2023 Events Trivia
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109 free 2023 Events trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This 2023 events trivia quiz is the year in review for people who followed the news rather than the red carpet. Seventy-three questions cover the world events of 2023: the bank failures of March, the Turkey–Syria earthquake, the Wagner mutiny, the coups in Niger and Gabon, the elections that put Milei, Noboa, Tusk and Wilders on the front page, the first Starship launch, the first landing near the Moon's south pole, the Nobel Prizes, the AI Safety Summit and the COP28 deal to transition away from fossil fuels. Sport gets its share too: the Women's World Cup, the Rugby and Cricket World Cups, the World Baseball Classic and Léon Marchand's swim into the record books. The easy questions ask which country overtook China in population and which company launched GPT-4; the hard ones want the town of the Nepal air crash, the bloc Somalia joined and the missile system behind the first interception in space. It suits pub quiz teams, news addicts, classrooms doing a year-in-review and anyone who wants to check how much of 2023 actually stuck. Films, music and celebrity gossip live on our separate 2023 pop culture quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the year 2023, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country adopted the euro and joined the Schengen Area on January 1, 2023?
Croatia
Croatia became the 20th euro-area member and the 27th Schengen state on 1 January 2023, the first eurozone enlargement since Lithuania in 2015.
Q 02Which country became NATO's 31st member on April 4, 2023, doubling its border with Russia?
Finland
Finland ended decades of military non-alignment after Russia invaded Ukraine, applying in May 2022 alongside Sweden, whose own bid was held up by two existing members.
Q 03Which US lender failed on March 10, 2023, the largest such failure since 2008?
Silicon Valley Bank
Silicon Valley Bank was closed by California regulators on 10 March 2023, two days after news of losses on its bond holdings set off a run by its depositors.
Q 04Which San Francisco lender did the FDIC seize and sell to JPMorgan Chase in May 2023?
First Republic Bank
First Republic Bank had been propped up in March by $30 billion in deposits from eleven big banks, but customers kept withdrawing and regulators seized it on 1 May 2023.
Q 05Which bank bought Credit Suisse for 3 billion francs in a Swiss-brokered deal in March 2023?
UBS
UBS took over its 167-year-old rival in a rescue brokered by the Swiss government; holders of Credit Suisse's AT1 bonds were wiped out entirely, while its shareholders still received UBS shares.
Q 06Which country overtook the long-time leader in April 2023 to become the world's most populous?
India
India passed the long-time leader by United Nations estimates; that country's population had shrunk in 2022 for the first time in six decades, while India's kept growing.
Q 07Which company launched GPT-4, a large language model that could respond to images, on March 14, 2023?
OpenAI
OpenAI's GPT-4 could read images as well as text; eight days after its launch, an open letter signed by Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak urged every lab to pause work on anything more powerful for six months.
Q 08What did Google DeepMind name the language model it released on December 6, 2023?
Gemini
Gemini launched in Ultra, Pro and Nano sizes, and two months later Google dropped the Bard name and rebranded its chatbot as Gemini too.
Q 09Which rocket's first full test flight, on 20 April 2023, ended in an explosion about four minutes after liftoff?
Starship
Starship, SpaceX's giant two-stage rocket, tumbled out of control and was destroyed; the launch wrecked its own pad, and regulators grounded the programme while the mishap was investigated.
Q 10Fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted in April 2023 in which country?
Sudan
Sudan's army chief and the head of the Rapid Support Forces had shared power since a 2021 coup; on 15 April 2023 their forces turned on each other in Khartoum.
Q 11What record did Freddy, an Indian Ocean storm of February 2023, go on to set?
Longest-lasting tropical cyclone ever
'Longest-lasting tropical cyclone ever' was confirmed by the WMO in 2024: Freddy lasted 36 days, crossed the entire Indian Ocean and struck Mozambique twice.
Q 12What is the title of Prince Harry's memoir, published in January 2023?
Spare
Spare takes its title from the old saying that a dynasty needs 'an heir and a spare'; it sold more than 1.4 million copies on its first day, a Guinness record for a non-fiction book.
Q 13Which North African country's 8 September 2023 earthquake killed at least 2,960 people?
Morocco
Q 21In February 2023 Russia suspended its participation in which nuclear arms treaty with the United States?
New START
New START capped each side at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads; Russia announced the suspension in a state-of-the-nation speech, and the treaty expired for good in February 2026.
Q 22President Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown in a July 2023 coup in which country?
Niger
Niger's presidential guard, the unit meant to protect Mohamed Bazoum, detained him on 26 July 2023; its commander declared himself leader and tore up the country's military agreements with France.
Q 23An August 30, 2023 coup ended the Bongo family's 56-year rule in which Central African country?
Gabon
Morocco's quake struck the High Atlas near Marrakesh, its deadliest since Agadir in 1960; the government accepted rescue teams from only four countries and left dozens of other offers unanswered.
Q 14Two dams collapsed above Derna after Storm Daniel in 2023, destroying a quarter of the city, in which country?
Libya
Libya's Derna lost whole neighbourhoods when two dams built in the 1970s gave way; the city's deputy mayor said they had not been maintained since 2002.
Q 15Which band's residency opened the Sphere arena in Las Vegas in September 2023?
U2
U2 played the run without drummer Larry Mullen Jr., who sat out to have surgery; with Dutch stand-in Bram van den Berg, these were the band's first shows without him since 1978.
Q 16Near which resort city did Hurricane Otis make landfall on 25 October 2023?
Acapulco
Acapulco had almost no warning: forecast to arrive as a tropical storm, Otis exploded into a Category 5 hurricane in about a day, the strongest ever to make landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast.
Q 17The Sycamore Gap Tree, illegally felled in September 2023, stood beside which ancient structure?
Hadrian's Wall
Hadrian's Wall was itself damaged when the tree, seen in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, was felled; two men were jailed for over four years in 2025, and the stump has put out new shoots.
Q 18Which mercenary chief led a June 2023 mutiny against Russia's military, then died in a plane crash two months later?
Yevgeny Prigozhin
Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner column came within about 200 km of Moscow on 24 June 2023 before halting; he died when his jet crashed in Tver region on 23 August 2023.
Q 19Which leader brokered the deal that ended the one-day mercenary mutiny in Russia in June 2023?
Alexander Lukashenko
Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus's president, brokered the deal: the Wagner chief halted his march on Moscow and left for Belarus, and Russia dropped the mutiny charges against him.
Q 20Which sitting head of state did the ICC issue an arrest warrant for on 17 March 2023?
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin was charged by the ICC on 17 March 2023 with the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children, the first warrant against a sitting leader of a permanent UN Security Council member.
Gabon's military, led by General Brice Oligui Nguema, seized power on 30 August 2023 minutes after Ali Bongo Ondimba was declared re-elected; his father Omar had taken office in 1967.
Q 24Bola Tinubu was elected president of which West African country in February 2023?
Nigeria
Nigeria's Bola Tinubu used his inauguration speech that May to scrap a fuel subsidy dating from the 1970s, and petrol prices climbed to record highs within weeks.
Q 25Which club won Italy's Serie A in 2023, its first league title in 33 years?
Napoli
Napoli had gone bankrupt and was playing in Italy's third tier as recently as 2006; its two earlier titles, in 1987 and 1990, came with Diego Maradona, whose name its stadium now bears.
Q 26Daniel Noboa won a snap presidential election in which South American country in October 2023?
Ecuador
Ecuador held the snap vote after President Guillermo Lasso dissolved congress in May 2023; Noboa, 35, heir to a banana fortune, beat Luisa González in the October runoff.
Q 27Bernardo Arévalo of the Semilla movement was elected president of which country in August 2023?
Guatemala
Guatemala's Bernardo Arévalo, son of former president Juan José Arévalo, won the 20 August 2023 runoff against Sandra Torres by a wide margin; prosecutors then spent months trying to suspend his Semilla party.
Q 28Who succeeded Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister of New Zealand on January 25, 2023?
Chris Hipkins
Chris Hipkins, then education and police minister, was sworn in on 25 January 2023 after Ardern's 19 January announcement that she no longer had 'enough in the tank'.
Q 29In which country did Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom win the most seats in a November 2023 election?
The Netherlands
The Netherlands went to the polls on 22 November 2023 after Mark Rutte's coalition collapsed over migration that July; Wilders' PVV took 37 of 150 seats, its best ever result.
Q 30Donald Tusk replaced Mateusz Morawiecki as prime minister of which country in December 2023?
Poland
Poland's Law and Justice party won the most seats that October but fell short of a majority, returning Tusk to the office he had left in 2014 to lead the European Council.