The 1950s
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This 1950s trivia quiz has 147 free questions with answers and covers the decade people actually lived through: Elvis and the birth of rock and roll, I Love Lucy and the first TV dinners, tail-finned Chevrolets, hula hoops and Davy Crockett caps, the polio vaccine, Sputnik and the early Cold War, and prices at the soda fountain. Most questions are gentle memory-joggers; a handful will stump even someone who was there. It was written with seniors in mind, so it works as a reminiscence activity for senior centers, care homes and family gatherings, read aloud or played on a phone. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source, and each question shows a short explanation after you answer, which usually starts a story. Play the whole set for a shareable score, then try the 1960s and 1970s quizzes to keep going.
30 of 147 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1956 single gave Elvis Presley his first number one on the US pop chart?
Heartbreak Hotel
Heartbreak Hotel struck Sam Phillips, Presley's first producer, as 'a morbid mess'; it topped the pop and country charts anyway and became his first million-seller.
Q 02Which Bill Haley & His Comets record became a number-one hit in 1955 after it opened the film Blackboard Jungle?
Rock Around the Clock
Rock Around the Clock first came out in 1954 as a B-side and sold slowly; a year later the film's opening credits turned it into the first rock and roll record to top the American pop chart.
Q 03Which milkshake-mixer salesman opened his first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois, in April 1955?
Ray Kroc
Ray Kroc first visited the McDonald brothers' California stand because it had ordered eight of his mixers at once; in 1961 he bought the brothers out for $2.7 million.
Q 04Who developed the first effective polio vaccine in the 1950s?
Jonas Salk
Jonas Salk's vaccine was declared safe and effective in April 1955; asked on television who owned the patent, he answered, 'Could you patent the sun?'
Q 05What did the Soviet Union name the first artificial Earth satellite, launched in October 1957?
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 was a polished sphere about the size of a beach ball that beeped by radio for three weeks; the alarm it caused in the United States set off the Space Race.
Q 06Which city changed hands four times during the Korean War of 1950 to 1953?
Seoul
Seoul fell to the North within days of the June 1950 invasion and was retaken for the last time in March 1951; the armistice that stopped the fighting in 1953 was never followed by a peace treaty.
Q 07Which campaign slogan helped Dwight D. Eisenhower win the White House in 1952?
I Like Ike
I Like Ike played on his nickname and spread from campaign buttons to a 1952 television cartoon, animated by Disney studio volunteers to music by Irving Berlin.
Q 08Which pastor was chosen to lead the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr., then 26, was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which kept the boycott going for 13 months until the Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation; it made him a national figure.
Q 09Which sitcom, first aired in 1951, was filmed before a live studio audience with three cameras running at once?
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy was shot on film instead of going out live, so its prints looked far better than the fuzzy kinescopes of the day; Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are credited with pioneering the syndicated rerun.
Q 10Which actor, famous for his rebellious persona, starred in the 1955 film 'Rebel Without a Cause'?
James Dean
James Dean cemented his iconic status with his role as Jim Stark in 'Rebel Without a Cause', though he tragically died before the film's release.
Q 11Which American marque introduced the Corvette two-seat sports car in 1953?
Chevrolet
Chevrolet unveiled the Corvette at GM's Motorama in January 1953, then hand-built just 300 that year on a makeshift line in a Flint truck plant, every one Polo White with a red interior.
Q 12What famous doll, created by Ruth Handler, was introduced at the American International Toy Fair in 1959?
Barbie
Barbie was named after Ruth Handler's daughter Barbara and modelled on Bild Lilli, a German doll first sold to adult men as a gag gift.
Q 13Which author's seminal Beat Generation novel 'On the Road' was published in 1957?
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac typed the first draft in three weeks in April 1951 on a 120-foot scroll of taped-together tracing paper; Viking published the novel six years later.
Q 21Which genre of crooners backed by lush orchestras dominated the early 1950s before rock and roll?
Traditional pop
Traditional pop put singers such as Perry Como and Patti Page in front of string orchestras; Page's 1950 'Tennessee Waltz' went out as the B-side of a Christmas novelty, then became one of the era's biggest sellers.
Q 22Which 1954 film features a giant monster awakened by nuclear testing?
Godzilla
Godzilla was inspired in part by a real event months earlier: fallout from an American nuclear test fell on the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5, contaminating its crew of 23.
Q 23Which organ was first successfully transplanted between two people, identical twins in Boston, in December 1954?
Kidney
Q 14What major musical, featuring songs like 'Tonight' and 'Maria', premiered on Broadway in 1957?
West Side Story
West Side Story moved Romeo and Juliet to the gang streets of New York and gave Stephen Sondheim his Broadway debut as lyricist; it lost the Tony for Best Musical to The Music Man.
Q 15Which game show featuring Charles Van Doren was embroiled in a rigged-answers scandal in the 1950s?
Twenty-One
Twenty-One's producers coached Charles Van Doren to unseat champion Herb Stempel, who was told to lose and later exposed the fix; Van Doren confessed to Congress in November 1959.
Q 16Which California city has been home to Disneyland since it opened in July 1955?
Anaheim
Anaheim's park opened to invited guests on 17 July 1955, but counterfeit passes let in thousands more and food and drink ran out; staff remembered the day as 'Black Sunday'.
Q 17Who was the leader of the Soviet Union for most of the latter half of the 1950s?
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev stunned the 1956 party congress with a 'Secret Speech' denouncing his predecessor's purges, and led the country until his colleagues removed him in October 1964.
Q 18Which road network did the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act create?
Interstate Highway System
The Interstate Highway System was budgeted at $25 billion for 41,000 miles, with Washington paying 90 percent of the cost; the original network was not declared complete until 1992.
Q 19Which fantasy epic by J. R. R. Tolkien was published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955?
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings was written as a single novel; its publisher issued it in three parts for economic reasons, between July 1954 and October 1955.
Q 20Which 1950s American youth subculture is associated with leather jackets, hot rods and rock and roll?
Greasers
Greasers were working-class teenagers in the United States and Canada; the slicked-back hairstyles required constant combing to keep in shape.
A kidney from Ronald Herrick went to his dying identical twin Richard, whose body accepted it and who lived eight more years; surgeon Joseph Murray later shared a Nobel Prize for the work.
Q 24Which 1957 TV show depicted the lives of the suburban Cleaver family?
Leave It to Beaver
CBS dropped Leave It to Beaver after one season; ABC picked it up and ran it for another five years, and it became far more popular in reruns.
Q 25Who began hosting 'American Bandstand' in 1956, becoming a major influence on teenage culture?
Dick Clark
Dick Clark was the regular stand-in who got the job when original host Bob Horn was dismissed after a drunk-driving arrest; a year later ABC took the Philadelphia show national.
Q 26What mutual defense treaty did the Soviet Union and its satellites form in 1955?
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was signed in May 1955, days after West Germany joined NATO; Moscow feared a rearmed Germany and wanted its seven allies bound more tightly to it.
Q 27Which two U.S. states, the 49th and 50th, were admitted to the Union in 1959?
Alaska and Hawaii
Alaska and Hawaii entered seven months apart, in January and August 1959, so a 49-star flag was official for just one year before the 50-star design replaced it in July 1960.
Q 28Which Beat Generation poet published the influential collection 'Howl and Other Poems' in 1956?
Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' became a landmark work of the Beat Generation, leading to an obscenity trial that challenged censorship.
Q 29Which children's TV show launched in October 1955 with a cast of young performers that included Annette Funicello?
The Mickey Mouse Club
The Mickey Mouse Club's young cast, the Mouseketeers, opened each show with a roll call in mouse-ear caps; Funicello, who joined at 12, became one of its most popular members and later a pop singer.
Q 30Which English medical student became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, in May 1954?
Roger Bannister
Roger Bannister ran 3:59.4 at Oxford's Iffley Road track with two friends pacing him; his record lasted just 46 days before Australia's John Landy beat it.