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50 free 1993 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
1993 was the year the web learned to show pictures, a new Intel chip got a name instead of a number, and a Cambridge mathematician stood up to claim a proof that had eluded everyone for three and a half centuries. Dinosaurs ruled the box office, a boy band began a run of chart-toppers, and a Christmas novelty single beat everyone to number one. These 50 questions skip the headlines every 90s quiz already covers and dig into the second tier: the void steeplechase, the rookie who won an American racing title, the penguin with a rubber glove on his head, the sealed glass world in the Arizona desert, and the Belgian, Cambodian and Japanese royal stories of the year. It suits pub quiz hosts, 90s kids and anyone born that year who wants to know what else was going on. Every answer carries an explanation and a source, and you can play online or print the set.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which claim from a 1637 margin note did Andrew Wiles announce he had proved at a Cambridge lecture in June?
Fermat's Last Theorem
Fermat's Last Theorem had resisted every attempt for three and a half centuries, and a flaw found in Wiles's argument that August took him and Richard Taylor until 1994 to repair.
Q 02Why did Intel name its new flagship chip Pentium rather than continuing the 286, 386, 486 sequence?
Numbers can't be trademarked
Numbers can't be trademarked, a judge had ruled when Intel lost a 1991 dispute over '386', so the company hired Lexicon Branding to coin a word instead.
Q 03What did the Purple Rain star adopt as his stage name during his contract dispute with Warner Bros.?
An unpronounceable symbol
An unpronounceable symbol became his name in protest at Warner's insistence on releasing his backlog slowly, leaving the press to call him 'The Artist Formerly Known as Prince'.
Q 04Which pink, yellow-spotted Noel's House Party character topped the UK singles chart at Christmas?
Mr Blobby
Mr Blobby held number one for three weeks and is regarded by many as the worst single ever released, which did not stop a flood of Blobby dolls, slippers and egg cups.
Q 05Which race was voided for the only time in its history when 30 of 39 runners ignored a false start?
The Grand National
The Grand National's 'race that never was' saw Esha Ness cross the line first in the second-fastest time ever recorded, while bookmakers refunded an estimated £75 million.
Q 06Which royal residence first admitted paying visitors to its state rooms, to fund repairs after the Windsor Castle fire?
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace's summer openings have continued ever since, and the ticket money that once rebuilt Windsor's gutted staterooms now pays for Royal Collection conservation.
Q 07Which dairy slogan launched in October with a Michael Bay-directed ad about a peanut-butter-stuffed history buff?
Got Milk?
Got Milk? was created for the California Milk Processor Board, and its first ad had a history buff lose a $10,000 radio quiz because his mouth was glued shut with peanut butter.
Q 08Which singer's seven-minute comeback single topped the UK chart for seven weeks and reached number one in 28 countries?
Meat Loaf
Meat Loaf's 'I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)' was his only solo number one almost everywhere, and at 7:52 it was the longest UK chart-topper since 'Hey Jude'.
Q 09Which pop star, born in Boca Raton, Florida in June, first found fame as Cat Valentine on the teen sitcom Victorious?
Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande was born on 26 June 1993, and her four-octave range, reaching into the whistle register, later made her one of the biggest names in pop.
Q 10Which striker, born in Leytonstone in July, grew up to become England's all-time top goalscorer?
Harry Kane
Harry Kane was born on 28 July 1993 and attended the same Chingford school as David Beckham, later captaining England and scoring a record 14 World Cup goals for his country.
Q 11Which film finally won Al Pacino a Best Actor Oscar, for playing retired Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade?
Scent of a Woman
Scent of a Woman brought Pacino his first win at the March ceremony, the same night he was also nominated for supporting actor in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Q 12Which club won the inaugural Premier League by ten points, ending a 26-year wait for a league title?
Manchester United
Manchester United had slipped to mid-table after a slow start before overhauling Aston Villa, and Ryan Giggs collected a title medal alongside a second PFA Young Player award.
Q 13Whose first Ashes delivery, bowling Mike Gatting at Old Trafford, is remembered as the 'Ball of the Century'?
Shane Warne
Q 21Which city lost the vote to host the 2000 Olympics to Sydney by 45 to 43 in Monte Carlo in September?
Beijing
Beijing's narrow defeat after four rounds of voting was avenged eight years later, when the IOC handed it the 2008 Games, and it later added the 2022 Winter Olympics too.
Q 22Which actress died at her Swiss home in January, a month after a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her UNICEF work?
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn had spent her last years on UNICEF field missions, beginning in Ethiopia in 1988, and died of appendix cancer at her home in Tolochenaz.
Q 23In which film does Robert Redford's billionaire offer a struggling couple a million dollars for one night with the wife?
Indecent Proposal
Shane Warne's leg break drifted one way in the air, spun sharply the other and clipped the top of off stump, a delivery credited with reviving leg spin bowling worldwide.
Q 14Which Nora Ephron romance ends atop the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day, echoing An Affair to Remember?
Sleepless in Seattle
Sleepless in Seattle had to rebuild the Empire State Building's observation deck on a former naval base in Seattle, because the real skyscraper was unavailable for filming.
Q 15Which film about a boy and a captive orca starred Keiko, a whale found at a Mexico City amusement park?
Free Willy
Free Willy's success inspired a real campaign that moved Keiko to a rehabilitation tank in Oregon and then to Iceland, where he was released from a sea pen in 2002.
Q 16Which little-known Simpsons writer did Lorne Michaels pick to replace David Letterman as host of NBC's Late Night?
Conan O'Brien
Conan O'Brien took the call during a Simpsons voice session, debuted on 13 September to savage reviews, and went on to host Late Night for a record 16 years.
Q 17Which Eric Clapton ballad, written after his four-year-old son's death, won Record of the Year at the February Grammys?
Tears in Heaven
Tears in Heaven swept Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, and remains Clapton's best-selling US single at more than 2.8 million copies.
Q 18Which boy band scored the first of its twelve UK number ones with the Gary Barlow ballad 'Pray' in July?
Take That
Take That's 'Pray' stayed on top for four weeks and began a streak of four consecutive number ones, with a video shot in Mexico.
Q 19Which document format did Adobe launch with Acrobat 1.0, competing with rivals such as WordPerfect's Envoy?
PDF stands for Portable Document Format, and the basic Acrobat Reader, which only views, prints and annotates files, became freeware that carried the format everywhere.
Q 20Who read 'On the Pulse of Morning' at January's presidential inauguration, the first inaugural poet since Robert Frost?
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou was only the second poet ever to read at a US inauguration, and her recording of the poem won the 1994 Grammy for Best Spoken Word.
Indecent Proposal was panned by critics yet became a national talking point, and Redford took the part only after John Gage was rewritten to be less of a villain.
Q 24Which Wallace & Gromit film, first shown on BBC Two on Boxing Day, pits the pair against the penguin Feathers McGraw?
The Wrong Trousers
The Wrong Trousers turns a gift of ex-NASA robotic trousers into a diamond heist, and its model-train chase helped it win the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.
Q 25Which Birmingham reggae band spent seven weeks at US number one with a cover of Elvis's 'Can't Help Falling in Love'?
UB40
UB40's version, recorded for the Sharon Stone thriller Sliver, also topped the charts in 11 other countries and gave the band its last US top-ten hit.
Q 26Which Miami prosecutor, confirmed 98–0 by the Senate in March, became the first woman to serve as US Attorney General?
Janet Reno
Janet Reno had already been Florida's first female state attorney, and she went on to serve eight years, the second-longest tenure of any attorney general.
Q 27Which sealed glass complex near Oracle, Arizona released its crew of eight in September after exactly two years inside?
Biosphere 2
Biosphere 2's crew grew their own food and lost an average of 16% of their body weight, yet their cholesterol and blood pressure readings improved.
Q 28Which Apple handheld shipped in August with handwriting recognition that Doonesbury mocked as reading 'Egg Freckles'?
Newton
Newton coined the term 'personal digital assistant', and The Simpsons piled on too, with a MessagePad turning 'Beat up Martin' into 'Eat up Martha'.
Q 29Kary Mullis won a share of the Chemistry Nobel for which DNA-copying technique, an idea that struck him while driving?
PCR
PCR, the polymerase chain reaction, became the central technique of molecular biology, and Mullis shared the prize with Michael Smith while also collecting the Japan Prize.
Q 30What did the world's first webcam, at Cambridge University's computer lab, show when it went on the web in November?
A coffee pot
A coffee pot in the Trojan Room had been watched over the lab's internal network since 1991, to spare staff a wasted trip downstairs, and stayed online until 2001.