In This Year50 randomly selected In This Year questions for quizmasters. New random selection made weekly. Next update: Monday 3rd August 2026 (Please note: Questions are taken from our database of previous quizzes. Some questions and answers may be outdated.) |
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| 1. | The Sound of Music won Best Picture at the Academy Awards|Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India for the first time|Patrick Troughton replaced William Hartnell as Doctor Who |
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1966 | |
| 2. | The Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War and took control of the country|Muhammad Ali defeated Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila|Ross McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records, was shot dead by the Provisional IRA |
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1975 | |
| 3. | Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom died aged 81|U.S. President William McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, New York|Guglielmo Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, a Morse code letter 'S' sent from England to Newfoundland |
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1901 | |
| 4. | Forrest Gump won Best Picture at the 67th Academy Awards|a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killed 13 and injured 5,510|the Dayton Peace Agreement brought an end to the Bosnian War |
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1995 | |
| 5. | Tyra Banks|Kate Beckinsale|Ryan Giggs|Monica Lewinsky|Paul Walker|Pharrell Williams |
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1973 | |
| 6. | Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union|at a football match in England, the Bradford City stadium fire killed 56|Live Aid pop concerts in London and Philadelphia raised over £50 million for famine relief in Ethiopia |
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1985 | |
| 7. | An amateur video captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police|a Lauda Air Boeing 767 crashed in Suphanburi, Thailand, killing all 223 on board|Mike Tyson was charged with the rape of Desiree Washington |
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1991 | |
| 8. | Chester Bennington|Cat Deeley|Cillian Murphy|Ross Noble|Ryan Reynolds|Alicia Silverstone |
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1976 | |
| 9. | Richard Ayoade|Tom Brady|John Cena|Michael Fassbender|Ronan Keating|Liv Tyler |
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1977 | |
| 10. | the first Sony PlayStation was released|Steve Fossett became the first to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon|Jacques Chirac was elected president of France |
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1995 | |
| 11. | Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|$18.9 million was stolen from the Dunbar Armored facility in Los Angeles, California, the largest cash robbery in U.S. history|the first computer to win a match against a World Chess Champion, IBM's Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov |
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1997 | |
| 12. | Jennifer Hudson|Alicia Keys|Beyoncé Knowles|Pitbull|Britney Spears|Justin Timberlake |
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1981 | |
| 13. | Tony Abbott|Seve Ballesteros|Michael Clarke Duncan|Caroline Kennedy|Paul Merton|Jayne Torvill |
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1957 | |
| 14. | The tallest man-made structure to date, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, was officially opened|an earthquake in Haiti killed more than 316,000 people|the Deepwater Horizon oil spill discharged nearly 5 billion gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico |
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2010 | |
| 15. | John Candy|David Cassidy|Peter Gabriel|Ed Harris|Jay Leno|Julie Walters |
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1950 | |
| 16. | What rock star conceded defeat to 10-year-old Nandi Bushell after a series of online drum battles this year, prompting the former to write a song in her honour? |
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Dave Grohl | |
| 17. | Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in for his own full term as U.S. President|Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, leaving his spacecraft for 12 minutes, became the first person to walk in space|Muhammad Ali's "Phantom Punch" knocked out Sonny Liston in the first round of their championship rematch |
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1965 | |
| 18. | Andrew Cunanan shot and killed fashion designer Gianni Versace on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion|Mother Teresa of Calcutta died aged 87|INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence was found dead in his Sydney hotel room |
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1997 | |
| 19. | The Herald of Free Enterprise capsized off Zeebrugge harbour in Belgium, killing 180|Irish rock band U2 released their album The Joshua Tree|former Gestapo boss Klaus Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment |
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1987 | |
| 20. | Mikhail Gorbachev was elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union|a fire on the Scandinavian Star, a ferry en route from Norway to Denmark, killed 158|East Germany and West Germany reunited into a single Germany |
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1990 | |
| 21. | George H. W. Bush was televised vomiting into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister and fainting|Denmark won the UEFA European Football Championship|Queen Elizabeth II gave her annus horribilis speech |
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1992 | |
| 22. | On the roof of Apple Records, London, The Beatles gave their last public performance|the Boeing 747 and Concorde both flew for the first time|Willy Brandt became Chancellor of West Germany |
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1969 | |
| 23. | Ben-Hur won 11 Oscars at the 32nd Academy Awards|the Great Chilean Earthquake, at 9.5, was, and still is, the strongest ever recorded|the Soviet Union beat Yugoslavia in the final of football's first ever European Nations Cup |
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1960 | |
| 24. | The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia sank off the coast of Italy|Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee|Vladimir Putin was elected President of Russia for the second time |
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2012 | |
| 25. | Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared, presumed drowned, in the sea near Portsea, Victoria|the New Zealand dollar replaced the New Zealand pound|Beatles manager Brian Epstein was found dead in his locked bedroom |
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1967 | |
| 26. | Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela|"Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole|U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were bombed, killing 224 and injuring more than 4,500 |
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1998 | |
| 27. | Boy George|Eddie Murphy|George Clooney|Meg Ryan|Michael J. Fox|Princess Diana |
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1961 | |
| 28. | Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board|Russia were suspended from the G8 after formally annexing Crimea|the Royal Thai Army overthrew Thailand's caretaker government after its failure to resolve political unrest |
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2014 | |
| 29. | Alan Alda|Brian Blessed|Glen Campbell|Mary Tyler Moore|Robert Redford|Burt Reynolds |
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1936 | |
| 30. | Tom Arnold|Rosanna Arquette|Pete Burns|John McEnroe|Mike Pence|Tracey Ullman |
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1959 | |
| 31. | Chariots of Fire won 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture|the Commodore 64 home computer was released|Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into a bridge in Washington, D.C. and fell into the Potomac River |
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1982 | |
| 32. | the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union|86 people were killed and more than 400 others injured in a truck attack in Nice, France, during Bastille Day celebrations|the Chicago Cubs ended the longest championship drought in American sports history by winning the World Series for the first time since 1908 |
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2016 | |
| 33. | Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak formed the Apple Computer Company|Nadia Comăneci scored seven perfect 10s at the Summer Olympics|Viking 1 successfully landed on Mars |
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1976 | |
| 34. | Tom Cruise|Jim Carrey|Steve Carell|Demi Moore|Ralph Fiennes|Jodie Foster |
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1962 | |
| 35. | Stephen King published Carrie, his first novel under his own name|U.S. President Richard Nixon announced his resignation|Turkey invaded Cyprus, occupying 37% of the island |
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1974 | |
| 36. | The Green Bay Packers won the first ever Super Bowl|Celtic became the first non-Latin football club to win the European Cup|The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band |
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1967 | |
| 37. | Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain was found dead|the Channel Tunnel was officially opened|Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president |
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1994 | |
| 38. | ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest singing Waterloo|Helmut Schmidt took over as Chancellor of West Germany after Willy Brandt resigned|Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in The Rumble in the Jungle |
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1974 | |
| 39. | Robert Downey Jr.|Sarah Jessica Parker|J.K. Rowling|Charlie Sheen|Brooke Shields|Ben Stiller|Shania Twain |
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1965 | |
| 40. | The UK, Ireland and Denmark joined the EEC|George Foreman defeated Joe Frazier to win the heavyweight world boxing championship|the Sydney Opera House was opened by Elizabeth II after 14 years of construction work |
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1973 | |
| 41. | The Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground off Alaska|the Hillsborough disaster claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool supporters|Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were executed after being found guilty of crimes against humanity |
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1989 | |
| 42. | 2001: A Space Odyssey premièred around the world|the Summer Olympics took place in Mexico|Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis |
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1968 | |
| 43. | The Who drummer Keith Moon died from an accidental overdose, aged 32, in London, England|Annie Hall won Best Picture at the 50th Academy Awards|a poison-filled pellet from an umbrella killed Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in London |
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1978 | |
| 44. | Andy Warhol premièred his Campbell's Soup Cans exhibit in Los Angeles|The Rolling Stones made their début at London's Marquee Club|Telstar relayed the first live trans-Atlantic television signal |
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1962 | |
| 45. | Emma Bunton|Emily Deschanel|Colin Farrell|Isla Fisher|Naomie Harris|Michael McIntyre |
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1976 | |
| 46. | Czechoslovakia beat West Germany 5–3 on penalties to win the UEFA European Football Championship|China's Chairman Mao Zedong died of a heart attack|Jimmy Carter defeated the incumbent Gerald Ford in the U.S. presidential election |
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1976 | |
| 47. | The RMS Queen Elizabeth was destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbour|Ceylon became a Republic and changed its name to Sri Lanka|Eugene Cernan became the last person to walk on the moon |
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1972 | |
| 48. | The Kobe earthquake in Japan killed 6,434 people|the Oklahoma City bombing claimed the lives of 168|O. J. Simpson was found not guilty of double murder in his criminal trial |
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1995 | |
| 49. | Noel Gallagher|Rhys Ifans|Guy Pierce|Liev Schreiber|Keith Urban|Emily Watson |
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1967 | |
| 50. | Carmen Electra|Liam Gallagher|Jennifer Garner|Jude Law|Shaquille O'Neal|Gwyneth Paltrow |
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1972 | |
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