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50 free 2009 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
2009 opened with a jet gliding onto a river and closed with a rock anthem hijacking the Christmas chart. In between, a comedian got his name bolted to the space station, a mystery coder switched on a new currency, a one-season racing team took both titles, and a Pacific nation changed the side of the road it drives on. These 50 questions cover the year's world news, science and tech launches, sport, music, films and television: a world-record transfer fee, a Grammy for a Zeppelin frontman, a late-night hand-over that lasted seven months, a midnight box-office record, and the Twitter race that put a Hollywood actor ahead of a news network. Most are pitched for a pub table; a handful reward the people who really paid attention. Play it on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a pub quiz, office round or a 2009-themed party.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which river did US Airways Flight 1549 ditch in after geese disabled both engines over New York?
Hudson
All 155 people aboard survived the Hudson River ditching and were rescued by nearby boats, a glide soon dubbed the 'Miracle on the Hudson'. The plane had struck a flock of Canada geese shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia.
Q 02Which Charlie's Angels star died hours before Michael Jackson on 25 June, her death overshadowed by his?
Farrah Fawcett
Farrah Fawcett, who played private investigator Jill Munroe in Charlie's Angels, died of cancer at 62 in Santa Monica that morning; Jackson died a few hours later and the news cycle moved on.
Q 03Stephen Colbert won NASA's poll to name a space station module, but what did NASA name after him instead?
A treadmill
A treadmill became COLBERT, the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, while the module itself was named Tranquility, only the eighth most popular entry in the poll.
Q 04Which country suspended its own dollar in April, months after printing a 100 trillion dollar banknote?
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's shoppers switched to the US dollar, the neighbouring rand and other foreign currencies once hyperinflation had made the local notes worthless.
Q 05Which company announced on 31 August that it would buy Marvel Entertainment for about $4 billion?
Disney
Disney paid Marvel shareholders $30 plus roughly 0.745 of a Disney share for each Marvel share, and the deal closed on the last day of the year.
Q 06Which band's 'Killing in the Name' became UK Christmas number one after a Facebook campaign to stop The X Factor?
Rage Against the Machine
Rage Against the Machine's 1992 single sold more than 500,000 copies in the week and became the first download-only single to take the Christmas top spot, beating X Factor winner Joe McElderry.
Q 07Jenson Button won the Formula One title with which team, in its only season before Mercedes bought it?
Brawn GP
Brawn GP, rescued from Honda's withdrawal by Ross Brawn, won eight of the season's seventeen races and both championships in its single year of competition.
Q 08Who took over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno on 1 June, only to lose it again after seven months?
Conan O'Brien
Conan O'Brien's 146-episode run is the shortest in the show's sixty-year history, ending on 22 January 2010 when NBC handed the slot back to Leno.
Q 09Which Microsoft operating system, released in October, replaced the widely criticised Vista?
Windows 7
Windows 7 sold more than 100 million copies in six months, making it Microsoft's fastest-selling operating system after Vista's three unloved years.
Q 10Which city won the vote to host the 2016 Olympics in October, after Chicago was knocked out in the first round?
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro won the final round 66 votes to 32 over the Spanish capital at the IOC session in Copenhagen, becoming the first South American city awarded the Games.
Q 11Which Pixar film about a widower who lifts his house with balloons was the first animated film to open Cannes?
Up
Up opened the 62nd Cannes Film Festival on 13 May and went on to become only the second animated film ever nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
Q 12Which club paid Manchester United a world-record £80 million for Cristiano Ronaldo in the summer?
Real Madrid
Real Madrid's £80 million was the highest transfer fee ever paid at the time, part of a spending spree that also brought Kaká to the Bernabéu that summer.
Q 13Which Argentine forward won his first Ballon d'Or on 1 December by a then-record margin of 240 points?
Lionel Messi
Q 21Angry Birds, released for the iPhone on 11 December, was built by the studio Rovio in which country?
Finland
Finland's Rovio Entertainment developed Angry Birds and handed publishing to Chillingo, and the slingshot puzzle became the template for a decade of mobile hits.
Q 22Which Twilight Saga film set the record for the biggest midnight opening, taking $26.3 million on 20 November?
New Moon
New Moon's $26.3 million from 3,514 theatres was the largest midnight gross in US and Canadian box-office history at the time, as fans queued for Bella's choice between Edward and Jacob.
Q 23Which original-series actor reprised Spock in J. J. Abrams's Star Trek reboot, alongside Zachary Quinto?
Leonard Nimoy
Lionel Messi polled 473 points to Cristiano Ronaldo's 233, the first of a record eight Ballons d'Or he would collect.
Q 14Alexander Rybak's fiddle-led 'Fairytale' won Eurovision in Moscow with a record 387 points for which country?
Norway
Norway's 387 points out of a possible 492 was the highest total in the contest's history at the time, winning both the jury vote and the televote.
Q 15Which one-man project from Owatonna, Minnesota, topped the Hot 100 with 'Fireflies', recorded in a parents' basement?
Owl City
Owl City's Adam Young recorded most of 'Fireflies' in his parents' unfinished basement; the song reached number one in its tenth week, shifting 200,000 downloads that week.
Q 16Amazon remotely wiped which author's novels from customers' Kindles in July, a move Jeff Bezos called 'stupid'?
George Orwell
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm vanished from devices overnight after a rights dispute, an irony about a surveillance novel that Amazon's refunds did little to soften.
Q 17Which actor beat CNN in April to become the first Twitter account with one million followers?
Ashton Kutcher
Ashton Kutcher crossed the million mark on 16 April in a publicised 'million followers contest' with the news network, when Twitter was barely three years old.
Q 18Which one-word button did Facebook switch on in February, letting users approve a post without commenting?
Like
The Like button was first enabled on 9 February and within a year had become the shorthand for approval across the web, spreading to outside sites as a plugin.
Q 19Minecraft, whose first public alpha appeared online on 17 May, was created by Markus 'Notch' Persson in which country?
Sweden
Sweden's Mojang Studios grew out of Persson's one-man alpha, and the block-building game went on to become the best-selling video game of all time with over 400 million copies sold.
Q 20Which game took $310 million in the US and UK on its first day, the biggest entertainment launch ever at the time?
Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 outsold any film or album opening in history, with its first-day take beating the opening weekends of the year's biggest blockbusters.
Leonard Nimoy played 'Spock Prime', the older Spock from the original timeline, in a film that recast the entire 1960s crew with new actors.
Q 24In which 1920s city is The Princess and the Frog set, where waitress Tiana dreams of opening her own restaurant?
New Orleans
New Orleans gave the film its jazz, its bayou voodoo and its beignets, and Tiana became the first African American princess in the studio's animated canon.
Q 25Jersey Shore, which introduced Snooki and The Situation on 3 December, premiered on which network?
MTV
MTV ran Jersey Shore for six seasons until December 2012, with eight housemates including Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi and Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino.
Q 26Which NBC hospital drama, launched in 1994 with George Clooney, ended on 2 April after 15 seasons and 331 episodes?
ER
ER's finale closed a run that began in September 1994, though Clooney himself had left the series in 1999 to pursue a film career.
Q 27Who was revealed in January as the eleventh Doctor Who, becoming the youngest actor ever cast in the role?
Matt Smith
Matt Smith was three years younger than Peter Davison had been when cast, taking over from David Tennant with a first full series in 2010.
Q 28Who quit Oasis on 28 August after a backstage fight in Paris, saying he could not work with Liam 'a day longer'?
Noel Gallagher
Noel Gallagher posted his resignation on the band's website two hours after Oasis pulled out of the Rock en Seine festival, ending the group after 18 years.
Q 29Whose remastered albums and a Rock Band video game were released together on 9 September, or 09/09/09?
The Beatles
The Beatles: Rock Band arrived on PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 the same day as the band's remastered CDs, a coordinated launch from Apple Corps and Rock Band developer Harmonix.
Q 30Which carmaker filed the fourth-largest bankruptcy in US history on 1 June, emerging as a new company on 10 July?
General Motors
General Motors' Chapter 11 filing trailed only Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual and WorldCom in size, and a government-backed 'new GM' bought its best assets on 10 July.