This decades trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and walks decade by decade from the 1950s to the 2010s, with roughly eight questions on each. Every stretch mixes music, television, film, fads, technology and news, so you get Sputnik and hula hoops before the Twist and Woodstock, then Pet Rocks and HBO, MTV and Rubik's Cube, Beanie Babies and Napster, YouTube and the iPhone, and finally Gangnam Style, TikTok and the Ice Bucket Challenge. It suits anyone who lived through a couple of these decades and thinks they remember them better than they do, and it works well as generational trivia: a pub round or a party game where boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z can each claim a stretch of the timeline. The easy questions reward general memory; the hard ones dig into details like what Sony first called the Walkman in America or who actually hosted the night Elvis debuted on Ed Sullivan. Every answer was checked against a primary reference before publication, so the dates, sales figures and names here are accurate rather than approximate. Answers and short explanations are shown after each question.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the 1950s, which comic strip made its debut and went on to run until its creator's death in 2000?
Peanuts
Charles Schulz hated the name Peanuts, which United Feature Syndicate imposed on him, and grumbled about it for the rest of his life.
Q 02Which company's brand of frozen 'TV Dinner', launched in 1953, came in a compartmented aluminum tray?
Swanson
The first one was a Thanksgiving plate of turkey, cornbread stuffing, peas and sweet potatoes, sold for 98 cents.
Q 03A 1954-55 Disney TV serial set off a nationwide craze for coonskin caps. Which frontiersman did it dramatize?
Davy Crockett
By the end of 1955 Americans had bought more than $300 million of tie-in merchandise, and Fess Parker became a star.
Q 04'Rock Around the Clock' became a hit after opening which 1955 film?
Blackboard Jungle
The record had first come out in 1954 as a B-side to 'Thirteen Women' and was regarded as a commercial disappointment.
Q 05Who hosted Elvis Presley's first Ed Sullivan Show appearance in 1956 in Sullivan's absence?
Charles Laughton
Sullivan was recovering from a car accident, so the British actor introduced Elvis from New York while Presley performed from Los Angeles.
Q 06Wham-O's Frisbee got its name in 1957 from college students tossing pie tins made by whom?
Frisbie Pie Company
The disc had been sold as the Pluto Platter; Yale students had been flinging the Connecticut bakery's tins around campus for years.
Q 07How long did Sputnik 1 transmit its radio signal after the Soviet launch of October 1957?
Three weeks
The 58 cm sphere kept beeping until its silver-zinc batteries died, and it burned up in January 1958 after 1,440 orbits.
Q 08How many plastic hula hoops did Wham-O sell in the first four months of the 1958 craze?
25 million
Sales passed 100 million within two years. Georgia Gibbs even sang 'The Hula Hoop Song' on Ed Sullivan that September.
Q 09Barbie, launched in March 1959, was based on a doll from which country?
Germany
Ruth Handler bought three Bild Lilli dolls on a 1956 Swiss trip; the doll was named after her daughter Barbara, who hated the association.
Q 10Chubby Checker's 'The Twist' set a record by reaching number one in 1960 and again in which later year?
1962
No song topped the Hot 100 in two separate chart runs again until Mariah Carey's Christmas hit did it in 2019 and 2020.
Q 11The Beatles' first Ed Sullivan Show appearance in February 1964 drew about how many US viewers?
73 million
It was the biggest US TV audience to that date, beaten three years later by the series finale of The Fugitive.
Q 12How many Mustangs sold in the first year after the 1964 launch, against 100,000 expected?
Over 400,000
The millionth Mustang rolled out within two years, making it Ford's biggest launch since the 1927 Model A.
Q 13Which 1965 film was the highest-grossing movie of the entire 1960s?
The Sound of Music
It opened as a limited roadshow release in March 1965 to mixed reviews and won five Academy Awards anyway.
Q 21Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) stayed on the Billboard 200 for how many weeks?
741
That is more than 14 years on the chart. It was the best-selling album of the decade.
Q 22Where did Gary Dahl source the rocks for his 1975 Pet Rock fad?
Mexican beaches
They cost him under a penny each; he sold nearly 1.5 million at just under $4 and cleared 95 cents on every one.
Q 23What made a 1975 mood ring change colour?
Finger temperature
The stone held thermochromic liquid crystals; sales hit $15 million by December 1975 before the market collapsed mid-month.
Q 14Twister took off in 1966 after Johnny Carson played it on The Tonight Show with which actress?
Eva Gabor
Rivals accused Milton Bradley of selling 'sex in a box'; it was the first popular US game to use human bodies as playing pieces.
Q 15Gene Roddenberry's first-draft pitch described Star Trek as which existing TV show 'to the stars'?
Wagon Train
NBC's ratings for the show were low and it was cancelled after three seasons and 79 episodes.
Q 16The world's first automatic teller machine opened in 1967 at a branch of which bank?
Barclays
It was in London, the same year PAL and SECAM colour television began broadcasting in Europe.
Q 17Roughly how many people watched Neil Armstrong's July 1969 moonwalk live on television?
600 million
That was about a fifth of the world's population, and it remains one of the most-watched broadcasts in history.
Q 18Roughly how big was the crowd left when Jimi Hendrix closed Woodstock on Monday morning?
30,000
The peak crowd was around 450,000; rain delays pushed his set to 8:30 a.m., and many people left during it.
Q 19What did HBO show in 1975 when it became the first network to deliver a signal by satellite?
The Thrilla in Manila
The Ali-Frazier fight was beamed continuously via satellite on September 30, 1975.
Q 20What nickname did editor Howard Simons give the secret Watergate source later revealed as the FBI's Mark Felt?
Deep Throat
The FBI's Mark Felt met Bob Woodward at 2 a.m. in a Virginia parking garage; the name riffed on his 'deep background' status.
Q 24Which 1975 flop became the longest-running theatrical release ever as a midnight movie?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
It was still in limited release decades after its premiere.
Q 25How much did the Apple II cost at its June 1977 launch with 4 KB of RAM?
$1,298
The maxed-out 48 KB model was $2,638. It beat the Commodore PET and Atari 400 to market by five months.
Q 26Kenner could not make Star Wars toys fast enough in 1977, so what did it sell for Christmas instead?
Boxed vouchers for future figures
The 'Early Bird Certificate Package' could be redeemed for four action figures between February and June 1978.
Q 27Sony's Walkman was originally sold under a different name in the United States in 1980. What was it?
Sound-about
Overseas sales teams disliked the made-in-Japan English of 'Walkman'; the UK got 'Stowaway' and Australia 'Freestyle' before the name went global.
Q 28Pac-Man was called Puck Man in Japan. Why was the name changed for its 1980 US release?
Fear vandals would alter the P
Designer Toru Iwatani said the character was partly inspired by a pizza with a slice missing and partly by the Japanese character for mouth.
Q 29Before settling on Rubik's Cube for the 1980 launch, Ideal Toy considered which name?
The Gordian Knot
'Inca Gold' was another candidate. About 500 million cubes had sold by 2024, making it the best-selling toy ever.
Q 30MTV went on air on August 1, 1981. What was the first clip it played?
'Video Killed the Radio Star'
The Buggles clip followed a network ID built around NASA moon-landing footage with an MTV flag on the lunar surface.