The 70th birthday party is this weekend and you need quiz questions about 1957

Twelve 1957 quiz questions you can read out tonight

Print these. Read the question, wait, then read the answer. Every answer here comes from the book's checked chapters.

1. What did a quart of milk cost at the store? 23.4 cents. The milkman charged 25.
2. What was the most common name for baby boys born in 1957? Michael. For girls, Mary.
3. Which did more homes have, a TV or a phone? A TV. About 78 percent had a set, against 75.5 percent with a phone.
4. How did CBS film Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show on January 6? From the waist up, so nobody could see him move.
5. Which TV show took the top spot in fall 1957? Gunsmoke, a Western.
6. What did a gallon of gas cost? 31 cents, and someone pumped it for you.
7. Which price did not change once in all twelve months? The one-ounce chocolate bar, at 4.5 cents.
8. Which children's book came out on March 12, 1957? The Cat in the Hat.
9. Who won the World Series? The Milwaukee Braves, over the New York Yankees, four games to three.
10. Who won Wimbledon on July 6? Althea Gibson, the first Black player of any nationality to win a Grand Slam title.
11. What did the Soviet Union launch on October 4? Sputnik, 22 inches across, circling the Earth every 96 minutes.
12. What happened to the American Vanguard rocket on December 6? It rose about four feet and blew up on the pad, on live TV.

A tip from us: save the rocket for last. It gets a groan. Then give the room the follow-up from the book. Eleven years and seven months later, an American stepped onto the moon.

A bonus round of harder questions

For a table that gets every one of the twelve right, here are eight harder ones. They come from the book's own quiz, with its answers.

1. Which car brand did Ford launch on September 4, 1957? The Edsel.
2. What opened on November 1, 1957, as the longest suspension bridge in the world? The Mackinac Bridge in Michigan.
3. Which plane made its first flight on December 20, 1957? The Boeing 707 prototype, for seven minutes in bad weather.
4. What was odd about game seven of the 1957 NBA Finals? It went to double overtime. It is still the only game seven in Finals history to do that.
5. Why did Gallant Man lose the Kentucky Derby? His jockey, Bill Shoemaker, misread the finish line and stood up in the irons too soon.
6. An hour at the minimum wage came about two cents short of buying what? A one-pound can of coffee, which averaged 101.7 cents.
7. In what year did color TV sets finally outsell black and white ones? 1970.
8. The Oscars held in March 1957 honored films from which year? 1956. The films of 1957 were honored in March 1958.

Number 8 is a good trap. Many free lists get it wrong.

A round about their teen years

Many 70th birthday games also ask about the years the guest of honor remembers. A person born in 1957 was a teenager in the early 1970s. Try these, and let the guest of honor answer first this time.

1. How old were they when the 1973 oil embargo hit? Sixteen. Gas stations ran out, and some states let you buy fuel only on odd or even days, by license plate.
2. What speed limit did President Nixon sign into law on January 2, 1974? 55 miles per hour, to save fuel.
3. What did the Twenty-sixth Amendment change in July 1971? It lowered the voting age to eighteen.
4. Could they buy a drink at eighteen in 1975? In many states, yes. Around thirty states lowered the drinking age in those years, then raised it back to twenty-one in the 1980s.

Then ask the questions only they can answer. What was your first car? Did you wait in a gas line, and what did your father say?

Run the quiz without running the party

Keep it short. Twelve questions is plenty.

Split the room into two teams, the people who were alive in 1957 and the people who were not. The guest of honor sits out, or answers last. They were a baby that year, so they know no more than anyone else, and that is funny on its own.

Put a price question first. Everyone can guess a price. Then go to TV, then music, then news. Leave the sad news out of a party quiz. The fire and mine stories of February 1957 belong in a book, not a game.

Party ideas that come from the year itself

You have the quiz. Here are three quick extras from the same year.

Put a 1957 price on each table card. Bread at 18.8 cents a pound. A stamp at three cents. A dozen eggs at 47.9 cents in June and 69.5 cents in October.

Play the records that topped the shop chart that year. "All Shook Up." "Love Letters in the Sand." "Diana." "You Send Me."

Read out the news from their birth month. The Library of Congress has a page on Althea Gibson's win for a July baby. A fall baby gets Sputnik, and NASA tells that story well.

The quiz is already written, with answers at the back

This is the problem The Year You Arrived: 1957 was written for. If you have the book, the hard part of tonight is done.

Do You Know? is a ready quiz. It has five questions for each of the first nine chapters, from the day they arrived to what was expected of them, with every answer at the back.

What Was on the Air is where the TV questions come from. It covers the year Lucy lost the top spot, the five shows that started in 1957 and the night they filmed Elvis from the waist up.

What Things Cost gives you the price questions, plus the odd ones, like why eggs jumped about forty-five percent from June to October.

For more on the year in order, see our page on what happened in 1957, month by month.