1920s History Trivia

The 1920s were a decade of contradictions: prosperity and Prohibition, jazz clubs and simmering unrest, dazzling new technology and a stock market that would eventually implode. This quiz rounds up the flappers, the strongmen, and the discoveries that defined the era.

Eleven questions covering the decade Americans still call the Roaring Twenties.

The Jazz Age and Its Excesses

Nowhere embodied the decade's contradictions like the United States, where Prohibition banned alcohol even as speakeasies flourished and jazz music poured out of them. It was an era of genuine cultural explosion, with new music, new fashions, and new freedoms for women who had just won the vote, layered over real inequality underneath.

Europe's Uneasy Peace

Across the Atlantic, the peace that followed World War I proved fragile. Germany's economy buckled under hyperinflation in 1923, and Italy handed power to Benito Mussolini's Fascist movement in 1922, an early warning sign of the authoritarian politics that would define the following decade.

Discoveries and Diversions

• Howard Carter's 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb sparked a worldwide fascination with ancient Egypt.
• Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo transatlantic flight turned aviation into front-page news.
• "The Jazz Singer" ushered in the era of talking pictures in 1927.

By decade's end, the good times had a due date. The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 brought the party to a sudden, brutal close.