2020 Trivia
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8correct to beat the crowd
100 free 2020 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
2020 was the year the world stayed home: Eurovision was cancelled for the first time ever, the Olympics were pushed back, the NBA finished its season inside Disney World and 34 million people watched a show about a zoo owner called Joe Exotic. This quiz covers the whole year, pandemic and otherwise: the news (Brexit day, the Beirut explosion, Hong Kong's security law, the Belarus protests, the US election), the science (the first crewed SpaceX flight, Perseverance, the CRISPR Nobel, the Arecibo collapse) and the culture (Parasite's Oscar, the Chiefs' 50-year wait, Liverpool's 30-year wait, Animal Crossing, Blinding Lights). Every answer has a short explanation, so it doubles as a recap of a year everyone remembers and nobody wants to repeat.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Philippine volcano, on an island in a lake near Manila, erupted on January 12, 2020, for the first time since 1977?
Taal
Taal threw ash over Metro Manila within hours, and the capital's main airport suspended every flight while people living around the lake were moved out.
Q 02Which retired NBA star died with his daughter Gianna in a January 2020 helicopter crash?
Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bryant was one of nine people killed; investigators blamed the pilot's decision to keep flying into thick cloud, where he lost his bearings.
Q 03Which trade agreement did the USMCA, signed into US law in January 2020, replace?
NAFTA
NAFTA had bound the three countries since 1994; Donald Trump, who called it perhaps the worst trade deal ever made, signed its replacement, which took effect that July.
Q 04The UK's Brexit transition ended on December 31, 2020, under a trade deal agreed on which day?
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve: the deal came 11 months after the UK left the EU and a week before the transition ran out, so Parliament rushed it through in a single day, December 30.
Q 05The WHO named COVID-19 on February 11, 2020; what does the '19' in the name stand for?
The year 2019
The year 2019: CO is for corona, VI for virus and D for disease, and the WHO wanted a name that pointed at no place, animal or group of people.
Q 06Which European country put its whole population under COVID-19 lockdown on March 9, 2020?
Italy
Italy had sealed off Lombardy and other northern provinces only the day before, then stretched the same travel ban over the entire country overnight.
Q 07Which actor announced from Australia that he had COVID-19 hours after the pandemic was declared?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks was in Australia to make the film Elvis when he and his wife, Rita Wilson, fell ill; the NBA suspended its season that same evening.
Q 08Which annual event was cancelled in March 2020 for the first time in its 64-year history?
Eurovision Song Contest
Eurovision Song Contest: organisers called it off on March 18 after 64 unbroken years, and Rotterdam, left without its show, was handed the 2021 contest instead.
Q 09Which city was due to host the 2020 Summer Olympics before they were postponed to 2021?
Tokyo
Tokyo kept the name Tokyo 2020 even though its Games were held in July and August 2021, and almost all of the events took place without spectators.
Q 10Which country became NATO's 30th member on March 27, 2020?
North Macedonia
North Macedonia had been kept waiting for years by Greece's objection to the name Macedonia; a 2018 deal between the two added 'North' and cleared the way.
Q 11In April 2020, a four-year-old tiger named Nadia tested positive for COVID-19 at which zoo?
Bronx Zoo
Bronx Zoo vets tested Nadia after she developed a dry cough; she had caught the virus from a keeper who showed no symptoms, and several other big cats fell ill too.
Q 12What unprecedented thing happened to the price of US crude oil on April 20, 2020?
It fell below zero
It fell below zero: with storage tanks nearly full, holders of expiring oil contracts paid buyers to take the barrels off their hands.
Q 13The May 2020 Crew Dragon flight was the first crewed launch from US soil since the retirement of what?
The Space Shuttle
Q 21Which country announced in August 2020 that it had approved a COVID-19 vaccine before large trials were complete?
Russia
Russia named the shot Sputnik V in honour of the first satellite, and Vladimir Putin said one of his own daughters had already been given it.
Q 22In August 2020, Israel agreed to normalise relations with which Gulf state?
UAE
UAE: in return Israel shelved its plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, and Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco signed similar deals within months.
Q 23Bayern Munich beat which club 1–0 in the 2020 Champions League final in Lisbon?
Paris Saint-Germain
Paris Saint-Germain were beaten by a 59th-minute header from Kingsley Coman, a Paris-born winger who had started his career in their own academy.
The Space Shuttle retired in 2011; in the nine years between, NASA astronauts could reach the station only aboard Russian Soyuz capsules.
Q 14Whose murder by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, sparked worldwide protests?
George Floyd
George Floyd died after officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck during an arrest; a bystander's video spread worldwide, and Chauvin was convicted of murder in April 2021.
Q 15On June 30, 2020, China imposed a sweeping national security law on which territory?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong's law followed a year of mass pro-democracy protests; it made secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces crimes carrying up to life in prison.
Q 16In July 2020, hackers hijacked high-profile Twitter accounts to promote a scam involving what?
Bitcoin
Bitcoin: hijacked accounts such as Barack Obama's and Elon Musk's promised to double any payment sent to one address, and a 17-year-old from Florida was charged over the attack.
Q 17NASA's Mars 2020 mission, launched on July 30, carried which rover?
Perseverance
Perseverance was sent to look for signs of ancient microscopic life in Jezero Crater, and it carried the small Ingenuity helicopter along for the ride.
Q 18Which 18-year-old swept the four biggest Grammy categories at the January 2020 ceremony?
Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish won Album, Record and Song of the Year and Best New Artist with songs her brother Finneas produced in his small bedroom studio, a sweep managed once before, in 1981.
Q 19Unsafely stored ammonium nitrate caused a huge explosion in which port city on August 4, 2020?
Beirut
Beirut's port had held the 2,750 tonnes for six years, ever since it was taken off a cargo ship; the blast left as many as 300,000 people temporarily homeless.
Q 20Mass protests followed the August 2020 re-election of Alexander Lukashenko in which country?
Belarus
Belarus erupted after officials gave Lukashenko 80% of the vote amid claims of fraud; within days his challenger, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, had left for Lithuania.
Q 24Who resigned in 2020 as Japan's longest-serving prime minister because of a chronic illness?
Shinzo Abe
Shinzo Abe stepped down over ulcerative colitis, the same bowel disease that had cut short his first term in 2007; his chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, took over.
Q 25Jacinda Ardern won a landslide second term in October 2020 as prime minister of which country?
New Zealand
New Zealand's voting system had pushed every government since 1996 into coalitions or support deals, but Labour's 50% gave Ardern enough seats to govern alone.
Q 26In October 2020, NASA's OSIRIS-REx briefly touched down on which asteroid to collect a sample?
Bennu
Bennu was touched for only a few seconds by the craft's sampling arm; the dust and pebbles it grabbed parachuted into the Utah desert in September 2023.
Q 27Maia Sandu, a former World Bank economist, became the first woman elected president of which country in 2020?
Moldova
Moldova's voters turned out the incumbent, Igor Dodon, who was openly backed by Russia, giving the pro-EU Sandu almost 58% of the run-off vote.
Q 28Kamala Harris, elected US vice president in November 2020, was a senator from which state?
California
California's junior senator had abandoned her own run for president in December 2019, before a single primary; eight months later Joe Biden chose her as his running mate.
Q 29Which partnership announced the first successful phase III COVID-19 vaccine trial results in November 2020?
Pfizer and BioNTech
Pfizer and BioNTech reported more than 90% efficacy; the small German partner had begun designing the shot in January, days after the virus's genetic code was published.
Q 30Which country was the first to approve a fully tested COVID-19 vaccine, on December 2, 2020?
United Kingdom
United Kingdom regulators moved first, and six days later Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old grandmother, was given the opening dose of the mass rollout at a hospital in Coventry.