2010s Trivia
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119 free 2010s trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The 2010s were the decade the smartphone took over. Instagram, Snapchat, Vine and TikTok all arrived, the iPad launched, and a Korean pop video became the first thing on YouTube to be watched a billion times. These 62 free 2010s trivia questions cover the whole decade: the Arab Spring and Brexit, the Higgs boson and the first photo of a black hole, Superstorm Sandy and the Chilean miners, Leicester City at 5000-1, the Cubs ending 108 years of waiting, the Ice Bucket Challenge, the dress, Harambe and fidget spinners, plus Adele, Frozen, Hamilton, Game of Thrones and Avengers: Endgame. The quiz covers trivia from 2010 to 2020 and is written for anyone who lived through the decade and wants to see how much stuck. Easy questions ask which company bought Instagram; harder ones ask what the Chilean rescue capsule was called or which yacht carried Greta Thunberg across the Atlantic. It works for a pub quiz round, a family night, or a 2010s-themed party. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and primary records, and each question shows its explanation and source once you answer.
30 of 119 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces in which Pakistani city?
Abbottabad
Abbottabad is a quiet garrison town north of Islamabad, and bin Laden's walled compound stood under a mile from Pakistan's military academy; he is thought to have hidden there for at least five years.
Q 02How many Chilean miners were rescued in October 2010 after 69 days trapped at the San José mine?
33
All 33 were out of contact for 17 days, until a drill bit came back up with a note taped to it: 'We are well in the refuge, the 33.' The last man reached the surface on 13 October 2010.
Q 03What was the name of the steel capsule that lifted the Chilean miners to the surface one at a time?
Fénix
Fénix, Spanish for phoenix, was named for the mythical bird that rose from the ashes; Chile's navy built the capsule, barely wider than a man's shoulders, with design advice from NASA.
Q 04Japan's 2011 Fukushima accident was only the second rated Level 7, the nuclear scale's maximum, after which disaster?
Chernobyl
Chernobyl, in 1986, was the only earlier Level 7. Japan had rated Fukushima at Level 5, the same as Three Mile Island, then raised it a month after the tsunami as the total radiation released became clear.
Q 05Which prime minister announced his resignation hours after the UK voted to leave the EU?
David Cameron
David Cameron had called the referendum himself and urged voters to remain; Leave won with 51.9%, and soon after 8 am he stood outside 10 Downing Street and said the country needed fresh leadership.
Q 06On 4 July 2012, CERN announced the discovery of a new particle consistent with which long-predicted one?
The Higgs boson
The Higgs boson, proposed in 1964, is the particle of the field that gives elementary particles mass; Peter Higgs and François Englert shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics after CERN's ATLAS and CMS experiments confirmed it.
Q 07LIGO's first direct detection of gravitational waves, in 2015, came from the merger of what?
Two black holes
Two black holes, about 29 and 36 times the Sun's mass, spiralled together and merged; the ripple reached LIGO's twin detectors in September 2015 and won three of the project's leaders the 2017 Nobel Prize.
Q 08Which NASA spacecraft flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, returning the first close-up images?
New Horizons
New Horizons launched in January 2006, when Pluto was still classed as a planet; astronomers demoted it to a dwarf planet later that year, and the probe took nine and a half years to arrive.
Q 09Which NASA rover was lowered onto Mars by a rocket-powered 'sky crane' in August 2012?
Curiosity
Curiosity, about the size of a small car, was too heavy for the airbags that had cushioned earlier rovers, so a hovering descent stage lowered it on cables into Gale crater.
Q 10Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished on 8 March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to which city?
Beijing
The Boeing 777 was bound for Beijing with 239 people aboard when it vanished from air-traffic-control radar under an hour after take-off; a flaperon that washed up on Réunion in July 2015 was the first confirmed debris.
Q 11Which cruise ship capsized off Tuscany in 2012 after its captain steered close to shore?
Costa Concordia
Costa Concordia struck rocks off the island of Giglio and 32 people died; Captain Francesco Schettino, who left the ship before his passengers were all off, was sentenced to 16 years for manslaughter.
Q 12Jorge Mario Bergoglio, elected pope in March 2013, was the first pope from which religious order?
The Jesuits
The Jesuits (Society of Jesus) had never produced a pope before Francis, who was also the first from the Americas; he was elected after Benedict XVI became the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign.
Q 13A fire on 15 April 2019 destroyed the roof and spire of which Paris landmark?
Notre-Dame Cathedral
Q 21Who scored Germany's extra-time winner against Argentina in the 2014 World Cup final?
Mario Götze
Mario Götze, a substitute, chested down André Schürrle's cross and volleyed home in the 113th minute, giving Germany the first European victory at a World Cup held in the Americas.
Q 22Leicester City won the 2015-16 Premier League after starting the season at what odds with bookmakers?
5000-1
The 5000-1 outsiders had almost been relegated the season before; Claudio Ranieri's side became champions without kicking a ball on 2 May 2016, when Tottenham drew 2-2 at Chelsea.
Q 23Which team ended a 108-year title drought in the 2016 World Series?
Chicago Cubs
Notre-Dame Cathedral came close to losing its two bell towers as well, but fire crews saved them; President Macron set a five-year deadline to rebuild, and it reopened in December 2024.
Q 14The Ice Bucket Challenge that swept social media in summer 2014 raised money to fight which disease?
ALS
ALS research got a windfall: the challenge raised $115 million for the ALS Association in the summer of 2014, and the money helped fund the discovery of a gene linked to the disease.
Q 15Which company developed Pokémon Go, launched in July 2016?
Niantic
Niantic, which began inside Google, built the game; Nintendo's market value still doubled within two weeks of launch, though it only part-owned The Pokémon Company and had not made Pokémon Go.
Q 16Which 13-employee photo-sharing app did Facebook agree to buy for about $1 billion in April 2012?
Instagram, launched by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in October 2010, had about 30 million users when Facebook struck the deal, which worked out at roughly $77 million per employee; it passed a billion monthly users in 2018.
Q 17Which Apple product did Steve Jobs unveil in January 2010, priced from $499?
The iPad
The iPad, Jobs said, defined an entirely new category of device; buyers agreed, taking 300,000 on its first day that April and a million within 28 days, less than half the time the first iPhone had needed.
Q 18In December 2012, which song's video became the first on YouTube to reach one billion views?
Gangnam Style
Gangnam Style, Psy's horse-dance hit, reached a billion views in about five months; two years later it passed 2.1 billion, more than YouTube's view counter could store, and the site had to upgrade it.
Q 19The 2012 Summer Olympics made which city the first to host the modern Games three times?
London
London had staged the Games twice before, most recently in 1948; Danny Boyle's 2012 opening ceremony had the Queen appear to parachute into the stadium with Daniel Craig's James Bond.
Q 20Which country won its first World Cup in 2010, beating the Netherlands 1-0 in the final in South Africa?
Spain
Spain won 1-0 through Andrés Iniesta's 116th-minute goal in Johannesburg on 11 July 2010; South Africa was the first African nation to host the tournament.
The Chicago Cubs had last won in 1908; Game 7 in Cleveland went to a tenth inning after a 17-minute rain delay, and Ben Zobrist's double then put them ahead in an 8-7 win.
Q 24The 2016 Cavaliers were the first team to win the NBA Finals after trailing in the series by what score?
3-1
Cleveland came back from 3-1 down against a Warriors side that had gone 73-9 in the regular season, winning the seventh game in Oakland 93-89 to end the city's 52-year title drought.
Q 25Which sprinter won the 100 m and 200 m at three straight Olympics, finishing in Rio 2016?
Usain Bolt
Usain Bolt left Rio with nine Olympic golds, but had to hand one back in 2017 after relay team-mate Nesta Carter's sample from the 2008 Games tested positive on a retest.
Q 26Prince died on April 21, 2016, at which home and recording complex?
Paisley Park
Paisley Park, in Chanhassen, Minnesota, was Prince's home and studio complex; he was 57, and the cause was an accidental overdose of counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl.
Q 27The dress that divided the internet in February 2015 was actually which colours?
Blue and black
Blue and black was the real colouring of the Roman Originals dress; sales surged as the photo spread, and the retailer then made a single white-and-gold version to auction for Comic Relief.
Q 28Harambe, the gorilla shot in May 2016 after a boy fell into his enclosure, lived at which zoo?
Cincinnati Zoo
Cincinnati Zoo staff shot the 17-year-old gorilla to protect a three-year-old who had climbed in; Harambe memes then swamped the zoo's Twitter feed until it deleted the account that August.
Q 29In May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz made the first known commercial bitcoin purchase, paying 10,000 BTC for what?
Two pizzas
Two pizzas from Papa John's, ordered for him by another forum user, were what Hanyecz got for coins then worth about $41; enthusiasts now mark 22 May as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
Q 30On what kind of vessel did Greta Thunberg cross the Atlantic to a 2019 UN climate summit?
A racing yacht
A racing yacht, Malizia II, carried her from Plymouth to New York in about two weeks because she refuses to fly; solar panels and underwater turbines made its electricity, and she sailed back to Europe on a catamaran.