Aging & Elderly Trivia
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173 free Aging & Elderly trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This aging and elderly trivia quiz covers the whole subject of growing old: the biology of ageing, the record-holding supercentenarians, life expectancy across history, and the customs, laws and institutions built around older people. The easy questions are ones most adults can reason out, such as what a centenarian is, which organisation sends AARP Magazine, why hair turns grey, and which country first introduced state retirement pensions. From there it digs deeper: the Hayflick limit and telomeres, progeria and Werner syndrome, the disputed blue zones, the Ig Nobel-winning study of pension fraud among the very old, Jeanne Calment's van Gogh story and her ill-fated apartment deal, the immortal jellyfish, the 500-year-old clam and the 200-year-old whale, plus Bismarck's pension age, the first Social Security cheque, Respect for the Aged Day in Japan and the origin of the term senior citizen. Difficulty runs from easy to expert so it works for a family night or a seniors' group as well as a pub quiz. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on ageing, old age, longevity, gerontology and the individual people, diseases and laws named before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Human Body and Medical History quizzes next.
30 of 173 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01By United Nations estimates, about how many people aged 100 or older were alive worldwide in 2020?
About 600,000
About 600,000. The UN's 573,000 for 2020 keeps climbing as more people survive into their nineties: its 2024 figure was 722,000, and it projects nearly four million by 2054.
Q 02What is a person who has lived to the age of 110 or beyond called?
Supercentenarian
Supercentenarian. So few people reach 110, and so many claims to great age prove unreliable, that researchers check each case against birth and other records before accepting it.
Q 03Who, in a 1922 tale, is born looking like an old man and grows younger every year?
Benjamin Button
Benjamin Button: F. Scott Fitzgerald said his 1922 story grew from a remark of Mark Twain's that it was a pity the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst at the end.
Q 04Falling levels of which hormone are thought to help explain why older adults often sleep more lightly?
Melatonin
Melatonin. The pineal gland releases it in darkness to set the body clock, and it makes less with age, which may play a part in older people's broken sleep.
Q 05Which protein, the most abundant in the human body, is made more slowly with age, leaving skin wrinkled and sagging?
Collagen
Collagen. It makes up about 30% of the body's protein, and smoking cuts its production as well, which is one reason smokers' skin tends to wrinkle sooner.
Q 06Which painter did Jeanne Calment, the oldest person ever verified, say she met as a girl in a family shop in Arles?
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh. She was 13 when he moved to Arles in 1888, and a century later she told reporters he had been ugly, bad-tempered and reeking of drink.
Q 07At 90, Jeanne Calment sold her flat to a lawyer for a monthly payment for life; how did the deal end?
He died first
He died first. André-François Raffray paid for 30 years and died in 1995, two years before her, so his family had to keep paying; in all she received more than twice the flat's value.
Q 08What did Jeanne Calment, the oldest person ever verified, do in 1985, at about the age of 110?
Moved into a nursing home
Moved into a nursing home. She had lived on her own until then, was still walking unaided at 114, and recorded her rap CD, Time's Mistress, about a decade after moving in.
Q 09What reportedly killed the husband of Jeanne Calment, the oldest person ever verified, in 1942?
Cherry poisoning
Cherry poisoning. Fernand Calment, 73, is said to have been poisoned by spoiled cherries, and his widow went on to outlive him by 55 years.
Q 10According to a disputed 2018 theory, who took over Jeanne Calment's identity when the real Jeanne died in 1934?
Her daughter
Her daughter Yvonne, the theory ran, which would have made the woman who died in 1997 only 99. The researchers who validated her age answered with the original records and said the claim fell short of scientific standards.
Q 11Jiroemon Kimura of Japan, who died in 2013 aged 116, holds which verified record?
Oldest man ever
Oldest man ever. He outlived every other man of his era: by his 116th birthday he was the last man alive who had been born in the 1800s.
Q 12Which habit did Japan's Jiroemon Kimura, who lived to 116, credit for his long life?
Eating small portions
Eating small portions. He kept his helpings modest, got up early and read the newspapers every day with a magnifying glass.
Q 13In Oscar Wilde's novel, what grows old and ugly in place of the ever-youthful Dorian Gray?
His portrait
Q 21Dutchman Geert Boomgaard, who was born in 1788 and lived to 110, is said to have soldiered in whose army?
Napoleon's
Napoleon's. Records list the Groningen boatman in the Dutch-recruited 33rd Light Infantry of the Grande Armée, and when he died in 1899 he was among the very last of its veterans.
Q 22Which part of the brain, vital for forming new memories, is among the first areas damaged in Alzheimer's disease?
Hippocampus
Hippocampus. Because the damage starts there, trouble holding on to new memories is usually among the first signs, before language and reasoning are affected.
Q 23Captain Tom Moore, aged 99, raised over £30 million for Britain's health service in 2020 by doing what?
His portrait. Dorian wishes aloud that the painting would age instead of him and offers his soul for it, and the canvas goes on to record every year and every sin while his face stays young.
Q 14Which honour did Kane Tanaka, then the world's oldest person at 118, give up in 2021 over fears of COVID-19?
Carrying the Olympic torch
Carrying the Olympic torch. She had been due to take a leg of the Tokyo relay in Fukuoka, but she and her family feared bringing the virus into her nursing home.
Q 15Which disease, first described in 1817 as 'the shaking palsy', usually begins after the age of 60?
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease. It is named after James Parkinson, the London doctor who wrote that essay, and its tremor and stiffness set in as brain cells that make dopamine die off.
Q 16Which member of the British royal family died in 2002 at the age of 101?
The Queen Mother
The Queen Mother. She died at Windsor with Elizabeth II at her bedside, only seven weeks after losing her younger child, Princess Margaret, who was 71.
Q 17Sarah Knauss, then the world's oldest person, died aged 119 just 33 hours short of seeing what?
The year 2000
The year 2000. She died on 30 December 1999, a day and a half short of it, but lived to see six generations of her family alive at once, down to a great-great-great-grandson.
Q 18In which US city was Maria Branyas, the world's oldest person until 2024, born?
San Francisco
San Francisco. Her Spanish parents had reached the United States only the year before and the family sailed for Spain in 1915, so the Spaniard who became the world's oldest person was American by birth.
Q 19In which country was Ethel Caterham living when she became the world's oldest living person in 2025?
United Kingdom
United Kingdom. Born in Hampshire in August 1909, nine months before Edward VII died, she ended up as the last surviving subject of his reign.
Q 20Which card game did Ethel Caterham, who became the world's oldest living person in 2025, keep playing past 100?
Bridge
Bridge. She was still playing in her hundreds, stayed behind the wheel of her car until she was 97, and at 110 caught COVID-19 and recovered.
Walking laps of his garden
Walking laps of his garden. He set out to raise £1,000 with 100 lengths before his 100th birthday; donations passed £30 million instead, and he was knighted that summer.
Q 24Which organisation, founded in Los Angeles in 1990, checks the ages of people who claim to be 110 or older?
Gerontology Research Group
Gerontology Research Group. Its researchers test each claim against birth and other records, and its list of the world's oldest people became the one Guinness World Records relied on.
Q 25A study finding that many centenarian counts are inflated by pension fraud won which award in 2024?
Ig Nobel Prize
Ig Nobel Prize. Saul Justin Newman took the 2024 Demography award for showing that places famed for very long lives tend to be places with poor birth records and pension fraud.
Q 26What was the term 'blue zone' originally derived from?
Researchers' pen colour on a survey map
Researchers' pen colour on a survey map. Demographers charting Sardinian villages with unusual numbers of centenarians marked them on the map in blue pen, and the nickname stuck.
Q 27Which Costa Rican region is one of the suggested blue zones?
Nicoya Peninsula
Nicoya Peninsula. Its elderly men once clearly outlived other Costa Ricans, but a 2023 study found the edge had vanished among those born after 1930.
Q 28Which Greek island is counted among the suggested blue zones?
Icaria
Icaria. It was one of the places added after the first zone in Sardinia, though critics say the idea leans on age records too unreliable to prove anything.
Q 29Which writer popularised blue zones in a 2005 National Geographic cover story and later built a company on them?
Dan Buettner
Dan Buettner. Two demographers had coined the name for a patch of Sardinia; his magazine story and books spread it, and Adventist Health bought his Blue Zones company in 2020.
Q 30Which Californian city, home to a large Seventh-day Adventist community, is counted among the blue zones?
Loma Linda
Loma Linda. Its long lives are usually put down to its many Adventists and their healthy habits, though sceptics note that richer people tend to live longer anywhere.