Famous Bills
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50 free Famous Bills trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bill is one of those names that turns up everywhere. A Bill has run the United States, built one of the world's biggest software companies, collected more championship rings than he had fingers, and taught a generation of schoolchildren to love science. The Old West had two of the most famous of all, Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody. This quiz gathers the best-known Bills in one place. Most questions name a famous Bill, such as Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Bill Murray, Bill Nye or Bill Russell, and ask about the work, the record or the odd detail that made him memorable. Others cover the Bills of fiction, from Dickens and Harry Potter to Kill Bill, along with a couple of famous bills that are not people at all. It suits a pub quiz round, a party for the Bill in your life, or anyone who enjoys general knowledge with a twist. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches you something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bill Gates quit which university in 1975 to start Microsoft with his school friend Paul Allen?
Harvard
Harvard gave Bill Gates an honorary doctorate in 2007, 32 years after he walked away without a degree. While there he met Steve Ballmer, who later ran Microsoft.
Q 02Bill Clinton played which instrument on The Arsenio Hall Show while running for president in 1992?
Saxophone
Saxophone was his instrument from school, where he won first chair in the state band's section. The late-night appearance is often credited with building his popularity among young voters.
Q 03Before he became TV's Science Guy, Bill Nye worked as a mechanical engineer for which company in Seattle?
Boeing
Boeing used a part he invented, a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube fitted to its jumbo jets. He moonlighted as a comedian and quit in 1986 to write for a Seattle sketch show.
Q 04Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman made a new running shoe sole by molding rubber in which kitchen appliance?
Waffle iron
Waffle iron ruined, shoe business made: Bowerman wrecked his wife's Belgian one around 1970 while testing the idea. The light, grippy tread led to Nike's Waffle Trainer in 1974.
Q 05In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's weatherman relives the same February day in which Pennsylvania town?
Punxsutawney
Punxsutawney barely appears on screen, because the film was shot almost entirely in Woodstock, Illinois. Murray's character, Phil, shares a first name with the town's famous groundhog.
Q 06Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead during an 1876 poker game in a saloon in which gold-rush town?
Deadwood
Deadwood is where the dead man's hand got its name: Hickok is said to have held two pairs, black aces and eights. His killer, Jack McCall, was an unsuccessful gambler.
Q 07Which sharpshooter, billed as Little Sure Shot, starred in Buffalo Bill Cody's touring Wild West show?
Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley got the name from fellow performer Sitting Bull, and earned more than anyone in the troupe except Buffalo Bill himself. She stood just five feet tall.
Q 08In the 1976 Schoolhouse Rock! cartoon I'm Just a Bill, the singing roll of paper hopes to become what?
A law
A law is what Bill finally becomes in the song, sung by jazz trumpeter Jack Sheldon. His bill would make school buses stop at railroad crossings.
Q 09Which actor plays Bill, the assassin boss hunted by Uma Thurman's Bride in the Kill Bill films?
David Carradine
David Carradine got the part after Quentin Tarantino rewrote it. Bill was first written for Warren Beatty, but the role grew to need more screen time and martial arts training.
Q 10Bill Fagerbakke, who played assistant coach Dauber on the sitcom Coach, became the voice of which SpongeBob character?
Patrick
Patrick has been Fagerbakke's role since the series began, and in 2021 the dim-witted starfish got a spin-off of his own, in which Fagerbakke plays the lead.
Q 11Bill Russell won 11 NBA championships in 13 seasons as the center of which team?
Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics management made him player-coach for his last three seasons, the first Black head coach in NBA history. He won two of his titles while doing both jobs.
Q 12Bill Haley & His Comets' Rock Around the Clock took off after playing under the opening credits of which 1955 film?
Blackboard Jungle
Blackboard Jungle sent the song to the top of the Billboard chart for eight weeks. Haley's trademark kiss curl is said to have been styled to draw attention from his blind left eye.
Q 13Soul singer Bill Withers, who wrote Lean on Me, spent nine years in which branch of the US military?
Navy
Q 21Before his six Super Bowl wins with New England, Bill Belichick got his first head coaching job with which NFL team?
Cleveland Browns
Cleveland Browns bosses hired him in 1991, after he had won two Super Bowls as an assistant to Bill Parcells. His coaching life began in 1975 with a job paying $25 a week.
Q 22Bill W. is the name members use for Bill Wilson, who co-founded which fellowship in Akron, Ohio, in 1935?
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous grew from a failed business trip: tempted to drink in Akron, Wilson decided that staying sober meant helping another alcoholic, and was introduced to surgeon Dr. Bob Smith.
Q 23In Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, the violent criminal Bill Sikes murders which character, his own girlfriend?
Navy service is where Withers became interested in singing and writing songs, having enlisted at 17. His debut album cover shows him at his aircraft factory job, holding his lunch box.
Q 14After Bill Paxton's death in 2017, storm chasers spelled out his initials in tribute to his role in which film?
Twister
Twister cast Paxton as tornado hunter Bill Harding opposite Helen Hunt, and it became the second-highest-grossing film of 1996. The chasers drew the letters BP using the Spotter Network.
Q 15Bill Pullman plays President Thomas Whitmore, who leads the fight against alien invaders, in which 1990s blockbuster?
Independence Day
Independence Day was not his last term in office: Pullman played the president again in the TV comedy 1600 Penn. Nine years before it he was the hero Lone Starr in Spaceballs.
Q 16Bill Skarsgård, a son of Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, played which shape-shifting clown in the 2017 film It?
Pennywise
Pennywise earned Skarsgård nominations for a Saturn Award and an MTV Movie Award for Best Villain. His siblings Alexander, Gustaf and Valter all act as well, as he did from childhood.
Q 17Bill Nighy's face was hidden by computer-generated makeup when he played which Pirates of the Caribbean villain?
Davy Jones
Davy Jones kept Nighy's performance but none of his face, as the principal villain of Dead Man's Chest in 2006. He returned to the part in the next film a year later.
Q 18Cartoonist Bill Watterson refused for years to license toys and T-shirts based on which newspaper comic strip?
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes stayed off official mugs and stickers because Watterson felt merchandise would devalue the characters. He ended the strip after ten years and returned to private life.
Q 19Bill Bryson's travel book A Walk in the Woods describes his attempt to hike which long American footpath?
Appalachian Trail
Appalachian Trail miles beat them in the end: Bryson and the friend he calls Stephen Katz gave up on walking it end to end, and Bryson covered about 40 percent of the route.
Q 20Which future president drafted the amendments that became the US Bill of Rights, approved by Congress in 1789?
James Madison
James Madison at first opposed adding a bill of rights at all, then agreed to support one to secure ratification and served as its author. Congress sent twelve amendments to the states.
Nancy
Nancy is killed because Sikes thinks she has betrayed him. On the run afterwards he tries to drown his dog, Bull's-eye, then slips from a rooftop and accidentally hangs himself.
Q 24In the Harry Potter books, Bill Weasley, a curse-breaker for Gringotts bank, marries which character?
Fleur Delacour
Fleur Delacour first appears as the Beauxbatons champion in the Triwizard Tournament. Bill, the eldest son of Arthur and Molly Weasley, also joins the Order of the Phoenix.
Q 25Bill Cipher, a powerful interdimensional dream demon, is the main villain of which Disney Channel animated series?
Gravity Falls
Gravity Falls gives Bill the voice of Alex Hirsch, who also voices Grunkle Stan. In the closing Weirdmageddon episodes, a gang of demons under Bill's command is let loose on the town.
Q 26Which actor earned an Oscar nomination as Bill the Butcher, the gang leader in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York?
Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis took a part that Robert De Niro was once set to play. The character was inspired by William Poole, a real bare-knuckle boxer and Know Nothing leader.
Q 27Buffalo Bill is the nickname of the serial killer hunted by FBI trainee Clarice Starling in which thriller?
The Silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs won all of the Big Five Oscars, only the third film to do so. Ted Levine played the killer, whose real name in the story is Jame Gumb.
Q 28In American tall tales, the cowboy hero Pecos Bill was raised as a feral child by which animals?
Coyotes
Coyotes brought him up until his long-lost brother convinced him, years later, that he was not one of them. His horse went by the name Widow-Maker.
Q 29Tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson danced with which child star in The Little Colonel and other 1930s films?
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple and Robinson were the first interracial dance team in a Hollywood film, in 1935. His signature routine was the stair dance, which he tried and failed to patent.
Q 30Bill Medley, who had a 1987 hit duet with Jennifer Warnes, sang with Bobby Hatfield in which duo?
The Righteous Brothers
The Righteous Brothers were not related at all: Medley and Hatfield met through a musician who played in both their bands, and their first single was a song Medley wrote.