60 Fun Facts About Chile

Chile's northernmost city, Arica, lies just south of the border with which country?

Peru. Chile seized Arica from Peru in the War of the Pacific, and a 1929 treaty between the two countries fixed the land border just north of the city.

Which South American desert is the world's driest non-polar desert?

Atacama. Its soils are so dry and nearly lifeless that scientists use the desert as a testing ground for Mars mission instruments.

Which peak is both the world's highest volcano and Chile's highest point?

Nevado Ojos del Salado. The air around it is so dry that, despite the peak's great height, snow covers it mainly in winter.

Chile's Antarctic claim overlaps those of Argentina and which other country?

Britain. All three claims overlap on the Antarctic Peninsula, and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty froze them rather than choosing between them.

Which sailor, marooned on Chile's Juan Fernández Islands for four years, is thought to have inspired Robinson Crusoe?

Alexander Selkirk. He asked to be put ashore because he feared his ship was unseaworthy, and that ship later sank.

What is Chile's national flower?

The copihue. Overpicking left it in grave danger of extinction, so in 1971 Chile banned cutting, uprooting and selling wild copihues.

The pudu, found in Chile's southern forests, is a small kind of what animal?

Deer. Pumas are its main natural predator, and domestic dogs also kill pudus and pass parasites on to them.

Which ocean current makes Chile's coastal waters so rich in fish?

Humboldt. Its cold upwelling supports about a fifth of the world's marine fish catch, though El Niño years can disrupt it.

Which Bordeaux grape, thought extinct after phylloxera, survived in Chile mistaken for Merlot?

Carménère. When Bordeaux's vineyards were replanted after phylloxera, growers passed it over for grapes that were easier to grow.

One theory derives the name 'Chile' from the Mapuche word chilli, meaning what?

Where the land ends. The Spanish first used the name only for one valley before it spread to the whole country.

Pedro de Valdivia, who founded Chile's capital, had served as a lieutenant to which conquistador?

Francisco Pizarro. Valdivia fought for him against Almagro's faction at Las Salinas in 1538, and was later killed after the Mapuche rose up at Tucapel.

Chile's capital was founded in 1541 beside which river?

Mapocho. Within months of the founding, Indigenous warriors destroyed the young settlement, and the Spanish had to rebuild it.

Chile's ancient Chinchorro people made which of these some two thousand years before the ancient Egyptians did?

Mummies. Rather than saving the treatment for elites, they took apart and rebuilt the bodies of ordinary men, women and children with sticks and clay.

Chile's Fiestas Patrias on 18 September mark the 1810 creation of what?

The first government junta. It ruled in the name of the captive Spanish king Ferdinand VII, so the day Chile celebrates began as a show of loyalty.

Which patriot led the early independence movement alongside his siblings Javiera and Luis?

José Miguel Carrera. After clashing with O'Higgins he kept fighting from exile, until he was betrayed, captured and executed in Mendoza in 1821.

Which Argentine general crossed the Andes with O'Higgins to defeat the royalists in Chile?

José de San Martín. After freeing Chile he sailed north with a liberating expedition and became Protector of Peru in 1821.

Which April 1818 battle near Santiago sealed Chile's independence from Spain?

Maipú. Only about two weeks earlier, royalist troops had surprised and routed the same patriot army at Cancha Rayada.

Which minister shaped the conservative Constitution of 1833 that stabilised the young republic?

Diego Portales. He never became president, yet ran the government from behind the scenes until mutinous soldiers killed him in 1837.

Which country lost its entire Pacific coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879–83)?

Bolivia. It later took Chile to the World Court seeking talks on a sea outlet, but in 2018 the court ruled that Chile had no duty to negotiate.

Which British naval officer, dismissed from the Royal Navy over a Stock Exchange fraud, went on to command Chile's navy?

Thomas Cochrane. After Chile he led Brazil's navy too, and he was eventually pardoned and restored to the Royal Navy as an admiral.

Which late-19th-century Chilean military campaign ended Mapuche autonomy?

Occupation of Araucanía. The state confined the Mapuche to lands it marked out and auctioned much of the rest, leaving many communities in lasting poverty.

Chile's popular completo is a loaded-up version of which fast food?

Hot dog. Its most popular version, the italiano, is topped with tomato, avocado and mayonnaise to echo the colours of the Italian flag.

The nearly 1,000 moai of Rapa Nui were carved from tuff quarried at which volcanic crater?

Rano Raraku. The largest moai ever carved, over 21 metres long, was never freed from the rock and lies unfinished in the quarry.

Jacob Roggeveen reached Rapa Nui in 1722 on which holiday, giving it its English name?

Easter Sunday. The Dutch explorer had been searching for Terra Australis, a legendary southern continent, and came upon this uncharted island instead.

Which organisation runs the Very Large Telescope on Chile's Cerro Paranal?

European Southern Observatory. Reinhard Genzel's team used the VLT to track stars orbiting the Milky Way's central black hole, work that won him a share of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The 1960 Valdivia earthquake's tsunami killed over 100 people in which country across the Pacific?

Japan. On its way across the ocean, the same tsunami had already devastated Hilo in Hawaii, killing dozens of people there.

Strong aftershocks from Chile's 2010 earthquake shook Valparaíso during which event?

Presidential inauguration. Sebastián Piñera took office as planned, and the Congress building was evacuated soon after the ceremony.

How many miners were trapped at the San José mine near Copiapó in August 2010?

33. They went 17 days with no word from the surface, and after 69 days underground every one of them was winched up alive.

The capsule that lifted Chile's trapped San José miners to safety in 2010 was named after which mythical creature?

Phoenix. A rescuer rode it down to the trapped men first, and the last miner it brought up was their shift supervisor.

In 1970, which senator became president after winning a plurality in a three-way race?

Salvador Allende. Without a majority he needed Congress to confirm him, and his government went on to nationalise the big copper mines.

During Chile's 1973 military coup, air force jets bombed which building in central Santiago?

La Moneda. Shortly before the attack, the president gave a farewell speech over the radio from inside the besieged palace.

Chile initiated which US-backed campaign by South American dictatorships to hunt down leftists?

Operation Condor. Its victims included the exiled Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his American colleague, killed by a car bomb in downtown Washington, D.C.

In 1998, former dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in which city on a Spanish judge's warrant?

London. Freed in 2000 as too unwell to face extradition, he flew home and rose from his wheelchair on the airport tarmac to greet cheering crowds.

Chile's 1988 'No' campaign against another term for Pinochet used which symbol as its logo?

A rainbow. Pinochet had written the vote into his own constitution, and after losing it he ended up handing over power.

Who became Chile's president in 1990 as the candidate of the Concertación coalition?

Patricio Aylwin. He set up a truth commission into the dictatorship's abuses, though Pinochet stayed on as army commander throughout his presidency.

Who was elected in January 2006 as Chile's first female president?

Michelle Bachelet. The dictatorship's secret police once held her at a detention centre, yet decades later she served as the country's defence minister.

Chile's nationwide protests that began in 2019 were sparked by a rise in the price of what?

The metro fare. A minister's advice that commuters could save by getting up earlier to ride at off-peak rates caused outrage as mass fare-dodging spread.

Chile's 2021 constitutional convention guaranteed an even split between which groups?

Women and men. At its first session it chose Mapuche academic Elisa Loncón, who held one of the seats reserved for Indigenous peoples, as its president.

Chilean president Gabriel Boric first rose to prominence leading what?

Student protests. His presidential bid nearly failed to launch, as he gathered the signatures he needed to run only about a day before the deadline.

What happened to the draft constitutions put to Chilean voters in 2022 and 2023?

Both were rejected. Voters who had backed writing a new charter by nearly 80% in 2020 turned down the first draft by about 62% two years later.

Chile's copper law, repealed in 2019, funded which institution?

The armed forces. The law's details were kept secret, and in 2015 army personnel were exposed for siphoning millions of dollars out of the fund.

In 2019, which Chilean mine was the world's top copper producer?

Escondida. Sued with two other miners over damage to a desert aquifer, it agreed in 2024 to a court-approved settlement compensating the Indigenous community of Peine.

Brine pumped from beneath Chile's northern desert is a major source of which metal?

Lithium. Pumping so much brine out of such a parched region has caused bitter disputes over water rights with local communities.

Fish farms in the fjords around Chile's Chiloé island mainly raise which fish?

Salmon. When algal blooms killed some 40,000 tonnes of farmed salmon in 2016, dumping thousands of tonnes of the dead fish at sea drew fierce criticism.

In 2010 Chile became the first South American country to join which organisation?

OECD. After the OECD's anti-bribery reviewers asked for it, Chile passed a 2009 law making companies criminally liable for bribery.

What is Chile's national dance?

Cueca. Pinochet's regime made it the national dance by decree in 1979, while women whose relatives had disappeared danced it alone in protest.

Who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945?

Gabriela Mistral. A village schoolteacher before her poetry made her famous, she was invited to Mexico in 1922 to help reform its rural schools.

Which Chilean poet won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971?

Pablo Neruda. When the government moved to arrest the Communist senator, he lived in hiding inside Chile until he managed to escape abroad in 1949.

Which Chilean-born actor played the title role in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian?

Pedro Pascal. His family fled Chile when he was a baby, as his parents were seen as enemies of the Pinochet regime, and found political asylum in Denmark.

The UNESCO-listed Humberstone and Santa Laura sites in northern Chile processed what?

Saltpeter. Once prized for fertiliser and explosives, it lost out to synthetic fertilisers, and both works were eventually abandoned.

Which stadium hosted Chile's 1962 World Cup final?

Estadio Nacional. After the 1973 coup, the military turned it into a detention camp where thousands of prisoners were held.

Which player scored the winning penalty as Chile beat Argentina in the 2015 Copa América final shootout?

Alexis Sánchez. A year later Chile beat Argentina on penalties in another final, and Lionel Messi, who missed his kick, briefly retired from international football.

Which Chilean club won South America's Copa Libertadores in 1991?

Colo-Colo. Its founder and captain, David Arellano, died in 1927 after an on-pitch collision during the club's tour of Spain.

Which Chilean became the first Latin American man to reach world No. 1 in tennis, in 1998?

Marcelo Ríos. He seized the top ranking by beating Andre Agassi in a final, yet spent only six weeks in all as world No. 1.

Which Chilean won two tennis gold medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics?

Nicolás Massú. He and Fernando González won the doubles final from two sets to one down, and the next day he came back from the same deficit to beat Mardy Fish in the singles.

Which Chilean woman won the 1937 U.S. Championships, the first Latin American to win a Grand Slam singles title?

Anita Lizana. She married and settled in Scotland.

Which horseback sport is officially Chile's national sport?

Rodeo was made the national sport by official decree, and it grew out of the ranch and mountain work of rounding up cattle on horseback.

Palín, a Mapuche team game that Spanish colonial authorities banned, most resembles which modern sport?

Field hockey is the closest match: teams drive a ball over the rival goal line with curved wooden sticks, and the Spanish called it chueca after a similar game from home.

Which English privateer raided the Chilean port of Valparaíso in 1578?

Francis Drake took the settlement by surprise, seizing a ship in its harbour and looting the church.

Which animal is one of the two creatures holding up the shield on Chile's coat of arms?

Huemul numbers fell so low that a 2006 decree made it a protected natural monument, citing its role as a heraldic species of Chile.