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50 free 1991 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
1991 was the year the Cold War ended and the web began. A 34-nation coalition drove Iraq out of Kuwait in a ground war that lasted four days, hardliners in Moscow tried a coup and lost, and by Christmas the Soviet flag had come down over the Kremlin. Meanwhile a physicist at CERN quietly switched on the first website. These 50 questions cover the news, sport, music, film and television of the year: a Valentine's Day thriller that swept the Oscars, a Bryan Adams ballad that would not leave number one, a jeweller who called his own products crap, the first Briton in space, a rugby World Cup final at Twickenham and the Christmas number one that had already been there 16 years earlier. 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 1991-themed birthday.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which film supplied the Bryan Adams ballad that spent a record 16 weeks at UK number one?
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves gave the song its film tie-in, and the single sold over a million copies to become the UK's best-seller of the year, beating a chart record that had stood since 1955.
Q 02Which Queen song became the first single to top the UK chart twice with the same recording, after Freddie Mercury died?
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody returned to number one for five weeks at Christmas, 16 years after its first run, with the reissue's proceeds donated to an AIDS charity.
Q 03Which Nirvana album, released in September, has a cover of a naked baby swimming toward a dollar bill on a fishhook?
Nevermind
Nevermind was an unexpected success, replacing Michael Jackson at the top of the US Billboard 200 in January 1992 and dragging grunge into the mainstream.
Q 04Which thriller released on Valentine's Day swept the 'Big Five' Academy Awards, a feat managed only twice before?
The Silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs won Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay, a feat previously managed only by It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Q 05Which Arnold Schwarzenegger film, the most expensive ever made at the time, topped the year's worldwide box office?
Terminator 2
Terminator 2 cost an estimated $94–102 million and took around $520 million, with its liquid-metal T-1000 effects setting a new bar for computer graphics.
Q 06Which leader resigned as Soviet president on Christmas Day, a day before the union was formally dissolved?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down with most of the republics already gone, and the 69-year-old state was wound up by the Supreme Soviet the next day, ending the Cold War.
Q 07Which Los Angeles motorist's beating by police was filmed from a balcony by bystander George Holliday on 3 March?
Rodney King
Rodney King's beating was seen worldwide after Holliday sent his camcorder tape to KTLA, and the officers' acquittal a year later sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Q 08Which British computer scientist at CERN announced the World Wide Web on a newsgroup on 6 August?
Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee's first website, info.cern.ch, went up at CERN, and the project only reached the wider Internet on 23 August.
Q 09Which NBA team beat the Los Angeles Lakers in five games in June to win the first championship in its history?
Chicago Bulls
The Chicago Bulls' first title started a run of six championships in eight seasons, and Michael Jordan was named Finals MVP for the first time.
Q 10Which Los Angeles Lakers guard announced on 7 November that he had HIV and was retiring immediately?
Magic Johnson
Magic Johnson was back within a year, co-captaining the Dream Team to Olympic gold in Barcelona in 1992.
Q 11Which Sheffield-born chemist answered a radio advert to become the first Briton in space, flying to Mir in May?
Helen Sharman
Helen Sharman was chosen live on ITV from nearly 13,000 applicants to an advert reading 'Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary', and spent eight days in orbit on Soyuz TM-12.
Q 12Which jewellery boss wiped around £500 million off his company by calling its products 'total crap' in April?
Gerald Ratner
Gerald Ratner's joke to the Institute of Directors at the Royal Albert Hall gave English the phrase 'doing a Ratner', and he was out of the business by 1993.
Q 13Which group of men jailed for the 1974 pub bombings that killed 21 people had their convictions quashed in March?
Q 21Which Russian president climbed onto a tank outside Moscow's parliament to rally crowds against the August coup?
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin had been elected president of the Russian republic only two months earlier, and the coup led by Vice President Gennady Yanayev collapsed in under 72 hours.
Q 22Which Soviet city voted in a referendum to take back the name St Petersburg, which it had lost in 1924?
Leningrad
Leningrad had been named for Lenin days after his death in January 1924, and the original name returned on 6 September, months before the union itself dissolved.
Q 23In which republic's state dacha at Viskuli did three Soviet leaders sign the 8 December accord that created the CIS?
Belarus
Birmingham Six
The Birmingham Six walked free after 16 years when the Court of Appeal ruled their convictions unsafe and unsatisfactory, one of Britain's worst miscarriages of justice.
Q 14Which media tycoon was found dead in the sea off the Canary Islands in November after vanishing from his yacht?
Robert Maxwell
Robert Maxwell's empire collapsed a month later with debts over £1 billion, and the Daily Mirror revealed he had taken £350 million from its pension fund.
Q 15Which Church of England envoy was freed in Lebanon in November after 1,763 days as a hostage, four years in solitary?
Terry Waite
Terry Waite had gone to Beirut to negotiate for other hostages and was himself kidnapped in 1987; he later became president of the homelessness charity Emmaus UK.
Q 16Which new levy did John Major's government confirm in April would replace the hated community charge from 1993?
Council Tax
Council Tax arrived in 1993; Major had announced the charge's abolition on 23 March, and the replacement was confirmed a month later.
Q 17Which club won a then-record eighth FA Cup in May, in the final where Paul Gascoigne tore his knee ligaments?
Tottenham Hotspur
Tottenham Hotspur's Gascoigne, a multimillion-pound target for Lazio, scythed down Gary Charles inside the first 15 minutes and wrecked his own knee, missing a year of football.
Q 18Which club took the league title despite a two-point deduction for a brawl at Old Trafford, losing just one match?
Arsenal
Arsenal conceded only 18 league goals all season, and their sole defeat, 2–1 at Chelsea, came while captain Tony Adams was serving a prison sentence.
Q 19Which country beat hosts England 12–6 at Twickenham on 2 November to win the Rugby World Cup?
Australia
Australia's Wallabies had knocked out holders New Zealand in the semi-final, and England abandoned their forward-dominated game in the final after public taunts from David Campese.
Q 20Which band's 1982 single 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' topped the UK chart in March thanks to a Levi's advert?
The Clash
The Clash topped the chart nine years after the song's release, one of 17 different number ones in the UK that year.
Belarus's parliament chairman Stanislav Shushkevich signed alongside the Russian and Ukrainian presidents at the state dacha near Viskuli, declaring the Soviet Union finished.
Q 24Which two Yugoslav republics declared independence on 25 June, triggering the Ten-Day War within days?
Slovenia and Croatia
Slovenia and Croatia's declarations prompted a brief Yugoslav army campaign in Slovenia that ended with the Brioni Agreement on 7 July, while Serb forces besieged Vukovar for 87 days in the autumn.
Q 25Which Cold War military alliance was formally ended by Václav Havel at a Prague meeting on 1 July, after 36 years?
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact had been created in 1955 in response to West Germany rearming inside NATO, and within 20 years every ex-member outside the USSR had joined NATO itself.
Q 26Which former Indian prime minister was killed by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber at a rally in Sriperumbudur on 21 May?
Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi was campaigning to return to office, and the Congress party won the most seats in the June election, making P. V. Narasimha Rao prime minister.
Q 27Which Burmese opposition leader, under house arrest in Rangoon, won the Nobel Peace Prize, her sons collecting it?
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi's sons Alexander and Kim Aris accepted the prize on her behalf; she would spend almost 15 of the 21 years from 1989 to 2010 under house arrest.
Q 28Which Philippine volcano's June eruption, the century's second largest, cooled global temperatures by about 0.5 °C?
Mount Pinatubo
Mount Pinatubo's VEI-6 blast was beaten in the 20th century only by Alaska's Novarupta in 1912, and its death toll passed 800.
Q 29Roughly how old was the mummified man that two German tourists found in the ice on the Austria–Italy border?
About 5,300 years
About 5,300 years old, Ötzi, nicknamed after the Ötztal Alps, is Europe's oldest known natural human mummy, and the Simons first took him for a recently dead mountaineer.
Q 30Which airline, founded in 1927 and famous for its blue globe logo and 'Clipper' call signs, shut down on 4 December?
Pan Am
Pan Am's trademark was the second-most recognised in the world when it ceased operations, 64 years after its first mail flight from Key West to Havana.