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50 free 1961 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
1961 was the year the space race got a human face and Berlin got a wall. A Soviet pilot circled the Earth in April, an American followed with a fifteen-minute hop in May, and in August East German troops strung barbed wire across a city while the new president in Washington promised the Moon within the decade. These 50 questions cover the news, sport, music, film and television of the year with a British lean: a League and FA Cup double, a 42-year jail sentence for a spy, a satirical magazine's first issue, a 14-year-old at number one, a clarinet tune written for a young daughter, a grey winning at Aintree, a Hancock episode read off teleprompters and the car Enzo Ferrari reputedly called the most beautiful ever made. Most are pitched for a pub table, with a handful for people who really remember the year. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a pub quiz, office quiz or a 1961-themed birthday.
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Q 01Which cosmonaut became the first human in space on 12 April, ejecting from Vostok 1 to parachute down separately?
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin was promoted to major by a special order issued while he was still in flight; the whole trip from launch to landing took 108 minutes.
Q 02Which club completed the first League and FA Cup double of the 20th century on 6 May, beating Leicester 2–0 at Wembley?
Tottenham Hotspur
Tottenham Hotspur were the first to do the double since Aston Villa in 1897; Bobby Smith and Terry Dyson scored after Leicester full-back Len Chalmers was hurt twenty minutes in.
Q 03Which 150 mph sports car, launched in Geneva on 15 March, did Enzo Ferrari reputedly call the most beautiful ever made?
Jaguar E-Type
The Jaguar E-Type made its racing debut by winning at Oulton Park on 3 April, and in 2008 it topped the Daily Telegraph's list of the world's 100 most beautiful cars.
Q 04Which Yankees outfielder broke Babe Ruth's home-run record with his 61st on the last day of a newly lengthened season?
Roger Maris
Roger Maris's mark was shadowed by commissioner Ford Frick's ruling that a record set beyond 154 games needed a 'distinctive mark', the asterisk suggested by sportswriter Dick Young.
Q 05Which musical, released in October and inspired by Romeo and Juliet, was the highest-grossing film of 1961?
West Side Story
West Side Story won ten Academy Awards from eleven nominations, a record for a musical, and Natalie Wood's songs were dubbed by Marni Nixon, who had to re-record them to fit Wood's filmed performances.
Q 06Which Joseph Heller novel had its number changed from 18 to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's Mila 18?
Catch-22
Catch-22 had its opening chapter printed in 1955 as Catch-18; Heller signed for $1,500 and the book became very popular among teenagers.
Q 07Which future royal bride was born at Park House on the Sandringham estate on 1 July, fourth child of Viscount Althorp?
Diana Spencer
Diana Spencer grew up next door to the royal family on their Sandringham estate and married at St Paul's Cathedral in July 1981, the first royal bride to have held a paying job before her engagement.
Q 08Which campaigning group grew from Peter Benenson's Observer article 'The Forgotten Prisoners', published on 28 May?
Amnesty International
Amnesty International's founder had read on the London Underground of two Portuguese students jailed for seven years for a toast to freedom; the article ran on The Observer's front page.
Q 09Which astronaut became the first American in space on 5 May, a 15-minute suborbital hop in the capsule Freedom 7?
Alan Shepard
Alan Shepard went on to walk on the Moon at 47 in 1971, the oldest person to do so; Freedom 7 reached 116 miles up and splashed down 302 miles down the Atlantic range.
Q 10Which East German leader insisted that 'no one has the intention of building a wall', weeks before sealing Berlin?
Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht had pushed for a border closure for some time; the denial was the first time anyone had publicly used the word 'wall', and work began on 13 August.
Q 11At which Berlin crossing did Soviet and American tanks stand 100 yards apart on 27 October before both withdrew?
Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie took its name from the letter C in the NATO phonetic alphabet; the standoff ended peacefully on 28 October after a US–Soviet understanding to pull the tanks back.
Q 12Which Holocaust organiser, seized by Mossad in Argentina, sat in a bulletproof glass booth at his trial in Jerusalem?
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann's trial, which opened on 11 April, was one of the first to be widely televised; he was sentenced to death on 15 December and hanged at Ramla Prison in June 1962.
Q 13Which UN Secretary-General died when his DC-6 crashed near Ndola in September, flying to negotiate a Congo ceasefire?
Q 21Where did John Kennedy set the goal, on 25 May, of landing a man on the Moon 'before this decade is out'?
A joint session of Congress
A joint session of Congress heard the pledge on 25 May, six weeks after the first human orbit had handed the Soviets another space first and three weeks after the first American suborbital flight.
Q 22In which Alabama town did a Klan mob firebomb a Freedom Riders bus on Mother's Day, 14 May?
Anniston
Anniston's mob, some still in church attire, attacked the first of two Greyhound buses; the riders were testing a Supreme Court ruling against segregation on interstate travel.
Q 23Which drug, sold for morning sickness, was pulled from the market in November after being linked to birth defects?
Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hammarskjöld remains the only posthumous recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; he was on his way to meet Katanga's secessionist leader Moïse Tshombe when the plane came down in Northern Rhodesia.
Q 14Over which Arctic archipelago did a Tu-95 drop Tsar Bomba, the most powerful weapon ever tested, on 30 October?
Novaya Zemlya
Novaya Zemlya's test yielded 50 megatons from a bomb dropped by parachute to detonate 4,000 metres up; the next four most powerful tests ever made were all Soviet, the following year.
Q 15Which country became a republic on 31 May and left the Commonwealth the same day, not rejoining until 1994?
South Africa
South Africa had announced on 15 March that it would withdraw on becoming a republic, and stayed outside the Commonwealth for 33 years until rejoining in 1994.
Q 16Which Kirov Ballet star defected at Le Bourget airport in June, the first Soviet artist to do so during the Cold War?
Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Nureyev escaped his KGB minders with help from French police and the socialite Clara Saint, after being told he must return to Moscow rather than fly on to London with the company.
Q 17Which novelist died by suicide in Ketchum, Idaho on 2 July, months after electroconvulsive therapy at the Mayo Clinic?
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway had been flown to the Mayo Clinic on the pretext of treatment for hypertension and given ECT as many as 15 times in December 1960; his wife Mary had found him with a shotgun in April.
Q 18Whose embalmed body, displayed beside Lenin's since 1953, was removed from the Red Square mausoleum on 31 October?
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin's body was reburied in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis as part of Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation; from 1953 the building had been called Lenin's and Stalin's Mausoleum.
Q 19Which 86-year-old poet, unable to read his poem in the glare at Kennedy's inauguration, recited 'The Gift Outright'?
Robert Frost
Robert Frost was the first poet to take part in a presidential inauguration, reciting from memory; Kennedy had suggested the poem himself as thanks for Frost's help in the campaign.
Q 20Which chimpanzee flew a Mercury capsule on 31 January, three months before any American astronaut did?
Ham
Ham was 'No. 65' until he landed safely, then was named after the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center that trained him; his flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds.
Thalidomide
Thalidomide is estimated to have caused serious birth defects in more than 10,000 children, over half of them in West Germany, where it had been sold over the counter since 1957.
Q 24Which Mercury capsule, flown by Gus Grissom, sank in the Atlantic when its hatch blew after splashdown in July?
Liberty Bell 7
Liberty Bell 7 lay on the Atlantic floor until 1999; its hatch was designed to release explosively in an emergency, and Grissom, at risk of drowning, was hoisted out by a recovery helicopter.
Q 25Which 28/1 shot became the first grey to win the Grand National in 90 years, ridden by Bobby Beasley on 25 March?
Nicolaus Silver
Nicolaus Silver was trained by Fred Rimell and beat the previous year's winner Merryman II into second place, while the favourite Jonjo finished seventh.
Q 26Which Paddington-born boxer took the world middleweight title when Paul Pender retired after nine rounds at Wembley?
Terry Downes
Terry Downes, the 'Paddington Express', had lost to Pender in Boston in January and lost the title back to him there in 1962; he fought six world champions and beat three.
Q 27Which Swedish warship, sunk 1,300 metres into her maiden voyage in 1628, was raised after 333 years on the seabed?
Vasa
Vasa was located again in the late 1950s by amateur archaeologist Anders Franzén, who reasoned that the Baltic's cold brackish water had no shipworm; over 45 million people have since seen her.
Q 28Which Gulf state, a British protectorate until 19 June, asked for British troops within days when Iraq claimed it?
Kuwait
Kuwait's request on 27 June brought British troops in; the Arab League took over its protection on 19 October, and the annexation Iraq threatened finally came in 1990.
Q 29Which Minister of Health announced that the pill, Conovid, could be prescribed on the NHS for two shillings a month?
Enoch Powell
Enoch Powell, later notorious for his 1968 speech on immigration, had that March proposed closing the large traditional psychiatric hospitals in his 'water towers' speech.
Q 30Which MI6 officer turned double agent was jailed for 42 years, the longest non-life sentence from a British court?
George Blake
George Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 with help from fellow inmate Sean Bourke and two anti-nuclear campaigners, and later mixed with Philby and Maclean in Moscow.