70th Birthday
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free 70th Birthday trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Seventy is a birthday worth making a fuss over. By then a person has seen a great deal and earned the right to be quizzed about it, and the day makes a fine excuse for a party, a toast and a few gentle jokes about getting older. This quiz is built for that party. Half of it celebrates the number itself and what people have done after reaching it: the statesmen, artists, astronauts and athletes who hit their stride at seventy or later, the anniversary the number names, and the places it turns up in sport, science and language. The other half heads back to the 1950s, the era of rock and roll, the first television crazes, the toys every child wanted and the headlines that filled the newspapers. The questions are pitched for a mixed room, so guests of any age can join in, and every answer comes with a short explanation worth reading aloud. Use it as a party game, split the room into teams, or test the guest of honour before the cake comes out.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which metal names both a 70th wedding anniversary and the jubilee Elizabeth II marked in 2022?
Platinum
Platinum marks 70 years, a full decade beyond diamond. In 2022 Elizabeth II became the first British monarch ever to reach that jubilee.
Q 02Which Founding Father, aged 70, was the oldest man to sign the Declaration of Independence?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin signed at 70, while the youngest signer, Edward Rutledge, was just 26.
Q 03Which astronaut and sitting US senator returned to orbit on the shuttle Discovery in 1998, aged 77?
John Glenn
John Glenn made the flight 36 years after becoming the first American to orbit Earth. It made him the oldest person to reach orbit.
Q 04Which mountain did skier Yuichiro Miura climb at 70, then again at 75 and at 80?
Mount Everest
Mount Everest first made Yuichiro Miura famous in 1970, when he became the first person to ski on it. His climb at 80, in 2013, set the age record for the summit.
Q 05Which singer's debut single for RCA, Heartbreak Hotel, became his first number-one pop hit in 1956?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley held the top of the Billboard chart for seven weeks with it. It finished as the biggest-selling single of 1956.
Q 06Which doll, named after Ruth Handler's daughter, was unveiled at a New York toy fair in March 1959?
Barbie
Barbie was based on Bild Lilli, a German doll that Ruth Handler had bought while travelling in Europe. The first one wore a zebra-striped swimsuit and a ponytail.
Q 07In which language is the number seventy said as sixty-ten, and ninety as four-twenties-ten?
French
French builds soixante-dix from the words for sixty and ten, a trace of counting by twenties. Belgian speakers skip the sum and simply say septante.
Q 08Which Oscar-winning Hollywood star quit acting in 1956 to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco?
Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly was just 26 when she left Hollywood. She had only recently won the Best Actress Oscar for The Country Girl.
Q 09Which actor-director won the Best Director Oscar for Million Dollar Baby at the age of 74?
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood became, at 74, the oldest winner the category had ever seen. He had first taken the same prize a dozen years earlier for Unforgiven.
Q 10Which modelling compound, first sold as a wallpaper cleaner, became a children's toy in 1956?
Play-Doh
Play-Doh began in 1930s Cincinnati as a putty for lifting coal residue off wallpaper. A nursery school teacher, Kay Zufall, saw its promise for art projects and helped choose the name.
Q 11Which word for a person in their seventies comes one decade after sexagenarian?
Septuagenarian
Septuagenarian comes from the Latin septuageni, meaning seventy each. The label lasts from a 70th birthday until the day an octogenarian takes over.
Q 12Which book of the Bible sets a human lifespan at threescore years and ten, meaning seventy?
Psalms
Psalms gives the figure in Psalm 90. The King James wording, counting by scores, is believed to have inspired the opening of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Q 13Which US president turned 70 less than three weeks after his first inauguration in January 1981?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan took the oath aged 69 years and 349 days, then the oldest person ever to assume the presidency. He left office eight years later at 77.
Q 21Which artist, then about 70, designed the woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa?
Hokusai
Hokusai wrote that nothing he drew before his seventieth year was worth taking into account. The print opens his series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.
Q 22Which Italian composer wrote the comic opera Falstaff, his last, as he approached the age of 80?
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi said that after killing off so many heroes and heroines he had earned the right to laugh a little. The comedy opened at La Scala in 1893.
Q 23In which sport did Oscar Swahn, 72, become the oldest athlete to win an Olympic medal, in 1920?
Shooting
Shooting brought Oscar Swahn six Olympic medals in all, three of them gold. At every Games he entered, he competed in the same team as his son Alfred.
Q 14Which politician, raised in Milwaukee, became prime minister of Israel in 1969 at the age of 70?
Golda Meir
Golda Meir had stepped down as foreign minister three years earlier, citing exhaustion and ill health. She was called back when Levi Eshkol died in office.
Q 15Which American folk artist, a farmer's widow, began painting in earnest at the age of 78?
Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses turned to paint after arthritis made her embroidery too painful. A collector spotted her pictures in a drug store window, and she lived to 101.
Q 16Which reference book did retired physician Peter Mark Roget first publish in 1852, aged 73?
Thesaurus
A Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases was Roget's retirement project: he gave up medicine in 1840 and was at work on the book by 1846.
Q 17Which Renaissance artist took over as architect of St Peter's Basilica in Rome at the age of 71?
Michelangelo
Michelangelo gave the rest of his life to the basilica and redesigned its great dome, which was completed only after his death.
Q 18Which British statesman, nearly 77, returned as prime minister after the October 1951 election?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill won a majority of 17 seats even though his party lost the popular vote. Two years later he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Q 19Which former Robben Island prisoner became South Africa's first Black president in 1994, aged 75?
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela had spent 27 years in prison before his release in 1990. His inauguration in Pretoria was televised to a billion viewers around the world.
Q 20Which singer-songwriter won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, at the age of 75?
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan was honoured in 2016 for creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. He stayed silent about the award for days.
Q 24Which city did Roman legions under Titus besiege in AD 70, destroying its Second Temple?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem fell after months of fighting. Rome later commemorated the victory on the Arch of Titus and on coins stamped Judaea Capta.
Q 25Which Cardinals slugger hit 70 home runs in 1998 to break Roger Maris's 37-year-old record?
Mark McGwire
Mark McGwire finished four ahead of Sammy Sosa after a season-long chase. Barry Bonds raised the mark to 73 only three years later.
Q 26In which state is the sitcom That '70s Show set, in the fictional town of Point Place?
Wisconsin
Wisconsin's Green Bay Packers turn up on jerseys and helmets throughout the series, and in one episode the gang goes to a game at Lambeau Field.
Q 27Which endurance sport brands its half-distance races 70.3, after the total number of miles covered?
Triathlon
Triathlon's Half Ironman strings together a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride and a 13.1-mile run to reach the figure.
Q 28Which Chinese philosopher said that at seventy he could follow his heart without doing wrong?
Confucius
Confucius summed up his life by decade in the Analects, from setting his heart on learning at fifteen to knowing the will of heaven at fifty.
Q 29Ytterbium, the element with atomic number 70, is named after a mining village in which country?
Sweden
Sweden's village of Ytterby gave its name to four elements: yttrium, terbium, erbium and ytterbium. No other place on Earth has as many elements named after it.
Q 30In which California city did Disneyland open in July 1955, on land cleared of orange groves?
Anaheim
Anaheim won out after Walt Disney outgrew his first idea, a small attraction beside his Burbank studios. The opening ceremony was televised on ABC.