Anniversary Trivia
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88 free Anniversary trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free anniversary trivia questions with answers. Whether you are planning a golden anniversary party, a vow renewal or a quiz round for a couple who have made it another year, this anniversary trivia set covers the ground. It asks about the traditional gift for each milestone (paper, wood, tin, silver, ruby, gold, diamond, platinum), where those customs came from, who sends congratulations at 50 and 60 years, the longest marriages on record, the origin of the honeymoon and the royal jubilees that gave the milestones their names. The easy questions ask what a golden anniversary marks and what the traditional first-anniversary gift is. The hard ones want the year the American jewellers' association expanded the gift list, the queen who invited fifty kings to her jubilee banquet, the pudding chosen for the Platinum Jubilee and the mineral rubies and sapphires share. Written for anniversary parties, wedding showers and family celebrations. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on anniversaries, jubilees, marriage and the gemstones, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 88 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Philadelphia landmark carries a verse from the biblical Jubilee law in Leviticus?
The Liberty Bell
The Liberty Bell carries its verse from Leviticus 25, and 1830s abolitionists adopted the old State House bell as a symbol and gave it its name.
Q 02Which anniversary is traditionally marked with silver?
25th
25th is the silver anniversary, and guests were once expected to send silver, so a 19th-century etiquette guide welcomed invitations adding 'No presents received'.
Q 03What is the formal name for a 150th anniversary?
Sesquicentennial
Sesquicentennial joins Latin sesqui, 'one and a half', to centennial, and Philadelphia's 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition flopped amid heavy rain and thin crowds.
Q 04Queen Victoria's 1897 Diamond Jubilee thanksgiving service was held outside which London church?
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral: Victoria, too frail to manage its steps, stayed in her carriage, so the short service was held outside the building.
Q 05Which punk band's 'God Save the Queen' was banned by the BBC during the 1977 Silver Jubilee?
Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols tried playing it from a boat on the Thames on the Jubilee holiday, and police arrested their manager Malcolm McLaren and others when it docked.
Q 06What is the traditional gift for a first wedding anniversary?
Paper
Paper is the first-anniversary gift, and a 1922 etiquette guide said presents for the earliest anniversaries were seldom anything but jokes.
Q 07What is the traditional gift for a fifth anniversary?
Wood
Wood marks the fifth, and an 1880s etiquette guide said the wooden wedding began in jest, with presents like a step-ladder and a rolling pin.
Q 08What is the traditional gift for a tenth anniversary?
Tin
Tin marks the tenth, and 1880s tin weddings were a frolic: one father-in-law sent the bride a check labelled 'Tin' in a tin pocket-book.
Q 09By the early 1900s, which material was suggested for the twentieth anniversary?
China
China marks the 20th, and 1920s etiquette advised inviting only close friends and family to anniversary parties, because guests were expected to send presents.
Q 10Which material do traditional lists give for a 15th wedding anniversary?
Crystal
Crystal marks the 15th, and a 1922 etiquette guide called it the earliest anniversary present that guests were likely to take seriously.
Q 11The custom of silver and gold wedding anniversaries appears to have begun in which part of Europe?
The Germanic lands
The Germanic lands: at a silver wedding there, the wife was given a silver wreath, and at a golden wedding, a gold one.
Q 12Whose 1922 etiquette book listed gifts for anniversaries at 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50 and 75 years?
Emily Post
Emily Post: long before her 1922 Etiquette gave that list, she had divorced her husband over his extramarital affairs.
Q 13Catholic couples can order what from the Vatican almoner's office for a milestone wedding anniversary?
A papal blessing
Q 21Operation Sail and the American Freedom Train celebrated which US milestone?
200 years of independence in 1976
200 years of independence in 1976: to help pull the Freedom Train, a steam locomotive long retired to a Portland park display was restored to working order.
Q 22Which material is the traditional gift for an 80th wedding anniversary?
Oak
Oak is the 80th-anniversary material on the traditional list, the hardwood chosen for the strength and endurance of an eighty-year marriage.
Q 23The modern honeymoon developed from which upper-class custom in early 19th-century Britain?
The bridal tour to visit relatives
A papal blessing parchment: the Office of Papal Charities sells them online or at St Anne's Gate, and all proceeds go to its charity for the poor.
Q 14Which gemstone is the traditional gift for a 55th wedding anniversary?
Emerald
Emerald is the traditional 55th-anniversary gem, though the Gemological Institute of America's modern list gives emerald to the 20th and 35th anniversaries instead.
Q 15The word 'jubilee' comes from the Hebrew name for what object?
A ram's horn
A ram's horn: Hebrew yovel named the trumpet that proclaimed the year, but Latin reshaped the word after iubilare, 'to shout for joy', giving jubilee its happy sense.
Q 16Instead of a crown, what did Queen Victoria wear in her 1887 Golden Jubilee procession?
A bonnet
A bonnet: Victoria refused to wear a crown, and she had begun the jubilee with breakfast under the trees at Frogmore, where Prince Albert lay buried.
Q 17Which British king celebrated his golden jubilee a year early, in 1809?
George III
George III held his jubilee on 25 October 1809, the day he entered the fiftieth year of his reign; he died in January 1820, nine months short of sixty years.
Q 18Which Take That star co-wrote 'Sing', the 2012 Diamond Jubilee single?
Gary Barlow
Gary Barlow wrote it with Andrew Lloyd Webber, then travelled the Commonwealth, from the Caribbean to the Pacific, to record musicians for it.
Q 19What dessert won the official pudding competition for the 2022 Jubilee?
A lemon Swiss roll trifle
A lemon Swiss roll trifle by Jemma Melvin won; she built it around lemon after learning that the Queen had lemon posset at her wedding.
Q 20What is the biblical Jubilee, described in Leviticus?
A fiftieth year of release and land return
A fiftieth year of release and land return, which rabbinic tradition says was meant to keep each tribe's original share of the land intact.
The bridal tour to visit relatives: the custom soon spread to France, where from the 1820s it was known as the voyage à la façon anglaise.
Q 24The diamond eternity ring was invented as a marketing idea in the 1960s by which company?
De Beers
De Beers devised the diamond eternity ring in the 1960s as a way to sell the small Siberian stones it was obliged to buy from the Soviet Union under a supply deal.
Q 25Why is a wedding ring traditionally worn on the left hand's fourth finger?
A vein running straight to the heart
A vein running straight to the heart was the belief, though the Roman writer Macrobius spoke of a nerve, and the name vena amoris dates only from a 1686 English treatise.
Q 26Rubies and sapphires are both varieties of which mineral?
Corundum
Corundum, crystalline aluminium oxide, is the mineral behind both: chromium traces make it ruby red, while iron and titanium give sapphire its blue.
Q 27Which valley in Myanmar was for centuries the world's main source of rubies?
Mogok
Mogok, in Myanmar's Mandalay Region, supplied the world's finest rubies for centuries; its deep red 'pigeon's blood' shade became the benchmark for the gem.
Q 28Emerald is a green variety of which mineral?
Beryl
Beryl is the mineral, and the element beryllium is named after it because Vauquelin found the new element in beryl and emerald in 1798.
Q 29Which country is historically the world's largest producer of emeralds?
Colombia
Colombia: its emeralds were part of the plunder when 16th-century Spanish invaders reached the New World.
Q 30Diamond is a crystalline form of which element?
Carbon
Carbon: in the 1790s chemist Smithson Tennant burned a diamond and found it gave off only carbon dioxide, proving the gem is pure carbon.