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20th Century Dates Quiz

For each highlighted event, guess the year.
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: December 12, 2019
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First submittedDecember 6, 2011
Times taken36,603
Average score61.8%
Rating4.51
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Event
Year
Man lands on the Moon
1969
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
1963
Attack on Pearl Harbor
1941
End of World War II
1945
Start of World War I
1914
Start of the Great Depression
1929
Rodney King riots
1992
Sinking of the Titanic
1912
First airplane flight
1903
Thatcher elected Prime Minister
1979
Tiananmen Square massacre
1989
Bolshevik Revolution
1917
India achieves independence
1947
Brown v. Board of Education
1954
Cuban missile crisis
1962
Woodstock
1969
Chernobyl nuclear disaster
1986
Event
Year
End of apartheid in South Africa
1994
O.J. Simpson trial
1995
Introduction of the Euro
1999
Fall of the Berlin Wall
1989
Richard Nixon resigns
1974
Falklands War
1982
D-Day
1944
Spanish flu outbreak
1918
Challenger space shuttle disaster
1986
Iranian revolution
1979
First Super Bowl
1967
Iraq invades Kuwait
1990
Martin Luther King assassinated
1968
Beatles play Shea Stadium
1965
First World Cup
1930
Lindbergh flies from New York to Paris
1927
First Model T produced
1908
35 Comments
+4
Level 29
Dec 7, 2011
33/34, ran out of time, but that was nice and challenging
+7
Level 89
Jul 8, 2018
I'm guessing all the 33/34 are like me and didn't know the World Cup?
+2
Level 54
Jul 9, 2018
32/34. No clue about Super Bowl OR World Cup. Figured Super Bowl was post-1945, but as late as '67? Surprised.
+1
Level 72
Sep 18, 2019
well if you look at the stats super bowl is least guessed, not world cup.
+1
Level 61
Oct 7, 2019
33/34 missed spanish flu
+1
Level 77
Dec 8, 2011
33 as well :)
+1
Level 68
Jul 19, 2014
Only missed three.... nice quiz.
+2
Level 81
Jul 19, 2014
I was in high school. I think I was sitting in Spanish class. When the OJ acquittal was announced. Where were you?
+2
Level 55
Jul 19, 2014
On the day of the white bronco chase, I was in Florida, and I was sitting in a cold bath, attempting to recover from a terrible case of sunstroke/burn. My companions were watching the live feed and shouting through to me "You'll never believe what's happening!"
+1
Level 81
Jul 20, 2014
I can't actually remember where I was during the Bronco chase... I think I was just at home. Don't recall. But I do remember the verdict.
+11
Level 62
Oct 31, 2016
I wasn't born yet!
+1
Level 78
May 13, 2022
Also high school, freshman year biology class. Someone brought in a note to the teacher and he wrote "NOT GUILTY" in big letters on the board.
+1
Level 70
May 6, 2024
I was -11 years old
+1
Level 51
Jul 19, 2014
Good
+3
Level 81
Jul 23, 2014
the end of apartheid is kind of a grey area. it was in 1991 when they actually announced all the apartheid laws were abolished. there wasnt any racial segregation after that. 1994 was when south africa had its first democratic elections and the government changed to ANC. i live in south africa
+2
Level 73
May 21, 2015
Agree. Great quiz, but the end of apartheid clue could be improved. e.g. Mandela inaugurated, still = 1994
+2
Level 43
Sep 26, 2015
World cup could mean a few different sport, I answered the Rugby World Cup date :) I take it its the football world cup??
+1
Level 35
Feb 19, 2024
the first FOOTBALL wc was in 1930
+4
Level 76
May 19, 2016
Brown vs. board of education and first super bowl - NO idea (those might not be globally significant like other events here - ehm.. yeah OJS, that's not global either, but..). The rest was guessable within the time because had some sense of the decade at least if not exact year. Nice quiz though.
+1
Level 81
Sep 13, 2018
I got the first World Cup and missed the first Superbowl but I see them as equally (in)significant.
+6
Level 72
Sep 18, 2019
They are /might be equally insignificant, but one involves the world and the other one country.
+3
Level 81
Feb 28, 2020
For the first many years of the World Cup it was almost all Europe and a handful of South American countries really competing. As usual, when a European says "the world" they mean Europe. Because it was relevant to you doesn't mean it's relevant to the entire world, or more relevant than something that happened somewhere else in the world. The United States is part of the world, too.

These days, both the Super Bowl and the World Cup have become much larger than they used to be. But the World Cup has grown more. The World Cup final averages 5x as many viewers as the Super Bowl. But it wasn't that way in 1930.

+2
Level 73
Sep 10, 2021
USA were actually involved in the first World Cup in 1930 and reached the semi final so it would be expected to be more well known.
+1
Level 76
Sep 27, 2020
'The Beatles play Shea Stadium' is also a US-centric event that is irrelevant to the rest of the world - nobody outside the US cares when they first toured the US
+1
Level 38
Dec 29, 2016
Great quiz, nice mixture of things
+3
Level 51
Mar 19, 2018
Which world cup? Football, rugby?
+3
Level 72
Sep 18, 2019
The euro wasnt a valid (physical) currency untill 2002, before that it didnt exist, it was not in circulation. The years before it was already used in accountancy/stock exchange as an abstract term, because at that point they had decided the value the currency would become. But it was just a word and not introduced to the public. (or else you could say 1995, because that was when they finally decided on the name euro)

What happened in 1999 was simply the replacement of the term Ecu (european currency unit) in the "books" for Euro. The ecu wasnt real currency and neither was the euro in 1999. It didnt truly exist until 2002.

It has been a long process which you could say started in 1975 (when the "European unit of account" was created, which got replaced by the term European currency unit in 1979). But for the general public 2002 was the year it got introduced.

+2
Level 72
Sep 18, 2019
I hope I managed to explain it. Rather difficult in another language ( and text instead of speech). Even if your vocabulary is big enough, describing things get tricky.

I guess you could say in short: if it is the concept, it is 1975 same thing as in 1999 just a different name. If it is the name, it would be 1995. If it is the actual legal currency people can pay with it is 2002.

+1
Level 36
Sep 20, 2019
Only just realized that the Chernobyl and Challenger disasters occurred in the same year (1986). What a coincidence!
+1
Level 81
Feb 28, 2020
I was pretty young then but 1986 is the first year that I remember distinctly many of the events happening on the news.
+1
Level 80
Feb 12, 2020
Fun quiz, bit of everything.
+1
Level 64
May 17, 2021
I would've missed the super bowl if they didn't number them for me.
+1
Level 68
Jan 6, 2022
Got all except for the Superbowl. Didn't really know some other answers as well, but had a rough idea when they were approximately. Had no clue about the Superbowl.
+1
Level 70
Sep 17, 2022
Only got 10/34 - but in my defense, I was born 5 years after the century ended.
+1
Level 66
Sep 2, 2024
20th century dates of mostly American things

Nobody outside the US is going to know the first superbowl...