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This decades trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and walks decade by decade from the 1950s to the 2010s, with roughly eight questions on each. Every stretch mixes music, television, film, fads, technology and news, so you get Sputnik and hula hoops before the Twist and Woodstock, then Pet Rocks and HBO, MTV and Rubik's Cube, Beanie Babies and Napster, YouTube and the iPhone, and finally Gangnam Style, TikTok and the Ice Bucket Challenge. It suits anyone who lived through a couple of these decades and thinks they remember them better than they do, and it works well as generational trivia: a pub round or a party game where boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z can each claim a stretch of the timeline. The easy questions reward general memory; the hard ones dig into details like what Sony first called the Walkman in America or who actually hosted the night Elvis debuted on Ed Sullivan. Every answer was checked against a primary reference before publication, so the dates, sales figures and names here are accurate rather than approximate. Answers and short explanations are shown after each question.
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Q 01In the 1950s, which comic strip made its debut and went on to run until its creator's death in 2000?
Peanuts
Charles Schulz hated the name Peanuts, which United Feature Syndicate imposed on him, and grumbled about it for the rest of his life.
Q 02Which company's brand of frozen 'TV Dinner', launched in 1953, came in a compartmented aluminum tray?
Swanson
Swanson's first TV Dinner was a Thanksgiving-style plate of turkey, cornbread stuffing, peas and sweet potatoes, sold for 98 cents.
Q 03The 1954-55 Disney serial that launched the coonskin-cap craze dramatized which frontiersman?
Davy Crockett
Disney's Davy Crockett, starring Fess Parker, drove an estimated $300 million in tie-in sales by the end of 1955, coonskin caps above all.
Q 04'Rock Around the Clock' became a hit after opening which 1955 film?
Blackboard Jungle
Blackboard Jungle ran the song over its opening credits; the 1954 record had been a B-side to 'Thirteen Women' and a commercial disappointment until then.
Q 05Who hosted Elvis Presley's first Ed Sullivan Show appearance in 1956 in Sullivan's absence?
Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton stood in because Sullivan was recovering from a car crash; the British actor introduced Elvis from New York while Presley performed from Los Angeles.
Q 06Wham-O's Frisbee, launched in 1957, was a renamed version of which earlier flying disc?
Pluto Platter
Fred Morrison's Pluto Platter was bought by Wham-O in 1957 and renamed Frisbee, after the Connecticut pie tins that Yale students had been flinging around campus.
Q 07How long did Sputnik 1 transmit its radio signal after the Soviet launch of October 1957?
Three weeks
Sputnik 1 beeped for three weeks until its silver-zinc batteries died; the 58 cm sphere burned up in January 1958 after about 1,440 orbits.
Q 08How many plastic hula hoops did Wham-O sell in the first four months of the 1958 craze?
25 million
Wham-O sold 25 million hoops in four months, and sales passed 100 million within two years; Georgia Gibbs sang 'The Hula Hoop Song' on Ed Sullivan that autumn.
Q 09Barbie, launched in March 1959, was based on a doll from which country?
Germany
Ruth Handler bought three Bild Lilli dolls on a 1956 Swiss trip; the doll was named after her daughter Barbara, who hated the association.
Q 10Chubby Checker's 'The Twist' set a record by reaching number one in 1960 and again in which later year?
1962
'The Twist' returned to number one in January 1962 after its first run in 1960; no song repeated the feat until Mariah Carey's Christmas hit in 2019 and 2020.
Q 11The Beatles' first Ed Sullivan Show appearance in February 1964 drew about how many US viewers?
73 million
About 73 million Americans watched on 9 February 1964, the biggest US TV audience to that date; The Fugitive's 1967 finale later beat it.
Q 12How many Mustangs sold in the first year after the 1964 launch, against 100,000 expected?
Over 400,000
Over 400,000 Mustangs sold in the first twelve months, about 418,000; the millionth came within two years, Ford's biggest launch since the 1927 Model A.
Q 13Which 1965 film was the highest-grossing movie of the entire 1960s?
The Sound of Music
Q 21How many consecutive weeks did Dark Side of the Moon (1973) spend on the Billboard 200?
741
The album logged 741 consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200 from 1973 until 1988, a record run at the time.
Q 22Where did Gary Dahl source the rocks for his 1975 Pet Rock fad?
Mexican beaches
They cost him under a penny each; he sold nearly 1.5 million at just under $4 and cleared 95 cents on every one.
Q 23What made a 1975 mood ring change colour?
Finger temperature
The stone held thermochromic liquid crystals that shifted colour with finger temperature; warm hands gave blues and violets, cold ones black.
The Sound of Music opened as a roadshow release in March 1965 to mixed reviews, won five Academy Awards and out-grossed every other film of the decade.
Q 14Twister took off in 1966 after Johnny Carson played it on The Tonight Show with which actress?
Eva Gabor
Eva Gabor played it with Carson on 3 May 1966 and sales took off; rivals accused Milton Bradley of selling 'sex in a box'.
Q 15Gene Roddenberry's first-draft pitch described Star Trek as which existing TV show 'to the stars'?
Wagon Train
Roddenberry's 1964 pitch called it 'Wagon Train to the stars'; NBC's ratings were low and the series ended after three seasons and 79 episodes.
Q 16The world's first automatic teller machine opened in 1967 at a branch of which bank?
Barclays
Barclays opened the first cash machine at its Enfield branch in north London on 27 June 1967; comedy actor Reg Varney made the first withdrawal.
Q 17Roughly how many people watched Neil Armstrong's July 1969 moonwalk live on television?
600 million
An estimated 600 million people, roughly a sixth of the world's population, watched the 20 July 1969 moonwalk live.
Q 18Roughly how big was the crowd left when Jimi Hendrix closed Woodstock on Monday morning?
30,000
Only about 30,000 remained of the roughly half-million who had come; delays pushed Hendrix's set to Monday morning, and many people left during it.
Q 19What did HBO show in 1975 when it began delivering programming by satellite?
The Thrilla in Manila
The Thrilla in Manila, the third Ali-Frazier fight, was beamed live by satellite on 30 September 1975 US time, the first continuous satellite feed to cable systems.
Q 20What nickname did editor Howard Simons give the secret Watergate source later revealed as the FBI's Mark Felt?
Deep Throat
Deep Throat was Simons's play on 'deep background' and a notorious 1972 film; Mark Felt met Bob Woodward at 2 a.m. in a Virginia parking garage.
Q 24Which 1975 flop became the longest-running theatrical release ever as a midnight movie?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show flopped in September 1975, then found a midnight audience from 1976 and never left cinemas, the longest theatrical run in film history.
Q 25How much did the Apple II cost at its June 1977 launch with 4 KB of RAM?
$1,298
The 4 KB Apple II listed at $1,298 in June 1977, and the 48 KB version at $2,638; the Commodore PET and TRS-80 followed later that year.
Q 26Kenner could not make Star Wars toys fast enough in 1977, so what did it sell for Christmas instead?
Boxed vouchers for future figures
Kenner sold boxed vouchers for future figures, the 'Early Bird Certificate Package': a display stand and a certificate redeemable for four action figures between February and June 1978.
Q 27Under what name was Sony's Walkman first sold in the United States in 1980?
Sound-about
In the US it launched as the Sound-about; Sony's overseas teams disliked the Japanese-English 'Walkman', but that original name went global by 1981.
Q 28Why was Japan's Puck Man renamed Pac-Man for its 1980 American release?
Fear vandals would alter the P
Midway feared vandals would alter the P on arcade cabinets into an F, so Puck Man became Pac-Man for America.
Q 29Before settling on Rubik's Cube for the 1980 launch, Ideal Toy considered which name?
The Gordian Knot
Ideal weighed 'The Gordian Knot' and 'Inca Gold' before choosing Rubik's Cube for the 1980 launch; the puzzle had sold in Hungary as the Magic Cube since 1977.
Q 30Which video did MTV play first when it went on air on 1 August 1981?
'Video Killed the Radio Star'
'Video Killed the Radio Star' by the Buggles followed a network ID built on NASA moon-landing footage with an MTV flag on the lunar surface.