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128 free The 1960s trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
62 free The 1960s trivia questions with answers. The 1960s changed everything: the Beatles landed, men walked on the moon, JFK and Dr. King were lost, Woodstock happened and television came of age. This quiz gives you 62 multiple-choice 60s trivia questions and answers on the music, the moon race, civil rights, politics, film, TV, fashion and fads of the decade, from easy ones any Boomer will get to hard ones only a real sixties buff will know. It pairs naturally with our 1970s quiz if you are building a 60s and 70s trivia night: play them back to back for a two-decade round. Every question shows an explanation after you answer, and each one has been checked against a real source. Play solo, share your score, or print the set for a party.
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Q 01To end the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US secretly agreed to remove its Jupiter missiles from which country?
Turkey
Publicly, Washington only pledged not to invade Cuba; the Jupiter withdrawal from Turkey and Italy stayed secret for years.
Q 02Which agency enforces the job-discrimination rules of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
EEOC
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which opened its doors in July 1965, investigates job-discrimination charges and may sue on workers' behalf; charges must usually be filed within 180 days.
Q 03Which Black nationalist leader, a year after breaking with the Nation of Islam, was shot dead at Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom in 1965?
Malcolm X
Malcolm X told an interviewer two days before his death that the Nation of Islam was trying to kill him; the ballroom now houses a memorial to him.
Q 04Who was the first woman in space, launching aboard Vostok 6 in 1963?
Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Tereshkova, a former textile worker and amateur parachutist, flew Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963, completing 48 orbits of Earth in just under three days.
Q 05The Watts riots in Los Angeles in August 1965 lasted six days and left how many people dead?
34
The Watts riots killed 34 people; there were also 1,032 injuries, 3,438 arrests, and more than $40 million in property damage across six days in August 1965.
Q 06The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was passed as an amendment to which earlier federal statute?
Fair Labor Standards Act
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 amended the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938; a 1973 public service announcement starring Yvonne Craig as Batgirl demanded equal pay with Robin.
Q 07Which author of The Feminine Mystique co-founded a major women's rights group in 1966?
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), co-founded the National Organization for Women in 1966 and served as its first president.
Q 08The Stonewall Inn, where a June 1969 raid sparked riots, was in which Manhattan area?
Greenwich Village
The Stonewall Inn stands on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village; the Mafia-owned bar was raided early on 28 June 1969 without the usual tip-off to its owners.
Q 09In April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis supporting a strike by which city workers?
Sanitation crews
King was in Memphis backing striking sanitation crews, whose walkout began in February 1968; he was shot on the Lorraine Motel balcony on April 4, and James Earl Ray was arrested at Heathrow in June.
Q 10The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in October 1966 in Oakland by which two individuals?
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale
Newton and Seale drew up a ten-point program and began armed patrols monitoring police in Oakland.
Q 11What kind of warship was the USS Maddox of the Gulf of Tonkin incident?
Destroyer
USS Maddox was an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer; the task-group commander aboard soon cabled that the reported second 'attack' of 4 August 1964 likely came from freak weather effects on radar.
Q 12Which British music group made their famous debut on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' in February 1964?
The Beatles
The Beatles played three consecutive Sunday broadcasts that February, and some 73 million Americans watched the first on 9 February 1964, then a record for US television.
Q 13On whose dairy farm in Bethel, New York, was the Woodstock Music & Art Fair held in August 1969?
Max Yasgur
Q 21Which British designer is credited with the 1960s miniskirt?
Mary Quant
Mary Quant sold the look from her King's Road boutique Bazaar and said she named the miniskirt after her favourite car, the Mini; André Courrèges also claimed credit for the style.
Q 22The term 'hippie' became widely used in the 1960s to describe members of which cultural movement?
Counterculture
The 'hippie' movement was a prominent aspect of the 1960s counterculture, characterized by a rejection of mainstream values, a focus on peace and love, and often associated with psychedelic music and experimental lifestyles.
Q 23Yoko Ono married which musician in Gibraltar in March 1969?
John Lennon
Max Yasgur leased his 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel to the organizers, who had told local officials to expect no more than 50,000 people; roughly 400,000 showed up.
Q 14Who founded Motown Records in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959?
Berry Gordy Jr.
Berry Gordy Jr. started the label with an $800 family loan in January 1959, first as Tamla Records; the Hitsville U.S.A. house on West Grand Boulevard became Motown's studio.
Q 15In what city was President John F. Kennedy assassinated in November 1963?
Dallas, Texas
Dallas, Texas, was where the 35th president died on Friday, November 22, 1963; Lyndon Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One at Love Field before it left the city.
Q 16Which section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act bans employers discriminating by race, colour, religion, sex or origin?
Title VII
Title VII covers employers with 15 or more employees; its ban on sex discrimination was added on the House floor by Virginia congressman Howard W. Smith in February 1964.
Q 17The Cuban Missile Crisis, the October 1962 standoff over nuclear missiles in Cuba, lasted how many days?
13
The crisis lasted 13 days, from 16 October, when Kennedy was shown U-2 photos of the missile sites, to 28 October, when Khrushchev announced their withdrawal.
Q 18What was Apollo 11's lunar module, which landed Armstrong and Aldrin in the Sea of Tranquility in July 1969, called?
Eagle
'The Eagle has landed,' Armstrong radioed from the Sea of Tranquility on 20 July 1969; Michael Collins stayed in lunar orbit aboard the command module Columbia.
Q 19The 1963 March on Washington that ended with the "I Have a Dream" speech was formally a march for what?
Jobs and Freedom
Its full name was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin were its chief organizers.
Q 20Which science-fiction series premiered on NBC in September 1966?
Star Trek
Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry, premiered on NBC on 8 September 1966 and ran only three seasons before syndication turned it into a phenomenon.
John Lennon and Ono held the bed-in at the Amsterdam Hilton, inviting the press into the bedroom each day to talk about peace.
Q 24The Mamas & the Papas were a popular folk rock group in the 1960s, known for which hit song?
'California Dreamin''
'California Dreamin'' was released as a single in December 1965; its alto flute solo by jazz player Bud Shank was reportedly improvised in the studio.
Q 25Which U.S. President significantly escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War during the 1960s?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Under Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. forces in Vietnam grew from about 16,000 advisers to more than 500,000 troops by 1968; he withdrew from the 1968 race that March.
Q 26The 1967 'Summer of Love' drew as many as 100,000 young people to one neighbourhood of which U.S. city?
San Francisco
San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and Golden Gate Park were the magnet, and Scott McKenzie's hit told arrivals to wear flowers in their hair.
Q 27Which classic novel, dealing with racial injustice in the American South, was published in 1960?
'To Kill a Mockingbird'
Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' was published in 1960 and quickly became a literary classic, winning the Pulitzer Prize and deeply resonating with readers for its themes of prejudice and compassion.
Q 28Which Soviet cosmonaut became the first human in space in April 1961?
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin never flew in space again; he later served as backup for the Soyuz 1 mission that killed his friend Vladimir Komarov, and died in a 1968 jet crash.
Q 29Which group, formed in April 1960 out of the lunch-counter protests, became the main channel of student activism?
SNCC
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded at a Shaw University conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 1960, with Ella Baker's encouragement; John Lewis chaired it from 1963 to 1966.
Q 30Which Alabama city was the starting point of the 1965 voting-rights marches to Montgomery?
Selma
The marches set out from Selma; state troopers beat marchers on its Edmund Pettus Bridge on 'Bloody Sunday', 7 March 1965, and the completed march reached Montgomery on 25 March.