In This Year50 randomly selected In This Year questions for quizmasters. New random selection made weekly. Next update: Monday 23rd March 2026 (Please note: Questions are taken from our database of previous quizzes. Some questions and answers may be outdated.) |
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| 1. | an IRA bomb killed 5 at the Grand Hotel in Brighton|the Apple Macintosh went on sale for the first time|Konstantin Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov as leader of the Soviet Union |
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1984 | |
| 2. | Nelson Mandela was released from prison|Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture at the Academy Awards|the Gulf War began with Iraq invading Kuwait |
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1990 | |
| 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. | Tyra Banks|Kate Beckinsale|Ryan Giggs|Monica Lewinsky|Paul Walker|Pharrell Williams |
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1973 | |
| 5. | Terms of Endearment won Best Picture at the 56th Academy Awards|WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead, leading to a police siege of the Libyan Embassy in London|Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated |
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1984 | |
| 6. | Mike Tyson made his professional début in New York|Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French agents|the wreck of the Titanic was finally located |
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1985 | |
| 7. | Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into a bridge in Washington, D.C. and fell into the Potomac River|Chariots of Fire won 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture|the Commodore 64 home computer was released |
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1982 | |
| 8. | U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles|English politician Enoch Powell delivered his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech|the Winter Olympics were held in Grenoble, France |
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1968 | |
| 9. | The Sound of Music premièred worldwide|racing driver Jim Clark won the Indianapolis 500 and the Formula One world driving championship in the same year|Singapore gained independence by being expelled from Malaysia |
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1965 | |
| 10. | At Camp David, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin formally declared that the Cold War was over|Microsoft released Windows 3.1|a fire at Windsor Castle caused over £50 million worth of damage |
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1992 | |
| 11. | YouTube was founded|Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast|Hong Kong Disneyland Resort opened |
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2005 | |
| 12. | Simon Cowell|Magic Johnson|Hugh Laurie|Kevin Spacey|Emma Thompson|Morrissey |
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1959 | |
| 13. | Margaret Thatcher became leader of the UK Conservative Party|NASA launched the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars|U.S. President Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts |
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1975 | |
| 14. | Alan Alda|Brian Blessed|Glen Campbell|Mary Tyler Moore|Robert Redford|Burt Reynolds |
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1936 | |
| 15. | The Winter Olympics were held in Vancouver and Whistler, Canada|a Thai military crack down on the "Red Shirts" protests in Bangkok ended with 91 dead and more than 2,100 injured|Julia Gillard was sworn in as the first female Prime Minister of Australia |
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2010 | |
| 16. | The Australian dollar replaced the Australian pound|Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? premièred worldwide|Luna 9 and Surveyor 1 achieved the first lunar soft landings |
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1966 | |
| 17. | Michael Caine|Jayne Mansfield|David McCallum|Willie Nelson|Joan Rivers|Gene Wilder |
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1933 | |
| 18. | Boris Johnson|Ross Kemp|Jürgen Klinsmann|Elle Macpherson|Clive Owen|Sarah Palin |
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1964 | |
| 19. | Planet of the Apes was released in cinemas around the world|Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated|Manchester United became the first English team to win the European Cup |
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1968 | |
| 20. | Tom Cruise|Jim Carrey|Steve Carell|Demi Moore|Ralph Fiennes|Jodie Foster |
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1962 | |
| 21. | 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 | |
| 22. | Elizabeth II ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom|A Streetcar Named Desire won four Oscars|the United States successfully detonated the first hydrogen bomb in the Marshall Islands |
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1952 | |
| 23. | the body of publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean|President George H. W. Bush ordered a cease-fire and declared victory over Iraq in the Gulf War|Slovenia and Croatia became the first republics to declare independence from Yugoslavia |
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1991 | |
| 24. | Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook|the Summer Olympics were held in Athens, Greece|Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper in the world at the time, officially opened |
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2004 | |
| 25. | Pat Cash|Steve Coogan|Elizabeth Hurley|Mark Labbett|Lennox Lewis|Sam Mendes |
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1965 | |
| 26. | U.S. forces made a controversial move into neutral Cambodia to hunt out the Viet Cong|New Zealander racing driver and team founder Bruce McLaren was killed while testing a new race car|the North Tower of the World Trade Center was topped out, making it the tallest building in the world |
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1970 | |
| 27. | The TV miniseries Roots first aired around the world|the Space Shuttle Enterprise made its first test free-flight from the back of a Boeing 747|Elvis Presley was found dead at his home in Graceland |
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1977 | |
| 28. | James Bulger was abducted, tortured and murdered by two 10 year old boys in Liverpool, England|the Battle of Mogadishu, dubbed "Black Hawk Down", took place in Somalia|tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed during a match in Hamburg |
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1993 | |
| 29. | The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station|Argentina won the FIFA World Cup|Out of Africa won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture |
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1986 | |
| 30. | John Carpenter|Prince Charles|Al Gore|George R R Martin|Teller|Andrew Lloyd Webber |
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1948 | |
| 31. | Cyprus became independent from the United Kingdom|21-year-old American rock singer Eddie Cochran died in a car crash in south England|U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy was elected Democratic presidential candidate |
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1960 | |
| 32. | 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 | |
| 33. | Boy George|Eddie Murphy|George Clooney|Meg Ryan|Michael J. Fox|Princess Diana |
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1961 | |
| 34. | Western Allies began the Berlin Airlift|US President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan|Korea was divided into North and South |
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1948 | |
| 35. | A suicide bomb at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut killed 63 people|Sally Ride became the first American woman in space|Neil Kinnock was elected leader of the British Labour Party |
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1983 | |
| 36. | 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 | |
| 37. | Drake|Ellie Goulding|Lindsay Lohan|Rafael Nadal|Robert Pattinson|Oscar Pistorius |
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1986 | |
| 38. | Bill Clinton succeeded George H.W. Bush as President of the United States|James Bulger was abducted, tortured and murdered by two 10 year old boys in Liverpool, England|the Sunset Limited train crash in Alabama killed 47 |
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1993 | |
| 39. | Halle Berry|Patrick Dempsey|Janet Jackson|Gordon Ramsay|Adam Sandler|Mike Tyson |
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1966 | |
| 40. | the Post Office Tower opened in London|the classic family sci-fi show Thunderbirds debuted in the United Kingdom|200 Alabama State Troopers attacked 525 civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama in what was to become known as Bloody Sunday |
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1965 | |
| 41. | Anna Kournikova|Rami Malek|Meghan Markle|Natalie Portman|Serena Williams|Elijah Wood |
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1981 | |
| 42. | Richard Nixon was inaugurated as 37th President of the United States|Midnight Cowboy was released in cinemas worldwide|a coup d'état put Gaddafi in control of Libya |
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1969 | |
| 43. | the BBC sitcom Dad's Army was broadcast for the first time in the UK|Rosemary's Baby premiered around the world|a U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashed in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs |
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1968 | |
| 44. | Zach Galifianakis|Richard Hammond|Matthew Perry|Gwen Stefani|Jay-Z|Catherine Zeta-Jones |
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1969 | |
| 45. | Sheryl Crow|Emilio Estevez|Steve Irwin|Jon Bon Jovi|Bob Odenkirk|Axl Rose |
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1962 | |
| 46. | Kristen Bell|Macauley Culkin|Steven Gerrard|Ryan Gosling|Kim Kardashian|Zachary Levi |
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1980 | |
| 47. | Chester Bennington|Cat Deeley|Cillian Murphy|Ross Noble|Ryan Reynolds|Alicia Silverstone |
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1976 | |
| 48. | The Godfather was released in cinemas worldwide|Ceylon became the republic of Sri Lanka|the Watergate Scandal began with five White House operatives being arrested for burglary |
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1972 | |
| 49. | Cleopatra premièred around the world|ZIP codes were introduced by the U.S. Postal Service|British prostitute Christine Keeler was arrested and convicted of perjury for her part in the Profumo Affair |
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1963 | |
| 50. | David Cameron|Stefan Edberg|Samantha Fox|Mikhail Mishustin|Kiefer Sutherland|Robin Wright |
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1966 | |
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