Centenarians
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40 free Centenarians trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Reaching a hundredth birthday used to be rare enough to make the newspapers. It is far more common than it was, yet the people who get there are as fascinating as ever: some were already famous, some became famous simply by lasting so long, and a few kept working, performing or competing well into their second century. This quiz covers the whole subject. There are questions on entertainers, statesmen, artists and scientists who passed the mark, on the oldest people ever recorded and the habits they swore by, on the parts of the world said to produce unusually many long lives, and on the greetings and gifts that different countries send when the big day comes. It suits anyone curious about longevity, fans of classic film and music who like to know what became of their favourites, and quiz hosts looking for a round with a twist.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jeanne Calment, whose 122 years are the longest verified human lifespan, said she met which painter in Arles?
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh lived in Arles in 1888 and 1889, when Calment was 13 and 14. She remembered that he gave her a condescending look, and said she forgave him for his bad manners.
Q 02In Britain, a 100th birthday can bring a congratulatory card, once sent as a telegram, from which figure?
The monarch
The monarch has sent these greetings since 1908, when Edward VII's secretary congratulated a Lincolnshire clergyman on reaching his hundredth year. Another card follows at 105, and then one every year.
Q 03Which Japanese prefecture, where a 1945 battle destroyed most family registers, was named a longevity 'blue zone'?
Okinawa
Okinawa joined the blue zone list in 2005 for its many people aged 100 or more. Because its registers were rebuilt after the war, some researchers question how reliable those ages are.
Q 04Who became the first US president to live to 100, celebrating the birthday in October 2024 while in hospice care?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter turned 100 on October 1, 2024, more than nineteen months after choosing hospice care at home in Plains, Georgia, so that he could spend his remaining time with his family.
Q 05Which British Army veteran raised over £30 million for the NHS by walking laps of his garden as he turned 100?
Tom Moore
Tom Moore set out to raise £1,000 with a hundred laps behind his walking frame. More than 1.5 million people donated, and a charity single made him the oldest person to top the UK chart.
Q 06Which Golden Girls star died on New Year's Eve 2021, less than three weeks before her 100th birthday?
Betty White
Betty White died at home in Los Angeles aged 99, days after a film marking her centenary was announced. It reached theatres on what would have been her 100th birthday.
Q 07French nun Sister André, who lived to 118, became the oldest known survivor of which illness weeks before turning 117?
COVID-19
COVID-19 reached her Toulon retirement home in January 2021, and she tested positive without showing a single symptom. She was reported to eat chocolate and drink a glass of wine every day.
Q 08Which cigar-smoking comedian, an Oscar winner at 80 for The Sunshine Boys, died weeks after his 100th birthday?
George Burns
George Burns had a Caesars Palace contract that guaranteed a show on his 100th birthday, but when the day came he was too weak to perform. He smoked 10 to 20 cigars a day for most of his life.
Q 09Which star of Spartacus and Paths of Glory died in 2020 at the age of 103?
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas barely survived a helicopter crash in 1991 and suffered a severe stroke in 1996 that impaired his speech, then lived another 24 years.
Q 10What did notary André-François Raffray buy from Jeanne Calment in 1965, paying her monthly until he died first?
Her apartment
Her apartment came with a catch: Calment, then 90, kept the right to live there for life. Raffray died in 1995 having paid more than double its value, and his family had to keep paying.
Q 11Which songwriter of God Bless America and Cheek to Cheek skipped his own 100th-birthday gala at Carnegie Hall?
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin did not attend the televised 1988 concert in his honour, and died the following year aged 101. He had assigned all royalties from God Bless America to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.
Q 12Olivia de Havilland, who lived to 104, earned the first of her five Oscar nominations for which 1939 film?
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind cast her as gentle Melanie Hamilton, the part she wanted when most actresses were chasing Scarlett O'Hara. She moved to Paris in the 1950s and was made a dame two weeks before turning 101.
Q 13Which actress, Oscar-nominated for playing the 100-year-old survivor in Titanic, went on to reach 100 herself?
Q 21Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who lived to 102, cycled home in 1943 after deliberately taking which drug he had created?
LSD
LSD was first synthesized by Hofmann in 1938, and his wobbly ride home is remembered every 19 April as Bicycle Day. Just before his 100th birthday he was still defending it and lamenting its prohibition.
Q 22Zhou Youguang, an economist who lived to 111, is credited as the father of which system for romanizing Chinese?
Pinyin
Pinyin was adopted by China in 1958 and by the United Nations in 1986. Zhou later helped translate the Encyclopaedia Britannica into Chinese, and he died one day after his 111th birthday.
Q 23Emma Morano of Italy, the last known person born in the 1800s, credited her long life to staying single and eating what?
Raw eggs
Gloria Stuart
Gloria Stuart celebrated her 100th birthday in 2010 at a gallery party hosted by Titanic director James Cameron. She had been 86 when he cast her in the part.
Q 14Which British royal, widowed in 1952, became the first member of the royal family to live past 100?
The Queen Mother
The Queen Mother marked her 100th birthday with a parade and a Guildhall lunch, where the Archbishop of Canterbury accidentally tried to drink her glass of wine. She died in 2002 aged 101.
Q 15Which Nobel Peace Prize-winning former US secretary of state travelled to Beijing for talks weeks after turning 100?
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger turned 100 in May 2023 and was in Beijing that July, 52 years after his first, secret visit to confer with Zhou Enlai. He died that November.
Q 16Which American folk artist began painting in earnest at 78, after arthritis made embroidery painful, and lived to 101?
Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses was discovered when a collector spotted her pictures in a drugstore window and began pushing her work in New York City. Her pictures later went out on 16 million Christmas cards.
Q 17Which matriarch of an American political dynasty outlived four of her nine children and died in 1995 aged 104?
Rose Kennedy
Rose Kennedy saw one son become president and two more become senators, and Pope Pius XII made her a papal countess in 1951. A stroke at 93 left her in a wheelchair for her last 11 years.
Q 18Which TV producer, creator of All in the Family, flew 52 combat missions in World War II and lived to 101?
Norman Lear
Norman Lear also founded the advocacy group People for the American Way, and in the early 2000s he sent a 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence on a national tour.
Q 19Which wartime singer, known as the Forces' Sweetheart, became the first centenarian with an album in the UK charts?
Vera Lynn
Vera Lynn had just turned 100 when the 2017 album, on which younger artists duet with her archive recordings, entered the chart. At 92 she had already been the oldest artist to top it.
Q 20Which Italian island's mountain villages were the first place researchers marked as a longevity 'blue zone'?
Sardinia
Sardinia gave the idea its name when researchers marked its long-lived villages on a map with a blue pen. The cluster lay in the mountains of Nuoro province, where local men seemed to live longest.
Raw eggs were her daily staple, though she also admitted to an occasional glass of homemade grappa. Her 117th birthday party in 2016 was broadcast live in Italy.
Q 24Jonas Jonasson, author of the comic novel about a 100-year-old man who climbs out of a window, comes from which country?
Sweden
Sweden made the book its best-selling title of 2010, and three million copies had sold worldwide by 2012. Its hero, Allan Karlsson, escapes his retirement home on the day of his hundredth birthday party.
Q 25Thomas Parr, the Englishman known as Old Parr and said to have lived 152 years, was buried in 1635 in which church?
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey took him on the orders of Charles I, who met Parr that year after an earl brought him to London as a curiosity. William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, performed the autopsy.
Q 26Which Today show weatherman, the original Ronald McDonald, began wishing viewers a happy 100th birthday on air in 1983?
Willard Scott
Willard Scott made the birthday greetings a Today fixture that his successor, Al Roker, carried on. Two decades earlier he had created the McDonald's clown and played him in the first commercials.
Q 27What silver gift has Japan's government sent citizens who reach 100 since 1963, shrinking it in 2009 to cut costs?
A sake cup
A sake cup went to only 153 people in 1963. As the numbers climbed the cups were made smaller, and by 2014 more than 29,000 people qualified in a single year. Each comes with a letter from the prime minister.
Q 28Which country's president sends citizens who reach 100 a letter and a cash gift called a bounty?
Ireland
Ireland pays the Centenarians' Bounty, worth more than 2,500 euros, even to citizens who have settled abroad.
Q 29Which Asian country's Centenarians Act of 2016 gives citizens who reach 100 a cash gift and a letter from the president?
Philippines
The Philippines pays the gift of 100,000 pesos through its social welfare department, and the law covers Filipinos living overseas as well as those at home.
Q 30What term do demographers use for a person who has reached 110, a mark only about one in 1,000 hundred-year-olds hit?
Supercentenarian
Supercentenarian has been in use since at least 1832, and at first it meant anyone well past 100. A semisupercentenarian is aged between 105 and 109.