60 free Guess the Year trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Guess the year trivia is the simplest quiz format there is: here is an event, when did it happen? It is also one of the hardest, because everyone knows the Berlin Wall fell 'in the eighties' and almost nobody is sure which year. This quiz gives you fifty-nine events across two thousand years and four possible years for each. Some are anchors you should know cold (the moon landing, the Titanic, Pearl Harbor); some are the ones people get wrong by a year or two (Chernobyl, the first iPhone, the euro coins arriving); a few are genuinely hard (the first Super Bowl, Windows 95, New Zealand's vote for women). The distractors are always plausible neighbouring years, so this works well as a pub-quiz round or a family game where players write down their guess before seeing the options. Each answer comes with a one-line explanation that adds a detail worth remembering, and the set is balanced so that the middle option is not the safe bet. Every date was checked against encyclopaedic reference pages before publishing, and each question carries a citation to the page that gives it.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year did the Berlin Wall fall?
1989
It came down on 9 November during the Peaceful Revolution, after East Berlin's transit restrictions were simply overwhelmed.
Q 02In which year did the Titanic sink?
1912
She struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York and went down in the early hours of 15 April.
Q 03In which year was the first iPhone released?
2007
Steve Jobs announced it on 9 January and it went on sale in the US on 29 June.
Q 04In which year did Apollo 11 land the first humans on the Moon?
1969
It was the fifth crewed Apollo mission, flying from 16 to 24 July.
Q 05In which year did reactor 4 explode at the Chernobyl nuclear plant?
1986
It happened on 26 April near the town of Pripyat in what is now Ukraine.
Q 06In which year did King John seal Magna Carta at Runnymede?
1215
The 'Great Charter' was sealed on 15 June, near Windsor.
Q 07In which year did Christopher Columbus make his first voyage across the Atlantic?
1492
He made four voyages in all, the last ending in 1504.
Q 08In which year was the Bastille stormed in Paris?
1789
The 14 July attack on the fortress-prison is still France's national day.
Q 09In which year was the Battle of Hastings fought?
1066
William of Normandy beat Harold Godwinson on 14 October and the Norman Conquest of England began.
Q 10In which year was the United States Declaration of Independence adopted?
1776
Congress ordered the engrossed copy on 19 July; the famous signatures came later that summer.
Q 11In which year did the Wright Flyer make the first sustained powered flight?
1903
The flights at Kitty Hawk on 17 December were the first by a manned, powered, controlled heavier-than-air aircraft.
Q 12In which year was Facebook founded?
2004
Mark Zuckerberg started it with Harvard roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.
Q 13In which year was Google founded?
1998
Larry Page and Sergey Brin were PhD students at Stanford at the time.
Q 14In which year did the First World War begin?
Q 21In which year was the Battle of Waterloo?
1815
Fought on Sunday 18 June near a village then in the Netherlands and now in Belgium, it was Napoleon's last battle.
Q 22In which year did the Wall Street Crash begin?
1929
Prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed in October, ushering in the Great Depression.
Q 23In which year was President John F. Kennedy assassinated?
1963
He was shot in Dallas on Friday 22 November.
Q 24In which year was the Eiffel Tower completed?
1914
It ran from 28 July until the armistice of 11 November 1918.
Q 15In which year did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
1941
The surprise raid on the US Pacific Fleet at Oahu came on 7 December.
Q 16In which year did Nazi Germany's surrender bring the war in Europe to an end?
1945
VE Day was 8 May; the definitive surrender document was signed that night in Karlshorst, Berlin.
Q 17In which year was Nelson Mandela released from prison?
1990
President F. W. de Klerk freed him after 27 years, amid fears of a racial civil war.
Q 18In which year did euro coins and banknotes enter circulation?
2002
The euro had existed as an accounting currency since 1999; the physical money arrived on 1 January and had replaced the old currencies by March.
Q 19In which year was the Great Fire of London?
1666
It burned from Sunday 2 to Wednesday 5 September and gutted the medieval City inside the old Roman wall.
Q 20In which year did William Shakespeare die?
1616
He died on 23 April, traditionally also his birthday, aged 52.
1889
Gustave Eiffel's company built it in just over two years for that year's World's Fair.
Q 25In which year was the Statue of Liberty dedicated?
1886
The dedication took place on 28 October; the statue was a gift from the people of France.
Q 26In which year did the Suez Canal officially open?
1869
Construction had taken ten years; the opening ceremony was on 17 November.
Q 27In which year did Krakatoa erupt catastrophically?
1883
The eruption in the Sunda Strait began on 19 May and lasted more than five months.
Q 28In which year did Mount Vesuvius bury Pompeii?
AD 79
It remains one of the deadliest eruptions in history, and one of the best documented thanks to Pliny the Younger.
Q 29In which year was Julius Caesar assassinated?
44 BC
He was stabbed on the Ides of March by a group of senators at the Curia of Pompey in Rome.
Q 30In which year were the first modern Olympic Games held, in Athens?
1896
They were officially the Games of the I Olympiad.