This name that decade trivia quiz has 80 free questions with answers, and every one asks the same thing: you are given an event, an invention or a debut, and you have to say which decade it belongs to. That makes it a different game from ordinary decades trivia, where the year is handed to you in the question. Here the year is the answer. The events run from the 1880s to the 2010s and mix history with pop culture: the Wright brothers and the Titanic, the first Winter Olympics and the first talkie, Monopoly and the Golden Gate Bridge, the Slinky, the bikini and the LP, Barbie and Sputnik, Apollo 11 and Woodstock, Pong and the Walkman, MTV and Chernobyl, the Web and Dolly the sheep, the iPod and the iPhone, Instagram and Fortnite. Some are easy, some are famously misremembered (the Rubik's Cube and the Walkman are both older than most people think), and a few, like the first cash machine and the first Post-it, are for the real experts. It works well as a party round because everyone can have a guess. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article for that event, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 80 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which decade did the Wright brothers make the first sustained, controlled powered flight?
1900s
The Flyer's 12-horsepower engine kept it aloft for 12 seconds on the first hop at Kitty Hawk.
Q 02In which decade did the Ford Model T go into production?
1900s
The moving assembly line came later, in 1913, and helped push the price below $300 by the 1920s.
Q 03In which decade did the Titanic sink on her maiden voyage?
1910s
She went down two hours and forty minutes after striking the iceberg, with up to 1,635 people lost.
Q 04In which decade was the Panama Canal formally opened to shipping?
1910s
The first vessel through was the cargo ship SS Ancon; the US had taken the project over from the French a decade earlier.
Q 05In which decade were the first Winter Olympic Games held, at Chamonix?
1920s
They were staged as an 'International Winter Sports Week' and only retroactively named the first Winter Olympics.
Q 06In which decade did The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length 'talkie', reach cinemas?
1920s
Al Jolson performed six songs using the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, and the silent era was effectively over.
Q 07In which decade did Mickey Mouse make his official debut in Steamboat Willie?
1920s
He had actually appeared months earlier in a test screening of Plane Crazy, but this was the film that made him a star.
Q 08In which decade did Parker Brothers first publish Monopoly?
1930s
Charles Darrow's patent for the game was granted on the last day of that same year.
Q 09In which decade did the Golden Gate Bridge open to the public?
1930s
At its opening it was both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world.
Q 10In which decade did the airship Hindenburg burst into flames in New Jersey?
1930s
It was the lead ship of the largest class of flying machine ever built, and it was filled with hydrogen.
Q 11In which decade did Superman first appear, in Action Comics #1?
1930s
Batman followed in Detective Comics a year later, and Wonder Woman arrived in All Star Comics in 1941.
Q 12In which decade was the Empire State Building constructed?
1930s
It took just over a year to build and was the tallest building in the world for four decades.
Q 13In which decade was the Slinky first demonstrated to shoppers, at Gimbels in Philadelphia?
1940s
Naval engineer Richard James had been working on the spring since 1943 and sold the entire stock in 90 minutes.
Q 14In which decade did Raytheon sell the first commercial microwave oven, the Radarange?
Q 21In which decade was Diners Club, the first independent payment card company, formed?
1950s
Frank McNamara reportedly got the idea after forgetting his wallet at a New York restaurant.
Q 22In which decade did Hasbro first distribute Mr. Potato Head, the first toy advertised on television?
1950s
Early sets came with only the parts; children were expected to supply a real potato.
Q 23In which decade did Apollo 11 land the first humans on the Moon?
1960s
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were all on their second and final spaceflight.
Q 24In which decade did East Germany begin building the Berlin Wall?
1940s
Percy Spencer noticed a chocolate bar melting in his pocket near a radar magnetron, and the first ovens were the size of refrigerators.
Q 15In which decade did French designer Louis Réard introduce the modern bikini?
1940s
He named it after the atoll where a nuclear bomb had been publicly tested four days earlier.
Q 16In which decade did Columbia Records introduce the 33 1/3 rpm LP record?
1940s
RCA answered with the 45 rpm single the following year, and the two formats coexisted for decades.
Q 17In which decade did Mattel introduce the Barbie doll?
1950s
Ruth Handler based her on the German Bild Lilli doll she had bought on a trip to Europe.
Q 18In which decade did Wham-O turn the plastic hula hoop into a craze?
1950s
The idea came from Australian children twirling bamboo hoops; the 'hula' comes from the Hawaiian dance.
Q 19In which decade did the Soviet Union launch Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite?
1950s
It beeped for three weeks before its batteries died and burned up on re-entry three months after launch.
Q 20In which decade did Disneyland open in Anaheim, California?
1950s
It is the only Disney park built under Walt Disney's direct supervision.
1960s
It stood for 28 years, complete with a 'death strip' of trenches and guard towers, until it fell in 1989.
Q 25In which decade was the Woodstock festival held on Max Yasgur's dairy farm?
1960s
More than 460,000 people turned up for what was billed as three days of peace and music.
Q 26In which decade did the original Star Trek series premiere on NBC?
1960s
It ran for only three seasons before syndication turned it into a franchise.
Q 27In which decade did Ford launch the Mustang, creating the 'pony car' segment?
1960s
Ford expected to sell about 100,000 in the first year and sold more than four times that.
Q 28In which decade was the world's first cash machine installed, at a Barclays branch in Enfield, London?
1960s
It beat a Swedish rival by nine days; the actor Reg Varney of On the Buses made the first withdrawal.
Q 29In which decade did Atari release Pong in arcades?
1970s
Allan Alcorn built it as a training exercise; Magnavox later sued because it resembled a game on the Odyssey console.
Q 30In which decade did Ernő Rubik invent the puzzle cube that bears his name?
1970s
He called it the Magic Cube; the international launch by Ideal Toy did not come until 1980.