80th Birthday Trivia
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99 free 80th Birthday trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
These 80th birthday trivia questions are built for the party. Anyone turning eighty in 2026 was born in 1946, the first year of the baby boom, so most of the quiz is about that year: the first bikini and the first Vespa, the unveiling of the 30-ton ENIAC computer, Churchill's Iron Curtain speech, the first United Nations meetings, the birth of Tupperware and the Magic 8 Ball, and a cinema year that gave us It's a Wonderful Life, The Best Years of Our Lives and Gilda. There is a round on famous people who share the birthday year (three US presidents, Freddie Mercury, Cher, Dolly Parton, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Spielberg), and a short round on the number eighty itself: Phileas Fogg's wager, the 80-20 rule, and what an eightieth wedding anniversary is called. Questions range from easy warm-ups everyone at the table can attempt to a few genuinely hard ones for the history buffs. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Japanese emperor issued the 'Humanity Declaration' renouncing his divinity on January 1, 1946?
Hirohito
Hirohito issued the rescript on January 1, 1946, at the urging of the American-led occupation; scholars still argue that its careful wording gave up far less divinity than the West assumed.
Q 02Which US president was in office throughout 1946?
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman closed 1946 with Proclamation 2714 on December 31, officially ending hostilities in World War II more than a year after Japan's surrender.
Q 03Where did Winston Churchill give his famous 'Iron Curtain' speech in March 1946?
Fulton, Missouri
Fulton, Missouri, is home to Westminster College; to honour the speech it later shipped a bombed Christopher Wren church from England and rebuilt it on campus as a Churchill memorial.
Q 04Which swimsuit was first modelled in Paris on July 5, 1946?
The bikini
Louis Réard unveiled the bikini at the Piscine Molitor in Paris on July 5, 1946, naming it after Bikini Atoll, where the US had tested an atomic bomb four days earlier.
Q 05Which early electronic computer was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946?
ENIAC
ENIAC was built to compute artillery trajectories for the US Army; the six women who programmed it by plugging cables and setting switches were not introduced at the 1946 unveiling.
Q 06In 1946 Jackie Robinson starred for which Brooklyn Dodgers farm team, a year before his major-league debut?
Montreal Royals
Montreal Royals star Robinson led the International League with a .349 average in 1946, and the Dodgers promoted him to break the major-league colour line the following April.
Q 07Which Italian scooter brand built its first model in 1946?
Vespa
Piaggio's Vespa, designed by aeronautical engineer Corradino D'Ascanio, was patented in April 1946 and entered production that year at Pontedera.
Q 08Which famous film festival was held for the first time in September 1946?
Cannes
Cannes opened on September 20, 1946, in a former casino; it had been due to launch in September 1939, but the outbreak of war cancelled that first edition.
Q 09Which Christmas film starring James Stewart was released in December 1946?
It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life lost money on release in December 1946; it became a holiday staple only after its copyright lapsed in 1974 and television stations could air it for free.
Q 10Which 1946 film about three returning servicemen swept the Oscars, winning seven including the top prize?
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Best Years of Our Lives won seven Oscars; Harold Russell, a veteran who had lost both hands, won Best Supporting Actor and a second, honorary Oscar for bringing hope to fellow veterans.
Q 11Which actress performed 'Put the Blame on Mame' in the 1946 film Gilda?
Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth mimed 'Put the Blame on Mame' in the nightclub scene to the voice of Anita Ellis, who dubbed her singing in Gilda.
Q 12Which Hitchcock thriller starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman came out in 1946?
Notorious
Notorious hides uranium ore in wine bottles; the plot point was written in 1945, before Hiroshima made uranium front-page news.
Q 13Which comedy duo first performed together at Atlantic City's 500 Club in July 1946?
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first worked as a team at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 25, 1946, and split exactly ten years later in July 1956.
Q 21Which country voted in a June 1946 referendum to abolish its monarchy and become a republic?
Italy
Italy's referendum of June 2, 1946 chose a republic by roughly 12.7 million votes to 10.7 million, and King Umberto II left for exile in Portugal.
Q 22Which Asian nation became fully independent on July 4, 1946?
The Philippines
The Philippines had been American territory since Spain ceded the islands in 1898; Washington handed over sovereignty on July 4, 1946, its own Independence Day.
Q 23Which Nazi leader swallowed cyanide in his cell hours before he was due to hang at Nuremberg in October 1946?
Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring cheated the hangman on the night of October 15, 1946; in 2005 a former American guard said he had unwittingly carried the poison in, hidden inside a fountain pen.
Q 14Which food-storage brand introduced its airtight plastic containers to the public in 1946?
Tupperware
Earl Tupper, who had worked at DuPont, launched Tupperware's airtight polyethylene containers in 1946; the home-party selling that made the brand famous came later.
Q 15Which fortune-telling toy was invented in 1946 by Albert C. Carter and Abe Bookman?
Magic 8 Ball
The Magic 8 Ball began in 1946 as Carter and Bookman's Syco-Seer; Brunswick Billiards asked for the black billiard-ball housing in 1950.
Q 16Which Japanese electronics company was founded in May 1946 as Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering?
Sony
Sony's later name blends the Latin sonus, 'sound', with 'sonny', American slang for a young boy; founders Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita had started the firm on May 7, 1946.
Q 17Mensa, founded in Oxford in 1946, takes its name from the Latin for which piece of furniture?
Table
Table is 'mensa' in Latin; the name was chosen to suggest a round-table society whose members meet as equals, whatever their background.
Q 18Which UN agency was created on December 11, 1946, to bring relief to countries devastated by war?
UNICEF
UNICEF began as an emergency fund to feed and care for children in war-ravaged countries; in 1953 it became a permanent part of the UN, dropping 'emergency' from its name but keeping the acronym.
Q 19In which city did the UN General Assembly hold its very first session in January 1946?
London
London hosted that first session at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, on January 10, 1946, where delegates of 51 nations elected Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak as the Assembly's first president.
Q 20Which Norwegian became the first Secretary-General of the United Nations in February 1946?
Trygve Lie
Trygve Lie had just lost the vote to preside over the first General Assembly to Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak; three weeks later he was chosen as the first Secretary-General instead.
Q 24Which Argentine leader was elected president in February 1946?
Juan Perón
Juan Perón won on February 24, 1946, after turning the American ambassador's campaign against him into his own slogan: 'Braden or Perón'.
Q 25Which king came to the throne of Thailand in June 1946 and reigned until 2016?
Bhumibol Adulyadej
Bhumibol Adulyadej became king on June 9, 1946, after his elder brother Ananda Mahidol was found shot dead, and reigned 70 years until October 2016.
Q 26Which city, the home of Fiat, staged the first race run to Formula One rules in September 1946?
Turin
Turin's Valentino Park hosted the race on September 1, 1946, and Achille Varzi won it; it is widely counted as the first Grand Prix under the formula that officially began in 1947.
Q 27Santa Claus Land, opened in Indiana in 1946, bills itself as the first theme park, nine years ahead of which rival?
Disneyland
Disneyland opened in 1955; Santa Claus Land was renamed Holiday World in 1984, when it added Halloween and Fourth of July sections to its Christmas one.
Q 28Whose weekly BBC radio talk Letter from America began in March 1946 and ran for almost 58 years?
Alistair Cooke
Alistair Cooke was commissioned for just 13 talks in March 1946; Letter from America ran until 2004, the longest-running speech radio programme with a single presenter.
Q 29Project Diana in January 1946 bounced radar waves off what?
The Moon
On January 10, 1946, Project Diana at Camp Evans, New Jersey, bounced radar signals off the Moon and received the echo about 2.5 seconds later, founding radar astronomy.
Q 30Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and which other president were born in 1946?
Donald Trump
Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946, Bush on July 6 and Clinton on August 19: three future presidents inside ten weeks, though Trump took office 24 years after Clinton.