1950s History Trivia

The 1950s looked placid on the surface, all suburbs, sock hops, and shiny new televisions, but underneath ran a current of Cold War anxiety and civil rights struggle that would define the decades to come. This quiz covers the decade's biggest headlines, from Korea to the launch of Sputnik.

Eleven questions on the decade that set the template for postwar life.

Cold War Tensions

The decade opened with the Korean War, a brutal three-year conflict that ended in 1953 roughly where it began, along the 38th parallel. The rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union expanded into space in 1957, when the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, setting off a technological race that would culminate a decade later on the Moon.

The Civil Rights Movement Takes Shape

In the United States, the fight against racial segregation gained real momentum. The Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional, and Rosa Parks' 1955 bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, helped launch a movement that would reshape American law over the following decade.

Culture and Upheaval Elsewhere

• Elvis Presley and rock and roll took over American radio and record stores.
• Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 speech denouncing Stalin's crimes shocked the Communist world.
• France's defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 ended its colonial hold on Vietnam.
• Fidel Castro's revolutionaries toppled Cuba's government at the decade's close.