148 Fun Facts About Brazil

Which motto is written across the starry blue globe on Brazil's flag?

Order and Progress is cut down from a maxim of the French philosopher Auguste Comte; the positivists who designed the republic's flag in 1889 were his followers.

Which granite peak at the mouth of Guanabara Bay is reached by a famous cable car?

Sugarloaf is named for its likeness to the cone-shaped loaves in which refined sugar was once sold; the cable car climbs it in two stages, by way of the lower Urca Hill.

Which Brazilian flip-flop brand, launched in 1962, grew from a cheap workers' sandal into a global fashion label?

Havaianas were once so tied to the poor that Brazil's government listed them among basic household goods; the design was modelled on the Japanese zori sandal.

Which statue has stood atop Corcovado mountain since 1931?

Christ the Redeemer wears a mosaic of small soapstone tiles over its concrete frame; the stone was chosen because it weathers well and is easy to work.

Which is Brazil's largest state by area?

Amazonas covers about 1.56 million square kilometres, the largest of Brazil's states, ahead of Pará at roughly 1.25 million; its capital is Manaus.

Which country ranks just below fifth-placed Brazil as the world's sixth-largest by area?

Australia fills a whole continent at about 7.7 million square kilometres, yet Brazil is bigger still: its 8.5 million cover roughly half of its own continent.

Brazil's 1822 break with Portugal is known as the Cry of what?

Ipiranga is the stream where Prince Pedro, who had already defied orders to return to Europe, proclaimed 'Independence or death!' on 7 September; he was crowned emperor that December.

What is the official currency of Brazil?

Brazilian Real: launched on 1 July 1994 to end years of hyperinflation, it replaced the cruzeiro real, the last in a run of short-lived currencies since the 1980s.

What traditional Brazilian stew is made with black beans and various cuts of pork and beef?

Feijoada comes with rice, collard greens and orange slices; a popular legend says enslaved cooks invented it from scraps, but food historians trace it to Portuguese bean stews.

Which Brazilian author's novel The Alchemist follows a shepherd boy from Spain to the pyramids of Egypt?

Paulo Coelho wrote The Alchemist in just two weeks; before turning novelist he was a rock lyricist, briefly jailed in 1974 for supposedly subversive activities.

Which architect designed many of the civic buildings of Brazil's planned capital, inaugurated in 1960?

Oscar Niemeyer, a lifelong communist, later spent years working in France, where he designed the French Communist Party's headquarters, before returning to Brazil in 1985.

Brazil's most famous Carnival, the biggest in the world, is held every year just before which Christian season?

Lent is the fasting season, so the party comes first. Rio's Carnival puts about two million people a day on the streets, more than any other Carnival anywhere.

What Afro-Brazilian martial art combines elements of dance, acrobatics, and music?

Capoeira was listed as a crime in Brazil's 1890 penal code, so it survived half in secret until teachers such as Mestre Bimba won it official acceptance in the 1930s.

What is the highest mountain peak in Brazil?

Pico da Neblina, meaning 'Mist Peak', is the highest mountain in Brazil, located in the state of Amazonas near the Venezuelan border.

What is the most populous city in Brazil?

São Paulo, home to about 11.5 million people in the 2022 census, was a late bloomer: it had barely 31,000 residents in 1872 and stood in Rio's shadow until an export boom late that century.

Which animal, common along rivers and wetlands across Brazil, is the world's largest living rodent?

Capybara can weigh over 60 kilograms; semiaquatic, with slightly webbed feet, it takes to the water to escape predators, which earned it the nickname 'water hog'.

Which river, nicknamed 'Old Chico', is the longest entirely within Brazilian territory?

The São Francisco is called the 'river of national unity' because it long served as the line of communication between the coast and the interior, and between the northeast and the south.

Brazil grows about a third of the world's supply of which crop, far ahead of second-placed Vietnam?

Coffee made Brazil the world's dominant grower by the 1840s, and the boom it set off late in the 19th century turned a provincial backwater into the country's biggest city.

Which spirit, distilled from fermented sugarcane juice, is the base of Brazil's national cocktail, the caipirinha?

Cachaça is distilled from fresh cane juice rather than the molasses behind most rum, and Brazilians drink nearly all of it themselves: only a small fraction is exported.

The words piranha, tapioca and cashew all come from which Indigenous language once spoken along Brazil's coast?

Tupi was colonial Brazil's lingua franca, used by settlers and missionaries as well as Indigenous peoples; it faded quickly after the Jesuits who wrote and taught it were expelled in 1759.

Which 1494 treaty divided newly discovered lands outside Europe between the two Iberian crowns?

The Treaty of Tordesillas drew a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, which left the eastern bulge of a continent Europeans had not yet sighted on Lisbon's side.

Before the capital moved inland in 1960, which city had served as Brazil's capital since 1763?

Rio de Janeiro took over as colonial capital in 1763 because it was the handier port for the gold and gems then pouring out of the interior, and it kept the job for almost two centuries.

Which renowned waterfall system is located on the border between Brazil and Argentina?

Iguazu Falls split into some 275 separate cascades along a horseshoe nearly three times as wide as Niagara; on seeing them, Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly sighed, 'Poor Niagara!'

The Pantanal, a vast tropical wetland, lies mostly in which Brazilian state?

Mato Grosso do Sul holds most of the Pantanal, where the rainy season puts roughly 80 percent of the floodplain under water each year.

Who was inaugurated as President of Brazil in January 2023?

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had been jailed on corruption charges in 2018, but his convictions were annulled in 2021, freeing him to run again and narrowly beat Jair Bolsonaro.

What do 26 of the 27 stars on Brazil's flag stand for?

States: the 27th star stands for the Federal District. Because the number of states has changed, the flag adopted in 1889 has been redrawn several times, most recently in 1992.

Which animal is pictured on the back of Brazil's 50 banknote?

The jaguar on the 50 note is the largest cat in the Americas, with jaws powerful enough to kill by piercing the skull of its prey.

Which Brazilian author wrote 'Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon' and 'Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands'?

Jorge Amado was jailed in 1935 for his leftist politics and had books banned in Brazil, yet after the war voters sent him to Congress as a Communist deputy.

Brazil borders every South American country except Ecuador and which other?

Chile is one of only two South American countries Brazil does not touch; its ten land neighbours even include France, by way of French Guiana.

Which Brazilian state is home to the colonial gold-mining city of Ouro Preto?

Minas Gerais means 'General Mines': within a decade of Ouro Preto's founding in 1698, the town was the centre of the greatest gold rush the Americas had yet seen.

What is the drought-prone, semi-arid interior of Northeast Brazil called?

The Sertão's long, unpredictable droughts have kept the region poor; the worst, the Great Drought of the late 1870s, killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Which 2002 Brazilian film about gang wars in a favela earned four Oscar nominations?

City of God filled most of its roles with young residents of real favelas rather than trained actors; its four Oscar nominations included one for best director.

Which dark purple berry of an Amazon palm is blended into the frozen bowls sold in juice bars worldwide?

Açaí was a staple food of the Amazon floodplain for centuries before anyone called it a superfood; its promotion as a health food only took off in the 1990s.

Which tropical savanna, Brazil's second-largest biome, covers much of the country's central plateau?

The Cerrado's acidic soils were long thought unfit for crops, until researchers found that lime and phosphorus could correct them, opening the savanna to vast soybean and cotton farms.

Which European rivals seized Brazil's sugar-rich northeast in 1630 and held it for 24 years?

The Dutch West India Company held the coast until 1654; its governor Johan Maurits brought artists and scientists to record the colony, whose synagogue is the oldest in the Americas.

What is Brazil's official long-form name under its 1988 constitution?

Federative Republic of Brazil is a name from the late 1960s; from the fall of the monarchy in 1889 until then, the country's constitutions called it the United States of Brazil.

Which Brazilian state borders both Uruguay and Argentina?

Rio Grande do Sul shares its gaucho ranching culture with both neighbours and once tried to leave Brazil altogether, fighting a ten-year republican war of secession from 1835.

Which Brazilian beach hosts one of the world's biggest New Year's Eve parties?

Copacabana draws about two million people to its midnight fireworks, many in white: the custom spread in the 1970s, after beachgoers saw Afro-Brazilian worshippers dressed that way making offerings to the sea.

Which Brazilian city is known as the 'Venice of Brazil' due to its numerous rivers and bridges?

Recife began as a mere anchorage for wealthy Olinda next door; in 1710 its traders, mocked as 'mascates' or peddlers, rose against Olinda's sugar barons.

Which Brazilian rhythm and dance is the sound of Carnival?

Samba was once treated as a police matter: gatherings were shut down, musicians arrested and their instruments destroyed, long before it was embraced as Brazil's national music.

Which Indigenous people live in rainforest villages straddling the Brazil–Venezuela border?

The Yanomami saw tens of thousands of gold miners pour into their land in the late 1980s, which pushed Brazil to set aside a vast protected territory for them in the early 1990s.

Which Brazilian port city, the capital of Bahia, is known for its Afro-Brazilian culture?

Salvador was for centuries a major port of the Atlantic slave trade, which is why African-rooted music, food and religion remain so strong in the city.

Which massive hydroelectric dam on the Paraná River does Brazil share with a neighbouring country?

The Itaipu Dam came at a price: in 1982 its reservoir drowned the Guaíra Falls, a chain of cataracts whose flow had been among the greatest of any waterfall on Earth.

Which Brazilian composer of 'The Girl from Ipanema' is widely considered a pioneer of bossa nova?

Antônio Carlos Jobim wrote the tune in 1962 to words by the poet Vinícius de Moraes, inspired by a teenager who strolled past their regular bar each day; it won the Grammy for Record of the Year.

What is the Brazilian barbecue tradition called, in which cuts of beef, pork, sausage and chicken are grilled on skewers?

Churrasco began on the cattle ranges of southern Brazil; in restaurants it is served rodízio style, with waiters circling the room and carving meat from the skewer straight onto each plate.

Which fuel, made from sugarcane, is sold alongside petrol at filling stations across Brazil?

Ethanol is mostly a corn-based petrol additive in the US, but in Brazil it is made from cane and sold as a fuel in its own right; flex-fuel cars burn it neat or in any mix.

Which state, Brazil's northernmost, shares its name with a famous flat-topped mountain on the border with Venezuela and Guyana?

Roraima holds Brazil's true northern tip, Monte Caburaí, which lies farther north than the Oiapoque coast of Amapá long taken for the tip.

Although Brazil is a farm-export giant, it must import much of which staple crop?

Wheat is the exception in tropical Brazil: the great bulk of the harvest comes from the cooler far south, so the mills buy millions of tonnes abroad, mostly from Argentina.

What kind of government ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985?

A military dictatorship took power in a 1964 coup; it ended when Tancredo Neves was elected as a civilian president, only for him to die before he could take office.

Brazil's name most likely comes from the Portuguese word for what?

A red-dye tree: Europeans prized brazilwood for the red dye it gave, and within a decade of Cabral's landing maps were calling the coast the 'land of brazilwood'.

Brazil is the only country crossed by both the equator and which other line of latitude?

The Tropic of Capricorn crosses Brazil's southeast, while the equator runs through the middle of Macapá, where the Zerão stadium's halfway line is popularly said to lie on it, giving each team a hemisphere.

Which far-western state keeps Brazil's westernmost time zone?

Acre lost its own time zone in 2008, when a law moved its clocks an hour closer to the capital; voters backed a return in a 2010 referendum, and the old zone came back in 2013.

What official name did early Portuguese records give the territory that became Brazil?

Cabral's men first called it Ilha de Vera Cruz, soon Terra de Santa Cruz, the 'Land of the Holy Cross'; within a decade, though, maps were using the traders' name, Brazil.

Brazil has the world's largest population of which religious group?

Catholics were about 57 percent of Brazilians in the 2022 census, still the largest Catholic community of any country, but down from some 90 percent in 1970 as evangelical churches grew.

Which princess signed the 1888 Golden Law that abolished slavery in Brazil?

Princess Isabel signed the Lei Áurea on 13 May 1888 while acting as regent during her father Pedro II's trip to Europe; Pope Leo XIII awarded her the Golden Rose for it.

The Portuguese royal court fled to Brazil in 1807 to escape whose invading army?

Napoleon's army marched on Lisbon in November 1807, and the Braganza court sailed for Brazil, making a colony the seat of a European empire until 1821.

The united kingdom created in 1815 joined Brazil, the mother country and which third realm, a region of southern Iberia?

The Algarves had been a kingdom in name only for centuries; the 1815 union's real novelty was raising Brazil from colony to kingdom, equal in rank to its mother country.

How did President Getúlio Vargas's second term end in August 1954?

He shot himself at Catete Palace as the generals demanded his resignation, leaving a farewell letter that ended, 'I leave life to enter History.'

In the 1860s Brazil joined Argentina and Uruguay in the Triple Alliance to fight which neighbour?

Paraguay lost the bloodiest war in Latin American history, which ended only when Brazilian troops killed its president, Francisco Solano López, at Cerro Corá in 1870.

The martyr of Brazil's 1789 independence plot is remembered by a nickname taken from which trade?

Dentistry: his nickname, Tiradentes, means 'tooth puller'. The Portuguese hanged him in 1792 and, without meaning to, gave Brazil a martyr whom the republic later made a national hero.

Novelist Machado de Assis was the founding president of which institution?

The Brazilian Academy of Letters chose as its first president a self-taught grandson of freed slaves who had started work at 17 as a printer's apprentice; he led it until his death.

In which city did a Brazilian aviation pioneer make his famous 60-metre flight in the 14-bis in 1906?

Paris saw Alberto Santos-Dumont win the Archdeacon Cup with that hop; Brazilians popularly hold that he, not the Wrights, was the first to fly.

Which luxury house made a 1904 wristwatch so that a Brazilian aviator could keep both hands on the controls?

Cartier's Louis Cartier designed it after his aviator friend complained that a pocket watch was useless in flight; put on public sale in 1911, the model still carries the flyer's name.

Carmen Miranda's towering Hollywood headdresses were famously piled with what?

Fruit: Carmen Miranda took the look from the dress of Afro-Brazilian women of the northeast and first wore it in the 1939 Brazilian musical Banana da Terra, before Hollywood made it her trademark.

Which stadium, built for the 1950 World Cup, saw hosts Brazil lose the deciding match to Uruguay?

The Maracanã held the largest crowd ever to watch a football match that day; Brazil needed only a draw, but Alcides Ghiggia scored Uruguay's winner with eleven minutes left.

What made the 1950 World Cup hosted by Brazil unique in how its winner was decided?

A four-team round-robin group decided the 1950 title, so there was no final at all; the last game only felt like one because Brazil, needing just a draw, lost it 2–1 to Uruguay.

Brazil's 7–1 semi-final defeat to Germany in 2014 was played at which stadium?

The Mineirão in Belo Horizonte watched Germany score four goals inside six first-half minutes on the way to 7–1; Brazilians named the humiliation the Mineiraço.

Pelé is the all-time top scorer of which club, which he joined as a teenager in 1956?

Santos kept Pelé for most of his career partly because Brazil's government declared him a national treasure, a status meant to stop any sale to a foreign club.

Pelé was 17 when he won his first World Cup in 1958, in which host country?

Sweden lost the final 5–2 on home soil, with Pelé scoring twice; it was Brazil's first title, eight years after the team had let one slip in its own stadium.

What is the nickname of Brazil's men's national soccer team?

Canarinho, 'little canary', comes from the yellow shirt, picked in a newspaper design contest after the white kit worn in the 1950 home defeat was attacked as unpatriotic.

Which striker scored both goals in the 2002 final to give Brazil its fifth World Cup?

Ronaldo's two goals against Germany came four years after he played the lost 1998 final only hours after a convulsive fit; the win made Brazil the first five-time champions.

In which country did the Brazilian Expeditionary Force fight during World War II?

Italy was where some 25,000 Brazilians fought from 1944, after German U-boats sank Brazilian merchant ships in 1942; no other South American country sent combat troops overseas.

What was the nickname of Brazil's World War II expeditionary force?

The Smoking Snakes (Cobras Fumantes) mocked the saying that a snake would sooner smoke a pipe than Brazil send troops to Europe; the force's insignia shows a pipe-smoking snake.

Which American industrialist built a rubber-plantation town deep in the Amazon in 1928?

Henry Ford never consulted an expert on rubber trees: planted close together, they fell to blight and insects, and Fordlândia was sold back to Brazil in 1945 at a heavy loss.

What nickname did rubber wealth earn Manaus around 1900?

Paris of the Tropics: rubber barons gave Manaus an opera house roofed with tiles shipped from Alsace and fitted with Carrara marble, before the boom went bust.

What did Henry Wickham smuggle from the Amazon to Kew Gardens in 1876?

Henry Wickham shipped some 70,000 rubber tree seeds from Santarém to Kew Gardens in 1876; plantations in British Malaya and Ceylon grown from that stock undercut wild Amazon rubber by the 1910s.

The Pororoca, which surfers ride up the Amazon, is what kind of phenomenon?

The Pororoca is a tidal bore: around the equinoxes the incoming ocean tide drives a wave up to 4 metres high up the Amazon against the current, loud enough to be heard coming.

Which finance minister led the plan that ended Brazil's hyperinflation in 1994 and won the presidency months later?

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a sociology professor turned finance minister under Itamar Franco, rode the plan's success to a first-round election win and two terms as president.

Petrobras was created in 1953 under which slogan?

'The oil is ours' rallied nationalists behind a state oil monopoly, which Petrobras held from 1953 until a 1997 law opened Brazil's oilfields to competition.

Which family developed Brazilian jiu-jitsu from Japanese judo in the 1920s?

The Gracie brothers built on the judo that the travelling fighter Mitsuyo Maeda brought to Brazil, stressing ground fighting and leverage so that a smaller, weaker fighter could beat a bigger one.

Which Amazonian plant, whose seeds are packed with caffeine, flavours a popular Brazilian soft drink?

Guaraná seeds can be about 6 percent caffeine, a toxin the plant makes to repel insects; a split-open pod looks so like an eyeball that the Sateré-Mawé have an origin myth about it.

Which Tarsila do Amaral painting, its Indigenous-language title meaning 'man who eats', inspired the 1928 Anthropophagic Manifesto?

Abaporu was a birthday present from Tarsila to her husband, the writer Oswald de Andrade; bought at auction in 1995 by an Argentine collector, it now hangs in Buenos Aires.

The Kasato Maru arrived in 1908 carrying Brazil's first immigrants from which country?

The Kasato Maru's arrival on 18 June 1908 is still marked as Brazil's day of Japanese immigration; the community it began is counted as the largest of Japanese descent outside Japan.

Which Brazilian forward was named FIFA's world player of the year six times between 2006 and 2018?

Marta won the award five years running from 2006 and again in 2018; she was born only a few years after Brazil lifted a decades-long legal ban on women playing football.

Gustavo Kuerten won all three of his Grand Slam singles titles at which tournament?

Gustavo Kuerten won the French Open in 1997 as an unseeded world No. 66, then again in 2000 and 2001; the 1997 title was his first ATP title of any kind.

Which Brazilian composer blended Bach with his country's folk music in the nine Bachianas Brasileiras?

Heitor Villa-Lobos learned the cello as a boy and played in cinema and theatre orchestras after his father died; by his own telling, he then roamed Brazil's interior absorbing its folk music.

In the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, what are the venerated spirits called?

In Candomblé the orixás are Yoruba-derived deities such as Oxalá, Iemanjá and Xangô; each person has a tutelary orixá, and under colonial pressure they were syncretised with Catholic saints.

At which circuit was Ayrton Senna killed during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix?

Imola's Tamburello corner claimed Senna a day after Roland Ratzenberger was killed in qualifying; an Austrian flag found in his car suggests he had planned to honour his fellow driver after the race.

Which state-founded Brazilian company became one of the world's biggest makers of regional jets?

Embraer was close to bankruptcy when the government sold it off in 1994; the regional jets it launched soon afterwards turned it into one of the world's largest makers of civil aircraft.

Lúcio Costa's master plan for the 1960 capital is often said to be laid out in what shape?

An airplane is the usual comparison, with residential 'wings' crossing a monumental 'fuselage', but Lúcio Costa said he had simply drawn a cross, the sign of taking possession of a place.

In Amazon folklore, which river animal turns into a handsome young man at night?

Pink dolphin: in the tales the boto seduces a village girl at a party, leaves her pregnant and slips back into the river by morning, a dolphin once more.

Which national park in Brazil's northeast is a sea of dunes and rainwater lagoons?

Lençóis Maranhenses fills up each rainy season because impermeable rock under the sand stops the water draining away; its wolf fish sit out the dry months dormant in the mud.

What were settlements of people who escaped slavery in Brazil, such as Palmares, called?

Quilombos sheltered the escaped; Palmares held out for most of the 17th century, and the death of its last leader, Zumbi, on 20 November 1695 is now marked as Black Consciousness Day.

Which rodent gnaws open the Brazil nut's hard capsule and buries the seeds?

The agouti, a large rodent with chisel-like teeth, is almost the only animal able to open the Brazil nut's capsule; seedlings from its forgotten caches can lie dormant for years until a tree fall lets in light.

Emperor Pedro II helped make which invention famous by trying it at the 1876 Philadelphia exhibition?

The telephone was largely ignored at the fair until Pedro II listened in on Alexander Graham Bell's device; the emperor is said to have cried, 'My God! It talks!'

President Jânio Quadros, who quit after seven months in 1961, campaigned with which anti-corruption symbol?

A broom stood for his promise to sweep out corruption; in office he spent his energy banning bikinis on the beach and decorating Che Guevara, then resigned without warning.

Which president, elected in 1989, was impeached by Brazil's Congress in 1992?

Fernando Collor resigned in December 1992 as his Senate trial opened, hoping to stop it, but the senators convicted him anyway and barred him from office for eight years.

The volcanic archipelago of Fernando de Noronha belongs to which Brazilian state?

Pernambuco gained Fernando de Noronha only in 1988, when the federal territory that had run the islands was dissolved; that same year about 70 percent of the archipelago became a marine national park.

Which northern state shares Brazil's only land border with French Guiana, an overseas part of France?

Amapá meets French Guiana along a 730 km frontier, and French is the second language taught in every school in the state.

What name, shared with the cowboys of the pampas, is given to natives of Brazil's southernmost state?

Gaúchos once meant only the cattle-herding horsemen of the southern plains, but in Brazil the word covers anyone from the state, even a city dweller.

Pará accounts for about 90% of Brazil's trade in which small black-purple berry, harvested from a palm?

Açaí looks like a grape but has far less pulp, and it grows in branched bunches of 500 to 900 berries.

Which of Brazil's five official regions has only four states yet is home to about two in five Brazilians?

The Southeast also generates about half of Brazil's GDP, since the country's three richest states all sit inside it.

Before the republic of 1889 renamed them states, what were the main divisions of the Empire of Brazil called?

Provinces became states overnight when the monarchy fell and the country restyled itself the Republic of the United States of Brazil.

Which southern state is home to Blumenau, a city founded by Germans that hosts Brazil's biggest Oktoberfest?

Santa Catarina's festival began in 1984, after a major flood of the Itajaí-Açu river, as a way to revive Blumenau's economy and lift morale.

Which modern country was annexed by Brazil in 1821 as Cisplatina, then won its independence in 1828?

Uruguay broke away after rebels called the Thirty-Three Orientals declared independence in 1825, and a peace convention confirmed it three years later.

Which coastal state, larger only than the Federal District, is the smallest of Brazil's 26 states by area?

Sergipe covers about 21,900 square kilometres, and its capital was moved from an inland colonial town to the coast in 1855.

Which northeastern state freed its enslaved people in 1884, four years before abolition reached the rest of Brazil?

Ceará was the first part of Brazil to abolish slavery, acting on 25 March 1884, well ahead of the national abolition law.

São Paulo state is the world's largest producer of which farm export?

Orange juice is São Paulo's signature export: the state grows most of Brazil's oranges, and Brazil sells more of the juice abroad than any other country.

Which state, carved out of the north of a larger neighbour by the 1988 constitution, is Brazil's newest?

Tocantins had to build its capital from scratch, with work starting in 1989, while most of its other towns date from colonial times.

Which state gave up the land for the Federal District when Brazil built its new capital on the central plateau?

Goiás wraps almost all the way around the Federal District, which touches only one other state along a short border.

Which state was split in two in 1977, its southern half becoming a new state with Campo Grande as capital?

Mato Grosso means 'thick bush', and even after losing its southern half it ranks as the third-largest state in Brazil.

Which state holds Serra da Capivara, a park with the largest concentration of prehistoric sites in the Americas?

Piauí's park protects rock shelters covered in prehistoric paintings, and stone tools found at one site may be as much as 22,000 years old.

Which short-lived state, covering only the city of Rio, existed from 1960 until a merger in 1975?

Guanabara was named after the bay beside it, and the military government dissolved it into the surrounding state in 1975.

Which hereditary land grants, fifteen strips handed out by King John III from 1534, first divided up Brazil?

Captaincies ran inland from the coast in strips parallel to the equator, and every one of them eventually reverted to the crown or was bought back.

The port of Ilhéus in southern Bahia was once one of the biggest exporters of which crop?

Cocoa made the fortunes of rival plantation barons around Ilhéus, whose violent land wars became the backdrop to famous Brazilian novels.

The Carajás mine in Pará, an open pit run by the mining company Vale, is the world's largest for which metal?

Iron is the prize at Carajás, which holds an estimated 7.2 billion tonnes of ore alongside gold, manganese, copper and nickel.

The state of Pará takes its name from a word for a sea or great river in which Indigenous language?

Tupi speakers used pará for a river as wide as a sea, and the state took its name from the Pará River.

Which colonial fortune hunters, most of them from São Paulo, pushed Brazil's frontier inland seeking gold and captives?

Bandeirantes means 'flag-carriers', and their expeditions pushed Brazil's borders out to roughly their modern limits.

Which Rio peak has been reached since 1912 by a two-stage cable car that appeared in the Bond film Moonraker?

Sugarloaf is named for its resemblance to the cone-shaped loaves in which refined sugar was once sold, and its cableway was only the third in the world.

Which Rio beach is backed by a 4 km promenade paved in black-and-white waves and draws millions each New Year's Eve?

Copacabana's geometric wave paving dates from the 1930s, and the whole promenade was rebuilt in 1970.

Which stadium, built for the 1950 World Cup, also staged the 2014 World Cup final?

Maracanã is officially named after Mário Filho, a sports journalist who campaigned loudly for it to be built.

Which forest inside Rio was replanted from 1861 after coffee farms stripped the hills and threatened the water supply?

Tijuca was restored by enslaved workers who planted more than 100,000 trees between 1861 and 1887.

Which colonial port, once the sea end of Brazil's Gold Trail, lets high tides flood its cobbled streets each full moon?

Paraty has special openings in its seawalls that let the tide pour in, and the streets stay flooded only until the water recedes.

Which colonial town, founded in 1535 and burned by Dutch invaders, has had a UNESCO-listed centre since 1982?

Olinda's Carnival is a street party known for its African-influenced dances, and the town ranks among the best-preserved colonial cities in Brazil.

Which UNESCO-listed colonial quarter of Bahia's capital is named for the whipping post that stood in its main square?

Pelourinho means 'pillory': enslaved Africans were publicly beaten at the post, and the district is a showcase of colonial churches.

At the Meeting of Waters near Manaus, the Amazon runs for 6 km without mixing beside which great tributary?

Negro means 'black', and its warm, slow, tea-dark water takes many kilometres to blend with the cooler, faster, sediment-laden main stream.

Which once-obscure village on Brazil's coast became a famous resort after actress Brigitte Bardot visited in 1964?

Búzios had earlier been a haunt of smugglers, slave traders and whale hunters, and one of its busiest waterfront spots is called Orla Bardot.

Which upmarket Rio beach district is named after a baron whose title came from a river often translated as 'bad water'?

Ipanema's beach is divided into stretches by numbered lifeguard towers called postos, and summer crowds often applaud the sunset.

Which state capital lies mostly on an island, joined to the mainland by Brazil's longest suspension bridge?

Florianópolis, nicknamed Floripa or the Island of Magic, has 60 beaches, and its Hercílio Luz Bridge opened in 1926.

Which state capital was planned and built in the 1890s to replace the old gold-rush town of Ouro Preto?

Belo Horizonte's planners took inspiration from the layout of Washington, D.C., and the city later gained the modernist Pampulha Complex.

Which state capital is the only one in Brazil to have been founded by the French?

São Luís began in 1612 as a fort for a colony called Equinoctial France, named after King Louis XIII and his sainted ancestor Louis IX.

Which city on Lake Guaíba, the first to adopt participatory budgeting, is the southernmost of Brazil's state capitals?

Porto Alegre began in 1752 with the arrival of 60 couples from the Azores, and it later hosted the World Social Forum.

Which planned city of the 1850s is the only state capital in Brazil's Northeast that does not sit on the coast?

Teresina was named in honour of Empress Teresa Cristina, and its hottest months are nicknamed the 'Bro' because each one ends in -bro.

Which state capital has the equator running through the middle of the city, earning it a 'middle of the world' nickname?

Macapá has no highway to the rest of Brazil beyond its own state, so travellers from elsewhere arrive by air or by boat.

Which state capital is Brazil's youngest, a planned city built from the ground up on former farmland?

Palmas was planned for a million people, and many of its street trees are older than the city itself.

Which state capital was founded in 1933 as a planned city and named through a contest run by a local newspaper?

Goiânia was founded by Governor Pedro Ludovico to serve as his state's new capital and administrative centre.

Which state capital, founded in a 1719 gold rush, lies near the geographical centre of South America?

Cuiabá's name may come from a Bororo phrase for a place of arrow-fishing, and the city is nicknamed the southern gate to the Amazon.

Which state capital on the northeastern coast grew from a sugar mill and is named for the seasonal lagoons on its shore?

Maceió began by exporting sugar from its mills, then tobacco, coconut and leather, and it became a state capital in 1839.

Which city, nicknamed the City of Mango Trees for the vast number growing there, is the capital of Pará?

Belém is the local form of 'Bethlehem', and Brazilians often call it Belém do Pará to tell it apart from other towns of the same name.

Which capital of Paraná introduced one of the world's first bus rapid transit systems in 1974?

Curitiba's long articulated buses stop at raised, tube-shaped stations where passengers pay before they board.

Which capital of Rio Grande do Norte was renamed New Amsterdam during two decades of Dutch occupation?

Natal was founded on Christmas Day in 1599, and the US War Department later called it one of the four most strategic points in the world.

Vitória, a city founded in 1551 on an island in a bay, is the capital of which coastal state?

Espírito Santo's capital once spread over some 50 islands, many of which were later joined to the largest one by landfill.

Porto Velho, which grew up around the Madeira-Mamoré railroad, is the capital of which state bordering Bolivia?

Rondônia's capital was founded by pioneers around 1907, and its first homes included the wooden houses of Barbadian railway workers.

Rio Branco, a city where almost half the state's people live, is the capital of which far-western state bordering Peru?

Acre is Brazil's westernmost state, running two hours behind the national capital, and it borders both Peru and Bolivia.

João Pessoa, home to Ponta do Seixas, the easternmost point of the mainland Americas, is the capital of which state?

Paraíba's capital has changed names several times: it was once Filipeia, after a Spanish king, and Frederica under Dutch occupation.

Which coastal city replaced inland São Cristóvão in 1855 as the capital of Brazil's smallest state?

Aracaju was chosen after officials spent the 1850s hunting for a site, because the old capital's inland position caused too many difficulties.

Which city across the bay from Rio was the capital of the surrounding state until a 1975 merger?

Niterói was founded in 1573 by the Indigenous chief Arariboia, on land he was granted for helping the Portuguese drive the French from the bay.

Which mountain city, the summer residence of Brazil's emperors, was the capital of the state around Rio in the 1890s?

Petrópolis means 'City of Peter' in honour of Brazil's last emperor, who is entombed in its cathedral.