40th Birthday Trivia
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50 free 40th Birthday trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
44 free 40th birthday trivia questions with answers. Turning forty in 2026 means you were born in 1986, the year of Chernobyl, Challenger, Top Gun, Halley's Comet, the Hand of God and the Mets' comeback. This quiz is built for a 40th birthday party: forty questions split between the world your guest of honour was born into, the celebrities blowing out the same number of candles this year, and the number forty itself, from Ali Baba's thieves and the forty days of Lent to WD-40, UB40, the Roaring Forties and the ruby wedding. The easy rounds ask which comet swung by in 1986 and what Andy sells in The 40-Year-Old Virgin; the harder ones want the temperature where Fahrenheit and Celsius agree, the country whose name means 'land of forty tribes' and the self-help bestseller that gave us 'life begins at forty'. Read them out over cake or hand the link round the table; every question is multiple choice with an explanation, so nobody has to argue with the quizmaster. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the year 1986, the number 40 and the films, bands and events involved, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up. That mix of 1986 and the number forty is exactly what people mean by trivia for 40 year olds: the world they were born into, plus a bit of fun at the number's expense.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which famous visitor made its once-in-a-lifetime pass through the inner Solar System in 1986?
Halley's Comet
Halley's Comet was met by ESA's Giotto probe, which flew within 600 km of its nucleus and found a very dark surface with bright jets of gas and dust bursting out.
Q 02Which nuclear power plant suffered the world's worst reactor disaster on April 26, 1986?
Chernobyl
Chernobyl stayed secret for two days, until its fallout set off radiation alarms at a nuclear plant in Sweden and the Soviet government was pressed into admitting the accident.
Q 03Which schoolteacher was among the seven crew killed on Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986?
Christa McAuliffe
Christa McAuliffe was chosen from more than 11,000 teachers who applied, and she planned to teach two lessons from orbit for broadcast to America's classrooms.
Q 04Which film was the highest-grossing movie in the world in 1986?
Top Gun
Top Gun made naval aviation look so good that Navy recruiters in some cities manned tables outside cinemas to catch would-be pilots on their way out.
Q 05Diego Maradona scored his 'Hand of God' goal in June 1986 against which team?
England
England lost the quarter-final 2-1. Minutes after the handball, Maradona ran from his own half past a string of defenders to score the 'Goal of the Century'.
Q 06A roller through Bill Buckner's legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series handed a comeback to which team?
New York Mets
The New York Mets turned Buckner's tenth-inning error into an improbable win, then came from behind again in Game 7 to take the title from Boston.
Q 07Which animation studio was spun off from Lucasfilm in 1986 with Steve Jobs as its majority owner?
Pixar
Pixar began as a hardware firm: Jobs first pushed it to sell the Pixar Image Computer, and John Lasseter's early shorts were made to show off what the machine could do.
Q 08Which daytime talk show went national on September 8, 1986, and ran for 25 seasons?
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show grew out of AM Chicago, a faltering local morning programme that Winfrey took over in 1984 and quickly turned into a hit.
Q 09Which space station did the Soviet Union launch in February 1986?
Mir
Mir outlasted the country that launched it: cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev flew up as a Soviet citizen in 1991 and, after 311 days aboard, landed to find the Soviet Union gone.
Q 10Hands Across America's 1986 human chain ended in Long Beach beside which ocean liner?
The Queen Mary
The Queen Mary marked the Pacific end. At least five million people turned out, yet the line never fully joined: it couldn't bridge every gap along the way.
Q 11Which musical, later Broadway's longest-running, opened at Her Majesty's Theatre on October 9, 1986?
The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera followed its composer's earlier hit Cats to Broadway and then took its record, overtaking it as the longest-running show there.
Q 12Which manager was appointed by Manchester United on November 6, 1986?
Alex Ferguson
Alex Ferguson earned the job by winning three Scottish league titles and a European trophy with Aberdeen, then won 13 Premier League titles with United.
Q 13Which two countries joined the European Community on January 1, 1986?
Spain and Portugal
Q 21Which Twilight star, born in May 1986, earlier played a Hogwarts student?
Robert Pattinson
Robert Pattinson was killed off as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire three years before he came back as the undying vampire Edward Cullen.
Q 22Drake, born in October 1986, found fame as Jimmy Brooks in which teen drama?
Degrassi
Degrassi: The Next Generation cast him as a basketball star left in a wheelchair after a classmate shoots him, and he put out his first mixtape while still on the show.
Q 23Which tennis champion, the 'King of Clay', was born on June 3, 1986?
Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal was taught from early childhood by his uncle Toni, who stayed on as his coach on the professional tour; another uncle was an international footballer.
Spain and Portugal had been kept out while they were dictatorships; both regimes ended in the mid-1970s, and their entry took the Community from ten members to twelve.
Q 14Which country's president fled into exile in Hawaii in February 1986 after the People Power Revolution?
The Philippines
In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos claimed victory over Corazon Aquino in an election widely seen as rigged; after four days of peaceful street protests he was airlifted from his palace.
Q 15Which Swedish prime minister was shot dead walking home from the cinema in Stockholm in February 1986?
Olof Palme
Olof Palme had sent his bodyguards home for the day. One man was jailed for the murder and then cleared on appeal, and nobody has been convicted of it since.
Q 16Which magazine introduced the Big Mac Index, a semi-humorous purchasing-power measure, in 1986?
The Economist
The Economist invented it as a light-hearted guide to whether currencies sit at their 'correct' level, swapping the economists' usual basket of goods for a single burger.
Q 17The 1986 Rutan Voyager flight was the first to do what?
Circle the world nonstop, unrefuelled
To circle the world nonstop, unrefuelled, Voyager took off so heavy with fuel, nearly three-quarters of its weight, that its wingtips dragged along the runway.
Q 18The M25 motorway, completed in October 1986, encircles which city?
London
London's ring was out of date almost as soon as it was finished: traffic outgrew it within a few years, and it has been widened again and again since.
Q 19Which pop superstar was born Stefani Germanotta on March 28, 1986?
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga's stage name comes from the Queen song 'Radio Ga Ga'. She left the Tisch School of the Arts after two years to manage her own career.
Q 20Which sport did Usain Bolt, born in August 1986, play seriously as a boy before turning to sprinting?
Cricket
Cricket came first: Bolt was a promising fast bowler, and it was his speed on the pitch that led his school coaches to steer him towards the track.
Q 24Which Game of Thrones star, born October 23, 1986, played Daenerys Targaryen?
Emilia Clarke
Emilia Clarke was not the first Daenerys: Tamzin Merchant played her in the original pilot, and the episode was shot again once the part had been recast.
Q 25Which actress, born July 2, 1986, starred in Mean Girls and The Parent Trap?
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan had already appeared in more than 60 TV commercials when Disney cast her as both twins in The Parent Trap, her first film.
Q 26In the 2005 comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Andy works at what kind of store?
Electronics
Electronics: Andy's co-workers at the store invite him to a poker game, where their bragging exposes the secret he has kept for years.
Q 27What does the '40' in WD-40 stand for?
The 40th formula attempted
The 40th formula attempted is the one in the can, by the maker's account: WD stands for 'water displacement', and it first kept rust off the skin of the Atlas missile.
Q 28The reggae band UB40 took their name from what?
A British unemployment benefit form
A British unemployment benefit form gave the band its name, and they kept the joke going: their first album's sleeve copied the card, rubber-stamped with its title, Signing Off.
Q 29Which gemstone marks a 40th wedding anniversary?
Ruby
Ruby stands for 40 years. When Elizabeth II reached that mark as queen in 1992, she summed the year up in a speech as her 'annus horribilis'.
Q 30Which former Beatle wrote the song 'Life Begins at 40' in 1980, the year he reached that age?
John Lennon
John Lennon wrote it for Ringo Starr, who also turned 40 that year, to record on his next album; after Lennon was killed that December, Starr couldn't bring himself to.