Decades Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This decades trivia quiz has 109 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 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which American comic strip debuted in October 1950 and ran 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 frozen 'TV Dinner', launched in the 1950s, came in a compartmented aluminum tray?
Swanson
Swanson sold just 5,000 TV Dinners at first, but within a year its sales had passed 10 million.
Q 03The 1954-55 Disney serial that launched the coonskin-cap craze dramatized which frontiersman?
Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett died at the Alamo in the third episode, but the show proved so popular that Disney made two more Crockett episodes, aired in late 1955.
Q 04'Rock Around the Clock' became a hit after playing over the opening credits of which 1955 film?
Blackboard Jungle
Blackboard Jungle turned it into a smash, though the record had been only a minor US hit when it first came out in 1954.
Q 05How did cameras show Elvis Presley on his third Ed Sullivan Show appearance?
From the waist up
From the waist up, yet at the end of that show Sullivan told viewers Presley was 'a real decent, fine boy'.
Q 06Wham-O's Frisbee, launched in 1957, was a renamed version of which earlier flying disc?
Pluto Platter
The Pluto Platter got its new name because New England college students had been tossing empty tins from the Frisbie Pie Company.
Q 07How long did Sputnik 1 transmit its radio signal after the Soviet launch of October 1957?
Three weeks
Three weeks: then Sputnik 1's batteries ran flat, and the silent sphere kept circling until it burned up in January 1958.
Q 08Wham-O's plastic hula hoop, the craze of 1958, copied bamboo exercise hoops from which country?
Australia
Australia's bamboo hoops came to the US, Joan Anderson said, when her mother shipped her one; Wham-O did not credit her.
Q 09Barbie, launched in March 1959, was based on a doll from which country?
Germany
Germany's Bild Lilli doll was based on a cartoon in the tabloid Bild, and Mattel later bought the rights to Lilli.
Q 10Chubby Checker's 'The Twist' topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960, then returned to number one in which later year?
1962
1962: the twist had caught on with New York society at clubs like the Peppermint Lounge, sending the record back to number one.
Q 11The Beatles' first Ed Sullivan Show appearance in February 1964 drew about how many US viewers?
73 million
73 million viewers tuned in, yet Capitol Records had turned down releasing the Beatles' singles in America for most of 1963.
Q 12Which Ford executive championed the Mustang's 1964 launch?
Lee Iacocca
Lee Iacocca made his name with the Mustang, yet Henry Ford II fired him in 1978, freeing him to take over Chrysler.
Q 13Which film was the highest-grossing release of 1965?
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music opened to mixed reviews, but it went on to displace Gone with the Wind as the highest-grossing film of all time.
Q 21Where did Gary Dahl source the rocks for his 1975 Pet Rock fad?
Mexican beaches
Mexican beaches supplied the stones, and Dahl got the idea in a bar while listening to his friends complain about their pets.
Q 22What made a 1975 mood ring change colour?
Finger temperature
Finger temperature was all it read, so simply rubbing your hands warm could turn a stressed black stone to a relaxed blue.
Q 23Which 1975 box-office flop, revived at midnight screenings, had by 2020 become the longest-running theatrical release ever?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Q 14Twister took off in 1966 after Johnny Carson played it on The Tonight Show with which actress?
Eva Gabor
Eva Gabor's turn with Carson rescued Twister, whose sales had been lackluster until that night.
Q 15Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek as which TV Western 'to the stars'?
Wagon Train
Wagon Train was Roddenberry's model, yet NBC turned down his first pilot before ordering a second one.
Q 16Which bank opened what is often called the world's first cash machine, in June 1967?
Barclays
Barclays' machine came from inventor John Shepherd-Barron, who was inspired by chocolate vending machines.
Q 17Roughly how many people watched Neil Armstrong's July 1969 moonwalk live on television?
600 million
600 million is the usual estimate, yet NASA's original moonwalk tapes, which held a sharper picture, were most likely erased and reused.
Q 18At Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix played a feedback-drenched version of which song?
The Star-Spangled Banner
The Star-Spangled Banner, bent into the sound of rockets and bombs, reached only the remnants of a crowd that had mostly gone home.
Q 19What did HBO show in 1975 when it began delivering programming by satellite?
The Thrilla in Manila
The Thrilla in Manila went out live by satellite, the step that turned HBO from a regional pay service into a national one.
Q 20What nickname did editor Howard Simons give the secret Watergate source later revealed as the FBI's Mark Felt?
Deep Throat
Deep Throat borrowed the title of a 1972 film, and Woodward said he signalled for meetings by moving a flowerpot on his balcony.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show became a ritual after midnight showings began at New York's Waverly Theatre in 1976, as fans dressed up and talked back.
Q 24What kind of program was the Apple II's 1979 killer app?
A spreadsheet
A spreadsheet called VisiCalc ran only on the Apple II for its first year, so offices bought the computer just to use it.
Q 25Which toy company made the original Star Wars action figures, released in 1978?
Kenner
Kenner couldn't make the figures by Christmas 1977, so it sold boxes holding a certificate for four figures to be mailed later.
Q 26Under what name was Sony's Walkman first sold in the United States in 1980?
Sound-about
Sound-about didn't last: Sony soon dropped its regional names, including Britain's Stowaway, and sold the player as the Walkman everywhere.
Q 27Why was Japan's Puck Man renamed Pac-Man for its 1980 American release?
Fear vandals would alter the P
Midway feared vandals would alter the P on arcade cabinets into an F, so Puck Man became Pac-Man for America.
Q 28Before settling on Rubik's Cube for the 1980 launch, Ideal Toy considered which name?
The Gordian Knot
The Gordian Knot suited a puzzle so tangled that Ernő Rubik himself needed about a month to solve his first scrambled Cube.
Q 29Which song did MTV play first when it went on air on 1 August 1981?
'Video Killed the Radio Star'
'Video Killed the Radio Star' followed a moon-landing network ID whose astronaut later became the Video Music Awards trophy.
Q 30Which candy company turned down product placement in E.T. (1982)?
Mars
Mars said no, so Hershey's Reese's Pieces lured E.T. instead, and sales of the candy soared after the film opened.