49 Fun Facts About Dams

Which type of dam relies on its own sheer weight to hold back the water?

The other main types are embankment dams built of earth and rock, buttress dams propped from behind, and arch dams that push the load into the valley walls.

An arch dam is curved in which direction?

The water pressure pushes on the convex face and squeezes the arch into its abutments, which is why the type suits narrow rock gorges and needs far less concrete.

The Jawa Dam, one of the earliest dams known, was built around 3000 BCE in which modern country?

The Hittites followed with dams in Anatolia between the 17th and 13th centuries BCE, and the Romans began masonry gravity dams in the 1st century CE.

The Sadd el-Kafara, the oldest major dam in the world, was built near Cairo by which civilisation?

Its name means 'Dam of the Infidels'; it was never finished and was destroyed by a flood because it had no spillway.

Roughly what share of the world's arable land is irrigated with water from reservoirs behind dams?

Irrigation, hydropower, water supply, flood control, navigation and fish farming are the main jobs dams do.

The 305 m Jinping-I, the world's tallest dam when finished in 2014, is in which country?

It sits on the Yalong River in Sichuan and was finished in 2014, edging out the Nurek Dam for the record.

Nurek Dam, the world's tallest when finished in 1980, is in which former Soviet republic?

Completed in 1980 on the Vakhsh River, it held the overall height record until Jinping-I overtook it in 2013.

The Grande Dixence Dam, the tallest dam in Europe at 285 metres, stands in which country?

It holds back the Lac des Dix in the canton of Valais and is also the tallest gravity-type dam anywhere in the world.

Lake Volta, Earth's largest artificial reservoir by surface area, lies entirely in which country?

The Akosombo Dam that created it was built mainly to power an aluminium smelter, and the lake covers 3.6% of the country's land.

Which Zambezi reservoir is the world's largest man-made body of water by volume?

It holds about 185 cubic kilometres of water; the dam that forms it was opened by the Queen Mother in 1960.

The Itaipu Dam on the Paraná River is a joint project of which two countries?

Ten of its twenty generators run at 50 Hz for one partner and ten at 60 Hz for the other; in 1994 the American Society of Civil Engineers named it one of the seven modern Wonders of the World.

The reservoir of the Itaipu Dam inundated which waterfall, then the world's largest by volume?

Brazil later abolished the national park that had protected the falls; the dam's name comes from a Guarani word meaning 'the sounding stone'.

Grand Coulee Dam, the largest power station in the United States by capacity, is in which state?

Franklin Roosevelt endorsed the 'high dam' design in 1934, and its third powerhouse in 1974 pushed capacity to 6,809 MW.

Which folk singer wrote 26 songs in a month in 1941, including 'Roll On, Columbia', while promoting the Columbia dams?

The Bonneville Power Administration hired him for a documentary that needed a narrator, and got a songbook instead.

The Aswan High Dam, built between 1960 and 1970, was developed with the help of which country?

The United States had withdrawn its funding offer in 1956; the finished dam created Lake Nasser and was then the largest power station in Africa.

Which was the most famous of the 22 monuments relocated from Lake Nasser under UNESCO?

The rock temples of Ramesses II were cut into blocks and reassembled on higher ground beside the new lake.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Africa's largest hydroelectric plant, sits on which river?

Egypt, 2,500 km downstream, has opposed it throughout its 2011-2025 construction and its five reservoir fillings.

Which dynasty built the Kallanai on the Kaveri River, India's oldest dam still in use, around 150 CE?

King Karikala's stone dam diverted the river into the delta for irrigation and was remodelled by British engineers in the 1800s.

The great dam of Marib, first built in the 8th century BC, is in which modern country?

It watered the capital of the Sabaean kingdom of Sheba; its final breach in the 6th century is remembered in the Quran.

The tallest dam the Romans ever built, at Subiaco near Rome, was created around 60 CE for what purpose?

At 40 metres it stayed the tallest dam anywhere in the world until the late Middle Ages.

Jawaharlal Nehru called which Indian dam a 'New Temple of Resurgent India'?

Nehru poured the symbolic first bucket of concrete into the Sutlej riverbed in November 1955; the dam forms the Gobind Sagar reservoir.

Oroville Dam, the tallest dam in the United States at 770 feet, holds back which river?

In February 2017 its damaged spillways forced the evacuation of about 188,000 people living downstream.

Glen Canyon Dam forms which reservoir, named for the first man to boat through the Grand Canyon?

The dam is the ultimate target of the saboteurs in Edward Abbey's 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang.

Margaret Bourke-White's photo of which dam's spillway was the first cover of Life magazine in 1936?

The Montana dam is the largest hydraulically filled dam in the US, and its lake has more shoreline than California's coast.

The largest earth-filled dam in the world, Tarbela, holds back which river?

It sits in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where the river leaves the Himalayan foothills, and was completed in 1976.

The largest known beaver dam, some 775 metres long, is in which Canadian national park?

Beavers build mostly at night, carrying mud in their forepaws and timber in their teeth, and can move their own body weight in material.

The morning-glory spillway known as the 'Glory Hole' is a famous feature of which California dam?

The funnel is 72 feet across at the lip of Lake Berryessa and narrows to about 28 feet before spitting water out below the dam.

The opening bungee jump of the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye was performed off which Swiss dam?

The 220-metre arch dam on the Verzasca River became a bungee venue afterwards; a 2002 poll voted the jump the best movie stunt ever.

Operation Chastise, the 1943 'Dambusters' raid, breached which two German dams?

The Sorpe was only lightly damaged; 617 Squadron lost eight Lancasters and 53 aircrew, and the flooding killed about 1,600 civilians.

Who designed the bouncing bomb used against the German dams in 1943?

The weapon was code-named Upkeep, and the raid was led by 24-year-old Wing Commander Guy Gibson.

The failure of the South Fork Dam on 31 May 1889 caused which American disaster?

The neglected dam belonged to a fishing club whose owners had sold its discharge pipes for scrap and patched leaks with mud and straw.

The 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse, killing at least 431, ended which Los Angeles water chief's career?

The dam was part of the Los Angeles Aqueduct system and failed just two years after completion because of a defective foundation.

The 1963 Vajont disaster in Italy killed around 2,000 people. What happened?

The dam itself survived almost intact; the 250-metre wave wiped out Longarone and other towns in the Piave valley below.

The 1975 Banqiao dam collapse in Henan followed the landfall of which typhoon?

Sixty-two dams failed in all; the storm dropped more than a normal year's rain in a single day, and death estimates run from 26,000 to 240,000.

The Teton Dam in Idaho failed catastrophically in June 1976 at what stage of its life?

Eleven people and 16,000 livestock died; the government paid over $300 million in claims and never rebuilt it.

The Malpasset Dam that collapsed in 1959, killing 423 people, stood above which French Riviera town?

The thin arch dam failed along an unsurveyed tectonic fault in the rock beneath it; nearby blasting for the A8 motorway may have contributed.

The 2009 accident that killed 75 at Russia's Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam was caused by the failure of what?

Turbine 2 had vibrated badly for years; its failure flooded the turbine hall and knocked out all 6,400 MW of the plant.

Iraq's Mosul Dam is considered unusually dangerous because it was built on what kind of foundation?

The gypsum beneath it has needed continuous grouting since the 1980s; the dam holds about 11 cubic kilometres of Tigris water above the city.

The failure of Venezuela's Guri Dam power plant on 7 March 2019 caused what?

Most of the country's 32 million people lost power; Venezuela gets the bulk of its electricity from the plant, which was once the largest in the world by capacity.

Which river's dam removals in 2024 surpassed the Elwha project as the largest in history?

The Elwha project cost about $351 million and reopened a river that once hosted ten runs of salmon and trout.

The campaign against Tasmania's Franklin Dam helped bring down which Australian prime minister?

Peter Dombrovskis's photographs of the river became a national campaign; the incoming Hawke government stopped the dam and won a landmark High Court case.

Roughly what share of the world's electricity came from hydropower in 2023?

They are the world's largest turbines; the 289-metre arch dam went fully operational in December 2022 and is considered the country's last mega hydropower project.

The Kariba Dam controls what share of the total runoff of the Zambezi River?

The double-curvature arch was built by an Italian contractor between 1955 and 1959; 86 workers died during construction.

The primary reason the Akosombo Dam was built was to supply electricity to which industry?

The American Volta Aluminum Company lent money for construction and initially took 80% of the power while the host country got 20%.

Electricity generated by water flowing through a dam's turbines is known as what?

Output can be ramped up or down within seconds, which makes dammed hydro plants valuable for balancing a grid.

The Aswan High Dam is built across which river?

An earlier Low Dam had stood 7 km downstream since 1902; the High Dam ended the annual flood that had fertilised Egypt's fields since antiquity.

The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest power station, spans which river?

Its 22.5 GW capacity overtook Itaipu in 2008; the dam has its own BrainPickle quiz.

A dam built to hold back the waste left over from mining operations is called what kind of dam?

Most of them are embankment structures, and they are usually listed separately from water-storage dams in size rankings.

The English word 'dam' traces back through Middle English to which language family?

Cognates survive in Middle Low German, Middle Dutch and Old Norse, and in the names of Dutch cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam.