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50 free 50th Birthday trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Anyone turning 50 this year arrived in 1976, the year the United States threw itself a 200th birthday party, a 14-year-old Romanian scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics, a lander called Viking 1 sent back the first pictures from the surface of Mars, and two Steves in California started a company called Apple. Concorde began carrying passengers, JVC launched VHS, the Ramones released their first album and Rocky won Best Picture. These 50 questions are built for a party: the news of 1976 (Carter beats Ford, Mao dies, Ebola and Legionnaires' disease get their names), the sport (Steelers, Reds, Borg's first Wimbledon, Dorothy Hamill's haircut), the screens (Charlie's Angels, The Muppet Show, Laverne & Shirley, Taxi Driver), the music (Hotel California, Dancing Queen, Frampton Comes Alive!) and the class of 1976 who are also turning 50: Reese Witherspoon, Peyton Manning, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ronaldo and more. Easy questions cover the hits; harder ones ask about Cray supercomputers, the two-dollar bill and the Chowchilla kidnapping. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so the table learns something even when they miss. Play it on phones or print it for the party.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which computer company did Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak form in 1976?
Apple
Their first product, the Apple-1, was an 8-bit machine designed by Wozniak; Microsoft was also officially registered that November.
Q 02Which supersonic airliner began carrying paying passengers on 21 January 1976?
Concorde
Air France flew out of Paris and British Airways out of Heathrow on the same day; Washington service followed in May.
Q 03Which home video format did JVC introduce in 1976?
VHS
It went on to beat Sony's rival system and dominate living rooms through the 1980s and 1990s.
Q 04The Cray-1, released in March 1976, was the first commercially developed what?
Supercomputer
The first buyer was the Energy Research and Development Administration in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Q 05On July 20, 1976, Viking 1 made the first successful landing on which planet?
Mars
The landing had been planned for the Bicentennial on July 4 but the chosen site looked too rough, so it slipped to the Apollo 11 anniversary.
Q 06Which famous, much-debated photograph did NASA release from Viking 1 in July 1976?
The Face on Mars
The shadowy mesa in Cydonia fuelled decades of speculation until sharper images showed an ordinary hill.
Q 07What anniversary did the United States celebrate on July 4, 1976?
Its 200th
The Treasury marked the Bicentennial by bringing back a long-absent banknote on Thomas Jefferson's birthday that April.
Q 08Which US banknote was reintroduced in April 1976 as part of the Bicentennial?
The two-dollar bill
It came out on Thomas Jefferson's 233rd birthday, since his portrait is on the front.
Q 09Who narrowly beat incumbent Gerald Ford in the November 1976 US presidential election?
Jimmy Carter
He was the first candidate from the Deep South to win the presidency since the Civil War.
Q 10In a 1976 debate, President Ford wrongly claimed there was no Soviet domination of where?
Eastern Europe
The gaffe came in the second televised debate, held in San Francisco.
Q 11Who did Gerald Ford narrowly hold off for the 1976 Republican nomination?
Ronald Reagan
The challenger had tried to woo moderate delegates by naming liberal senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate.
Q 12Which Chinese leader died on September 9, 1976, after a series of heart attacks?
Mao Zedong
Hua Guofeng was named his successor that October; his remains were put on permanent display despite a request to be cremated.
Q 13A July 1976 earthquake that killed over 240,000 people flattened which Chinese city?
Tangshan
Official figures put the dead at 242,769 and the injured at 164,851, making it one of the deadliest quakes on record.
Q 21In July 1976, North and South were formally unified as the Socialist Republic of what?
Vietnam
The Provisional Government of the South was dissolved a year after the fall of Saigon.
Q 22Which kidnapped newspaper heiress was convicted of armed bank robbery in March 1976?
Patty Hearst
She was sentenced to a long term but served only 22 months before the next president commuted it.
Q 23In the 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping, 26 schoolchildren and an adult were buried in what?
A box truck in a quarry
They dug themselves free after 16 hours; the quarry owner's son and two accomplices were arrested.
Q 14Which British prime minister unexpectedly resigned in March 1976?
Harold Wilson
Callaghan took over in April; the same month David Steel's Liberals were reeling from the Jeremy Thorpe scandal.
Q 15In June 1976 the UK and Iceland ended the third of which oddly named conflict?
The Cod War
Britain accepted Iceland's 200-nautical-mile fishing limit in exchange for defined fishing rights.
Q 16Israeli commandos freed 103 hijacked hostages on July 4, 1976, at which African airport?
Entebbe
Yonatan Netanyahu, the raid commander and older brother of the future prime minister, was killed in the operation.
Q 17The Soweto uprising that began on June 16, 1976, took place in which country?
South Africa
June 16 is now a public holiday there, Youth Day.
Q 18Which deadly virus was first recorded in 1976, in Nzara, Sudan?
Ebola
A second outbreak followed weeks later in Yambuku, Zaire, near the river that gave the virus its name.
Q 19A mystery pneumonia at a 1976 Philadelphia convention was named after which organisation?
The American Legion
Twenty-nine delegates at Philadelphia's Bellevue-Stratford died in what became the first recognised outbreak of Legionnaires' disease.
Q 20Which Indian Ocean island nation became independent in June 1976?
Seychelles
It joined the United Nations that September.
Q 24Anita Roddick opened the first branch of which cosmetics chain in Brighton in 1976?
The Body Shop
It grew into a global chain built on natural-ingredient cosmetics and campaigning.
Q 25Which gourmet candy brand was first sold in 1976 at an ice cream parlour near Los Angeles?
Jelly Belly
Creator David Klein named the beans after blues musician Lead Belly; the first eight flavours included Root Beer and Cream Soda.
Q 26Which 14-year-old gymnast scored the first perfect 10 at the 1976 Summer Olympics?
Nadia Comaneci
She posted more perfect 10s at those Games; the scoreboards could only display "1.00".
Q 27Which city hosted the 1976 Summer Olympics?
Montreal
The Winter Games that year were in Innsbruck, Austria.
Q 28Which event did Bruce Jenner win at the 1976 Olympics?
The decathlon
The win made the athlete, now Caitlyn Jenner, an American household name and a Wheaties box fixture.
Q 29Dorothy Hamill won 1976 Olympic figure-skating gold and started a craze for what?
A wedge haircut
She was the last singles skater to win Olympic gold without a triple jump.
Q 30Which team beat the Dallas Cowboys 21–17 in Super Bowl X in January 1976?
Pittsburgh Steelers
Lynn Swann became the first wide receiver named Super Bowl MVP with a record 161 receiving yards.