1940s and 1950s
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50 free 1940s and 1950s trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The 1940s and 1950s changed daily life faster than almost any two decades before them. The first was dominated by a world war and the hard work of rebuilding; the second brought television sets, teenagers with pocket money, new suburbs and the opening moves of the space age. This 40s and 50s trivia quiz covers both decades in roughly equal measure. Expect questions on wartime turning points and the people caught up in them, the films and bandleaders of the forties, the singers and sitcoms of the fifties, sporting firsts, and the toys, foods and inventions that turned up in postwar homes. It is written for anyone who lived through those years or grew up on stories about them, and it works well read aloud at a family gathering, a reunion or a seniors' group. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even the questions you miss leave you with a story worth repeating.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which toy was born when naval engineer Richard James watched a spring knocked off a shelf keep moving?
Slinky
Slinky sold its first 400 units in 90 minutes when it was demonstrated at Gimbels department store in Philadelphia in November 1945. Each one cost $1.
Q 02Which garment did Louis Réard unveil in Paris in 1946, hiring a nude dancer when no fashion model would wear it?
Bikini
Bikini was the name of the Pacific atoll where the United States had tested a nuclear bomb four days earlier. The dancer, Micheline Bernardini, received 50,000 fan letters.
Q 03Which doll did Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler launch in 1959 after watching her daughter play with paper dolls?
Barbie
Barbie was modelled on Bild Lilli, a German doll Handler came across on a trip to Europe in 1956. Her daughter had liked giving paper dolls adult roles, which the baby dolls of the day did not allow.
Q 04Which kitchen appliance grew out of Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer noticing a candy bar melting in his pocket?
Microwave oven
Microwave oven cooking began with popcorn, the first food Spencer heated on purpose. The second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters.
Q 05Which 1950s sitcom drew more viewers for the birth of Little Ricky than Eisenhower's inauguration did the next morning?
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy was also the first scripted television show filmed on 35 mm film in front of a studio audience. Nearly 72% of American sets were tuned in for the birth.
Q 06Which Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman broke baseball's color line in 1947 and won the first Rookie of the Year award?
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson wore number 42, which Major League Baseball retired across every team in 1997. No professional athlete in any sport had been honoured that way before.
Q 07Which singer did The Ed Sullivan Show film only down to the waist during a January 1957 appearance?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was paid an unprecedented $50,000 for three Sullivan appearances, even though the host had earlier judged him unsuitable for family audiences.
Q 08Which theme park's televised 1955 opening saw thousands of guests get in on counterfeit tickets or over the fence?
Disneyland
Disneyland's first day of operation became known as Black Sunday. Of the 28,000 people who turned up in Anaheim, California, only about half had been invited.
Q 09Which Montgomery seamstress was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was not the first: 15-year-old student Claudette Colvin and other Black Montgomerians had already been arrested for the same refusal. Her case set off a bus boycott.
Q 10Which naval base's surprise bombing by Japan sank the battleship USS Arizona and brought America into World War II?
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor saw all eight US battleships present damaged and four sunk, yet six of the eight were repaired and returned to service during the war.
Q 11Which teenager's diary of two years hiding in a secret Amsterdam annex was published by her father in 1947?
Anne Frank
Anne Frank hid with her family behind a bookcase in the building where her father Otto worked. Her diary has since been translated into more than 70 languages.
Q 12Which Humphrey Bogart film was rushed into release in 1942 to cash in on the Allied invasion of North Africa?
Casablanca
Casablanca premiered in New York just weeks after Allied troops captured the Moroccan city itself. It went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Q 13Which Soviet spacecraft, a polished metal sphere launched in October 1957, set off the Space Race?
Sputnik 1
Q 21Which New Zealander was first confirmed to reach Mount Everest's summit, alongside Tenzing Norgay, in May 1953?
Edmund Hillary
Edmund Hillary's news reached Britain on the day of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, and the press called it a coronation gift.
Q 22Which virologist chose not to patent or profit from the polio vaccine whose success was announced in April 1955?
Jonas Salk
Jonas Salk told broadcaster Ed Murrow that the patent belonged to the people. Giving up any profit was meant to spread the vaccine as widely as possible around the world.
Q 23Which French region's beaches were the target of D-Day, the largest seaborne invasion in history, on 6 June 1944?
Normandy
Sputnik 1 was only 58 cm across, yet amateur radio operators could easily pick up its signal as it passed overhead. Its batteries ran down after three weeks.
Q 14Which Wham-O toy, based on a bamboo version used by Australian children, sold 25 million in under four months of 1958?
Hula hoop
Hula hoop sales passed 100 million within two years of the 1958 craze. The name came from the Hawaiian hula dance.
Q 15Which actress appeared, without her consent, on the cover of the first issue of Playboy in December 1953?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe had posed nude for a calendar in 1949, before she was famous, signing herself Mona Monroe. Hugh Hefner ran one of those pictures as the centerfold; the cover was a 1952 parade photograph.
Q 16Which four-wheel-drive vehicle, built by Willys-Overland and Ford for the US Army, became a civilian brand in 1945?
Jeep
Jeep was Army slang before the war, but the light 4×4 that entered production in 1941 made the name its own. The first civilian models were built in Toledo, Ohio.
Q 17Which wartime figure began as a 1942 hit song and came to stand for women working in American factories?
Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter reached the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1943, painted by Norman Rockwell in a pose borrowed from Michelangelo's Prophet Isaiah.
Q 18Which actor earned two posthumous Oscar nominations after dying in a 1955 car accident at the age of 24?
James Dean
James Dean made just three major films: East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. The nominations came for the first and the last of them.
Q 19Which hamburger chain did milkshake-mixer salesman Ray Kroc begin franchising from Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955?
McDonald's
McDonald's began in 1940 as a single restaurant run by brothers Richard and Maurice in San Bernardino, California. Kroc first visited to see why they were making so many milkshakes.
Q 20Which crooner's 1942 recording of White Christmas became the world's best-selling single, at over 50 million copies?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby recorded the song in just 18 minutes for the musical film Holiday Inn. It went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Normandy was reached first from the air: 24,000 American, British and Canadian airborne troops began landing shortly after midnight, hours before the beach assault.
Q 24Which brand of plastic kitchen containers, introduced in 1946, was sold mostly through home parties run by Brownie Wise?
Tupperware
Tupperware made Brownie Wise, a former Stanley Home Products saleswoman, its vice president of marketing in 1951. The first container that Earl Tupper developed was bell-shaped.
Q 25Which comic strip did Charles Schulz launch in October 1950 under a title he said he had always hated?
Peanuts
Peanuts was the syndicate's choice of name: Schulz had sold the strip as Li'l Folks, a title that turned out to have been used before.
Q 26Which blockaded city did American and British aircraft supply with food and fuel for nearly a year from June 1948?
Berlin
Berlin received more than 200,000 flights during the airlift. Some crews also dropped candy to German children, which earned the aircraft the nickname raisin bombers.
Q 27Which frontman of the Crickets died with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in a February 1959 plane crash?
Buddy Holly
Buddy Holly was only 22 when the plane came down soon after takeoff. Valens was aboard because a guitarist in the touring band had flipped a coin with him for the seat.
Q 28Which James Stewart film sold poorly in 1946 but became a Christmas classic once its copyright lapsed in 1974?
It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life needed $6.3 million to break even and came nowhere close. Once stations could broadcast it without paying royalties, it turned into a seasonal fixture.
Q 29Which author wrote The Cat in the Hat with just 236 different words, as a livelier rival to Dick and Jane primers?
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Geisel, said he built the story on the first two rhyming words he found on the word list he was allowed to use.
Q 30Which test pilot broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 in 1947 despite breaking two ribs in a riding fall?
Chuck Yeager
Chuck Yeager could not seal the hatch with his injury, so he secretly asked fellow pilot Jack Ridley for help. Ridley sawed the end off a broom handle for him to use as a lever.