49 Fun Facts About Dominica

By what nickname is Dominica known for its lush, largely rainforested landscape?

Nature Island of the Caribbean. Rugged mountains and a shortage of sandy beaches kept mass tourism away, so Dominica markets its rainforest and wildlife to eco-tourists instead.

What is the capital of Dominica?

Roseau. French settlers named it for the reeds, roseaux, that lined its river, and it became the capital after malaria from nearby swamps drove the British out of their first choice, Portsmouth.

Columbus named the island Dominica because he first sighted it on what?

A Sunday. He sighted it on Sunday 3 November 1493 and named it from the Latin dies Dominica, the Lord's day; Carib resistance then kept every European power from colonising it for some 200 years.

Which French island is Dominica's nearest neighbour to the south?

Martinique. Dominica sits between two French islands, with Guadeloupe to its north, yet it ended up a British colony after the two powers fought over it for more than a century.

Which word begins the official name of Dominica, independent since 1978?

Commonwealth. The Commonwealth of Dominica became independent on 3 November 1978 under Patrick John, whose government was brought down by mass protests within a year.

Which Dominica landmark, reached on foot through the Valley of Desolation, is the world's second-largest of its kind?

Boiling Lake. It is a flooded volcanic vent about 60 metres across, kept churning by steam and gas rising from magma below, and only New Zealand's Frying Pan Lake is bigger.

Dominica's Champagne Reef, a popular snorkelling spot, gets its name from what?

Gas bubbles from the seabed. Volcanic gases escape through cracks in the sea floor and rise in warm, fizzing streams, so snorkellers swim through water that looks like a freshly poured glass.

Which critically endangered bird, found only on Dominica, appears on the national flag?

Sisserou parrot. Dominica's national bird, also called the imperial amazon, pairs for life in the high rainforest, and hurricanes have repeatedly knocked back its tiny population.

The bird on Dominica's flag makes it one of very few national flags to feature which colour?

Purple. The usual explanation for its rarity is cost: the dye was long too expensive to use on flags, and Dominica's has it only because the bird really is that colour.

The ten green stars on Dominica's flag represent what?

Its ten parishes. Playwright Alwin Bully designed the flag in early 1978 as independence neared, and it has been modified three times since, most recently in 1990.

The indigenous Kalinago people called the island Wai'tu kubuli, meaning what?

Tall is her body. The Kalinago name outlived Columbus's label in at least one place: the island's signature footpath is the Waitukubuli National Trail.

Which peak, named for the 'little devil' seabird, is Dominica's highest?

Morne Diablotins. The 1,447-metre volcano is named for the diablotin, or black-capped petrel, a night-flying seabird that scientists rediscovered over Dominica's mountains in 2015.

Dominica is popularly said to have how many rivers?

365. Dominicans say there is one for every day of the year, and the heavy rain that falls on the island's mountains keeps them flowing.

Which cetacean lives in Dominica's waters year-round, making the island a prime spot for watching them?

Sperm whale. Families of them live off Dominica all year, and researchers have tracked the same mothers and calves there since 2005.

Who became the Caribbean's first female prime minister when she took office in Dominica in 1980?

The 'Iron Lady of the Caribbean' was also the island's first woman lawyer and urged the US to intervene in Grenada in 1983.

Dominica's 'Iron Lady' prime minister urged the United States to intervene in which country in 1983?

Grenada. As chair of the regional bloc of neighbouring island states she made the appeal for help, then appeared on television beside Ronald Reagan to defend the invasion.

Who became Prime Minister of Dominica in January 2004, when his predecessor died in office?

Roosevelt Skerrit. His predecessor was the second prime minister to die in office in under four years, so the post passed to the education minister, who was just 31.

Which Category 5 hurricane made a direct landfall on Dominica on 18 September 2017?

Maria. It exploded from a Category 1 to a Category 5 storm in about a day, reaching full strength just before it crossed the island.

Which 1979 hurricane wrecked the homes of most people on Dominica, months after its independence?

David. It struck on 29 August 1979 and also flattened most of the island's crops, so the new nation spent its first years rebuilding with outside aid.

Which Pirates of the Caribbean film used Dominica as Pelegosto, its island of cannibals?

Dead Man's Chest. The crew arrived in spring 2005 to film the cannibal village and Tia Dalma's river hideout on location, giving the island's economy a welcome lift.

Which Dominica-born novelist wrote Wide Sargasso Sea?

Born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams in 1890, she depicts the island obliquely in the 1966 novel.

Wide Sargasso Sea, partly set on Dominica, was written as a prequel to which classic novel?

Jane Eyre. The prequel gives a past to Bertha, the 'madwoman in the attic', recasting her as Antoinette, a Creole heiress renamed and locked away by her English husband.

The 'mountain chicken', long hunted as a delicacy on Dominica, is actually what kind of animal?

A giant frog. One of the world's largest frogs, it was hunted for its meaty legs until a fungal disease that reached the island pushed it to the brink of extinction.

Which 1970s dance music, pioneered by the Dominica band Exile One, helped pave the way for zouk?

Cadence-lypso. Gordon Henderson's group fused Haitian cadence with Trinidadian calypso, and the blend became one of the styles Kassav' drew on when they created zouk.

Despite two centuries of British rule, which is the largest religious denomination in Dominica?

Roman Catholic. Most Dominicans are Catholic, a legacy of the French who settled the island decades before Britain took control in 1763.

Dominica's Waitukubuli National Trail holds which distinction?

Longest hiking route in the Caribbean. It runs 115 miles from the island's southern tip to the Cabrits in the north, split into 14 segments so that each can be walked on its own.

Morne Trois Pitons, established in 1975, was Dominica's first what?

National park. It takes its name from a three-peaked volcano, and UNESCO listed it in 1997 for its rare mix of rainforest, fumaroles, hot springs and crater lakes.

Which currency does Dominica use?

East Caribbean dollar. Eight island economies share it, and it has been pegged at EC$2.70 to the US dollar since 1976, so its exchange rate has not moved in decades.

Dominica was ceded to Great Britain in 1763 under an agreement signed in which city?

Paris. The 1763 treaty ended the Seven Years' War, but France seized the island back in 1778 and only a second peace, in 1783, returned it to Britain for good.

In 1838, Dominica became the first British Caribbean colony whose elected assembly was controlled by which group?

Members of African descent. Their majority pressed for laws to help the newly freed, which so alarmed the planters that in 1865 London made half the assembly's seats appointed.

Between 1958 and 1962 Dominica belonged to which short-lived Caribbean grouping?

West Indies Federation. Britain meant its ten island territories to become one independent country, but Jamaica voted to leave in 1961 and the union was dissolved the next year.

Which crop earned nearly half of Dominica's export income in the 1980s, before a trade ruling ended its protected European market?

Bananas. Europe bought its former colonies' fruit on favoured terms until the World Trade Organization ruled against the scheme in the 1990s, and repeated hurricanes battered what was left.

What did Dominica begin offering foreigners in the early 1990s in return for a large investment, with no need to live there?

Citizenship. The scheme was controversial from the start, yet its fees have since become one of the pillars of the government's budget.

Dominica is the most northerly member of which island chain in the Lesser Antilles?

Windward Islands. Britain actually governed Dominica as one of the Leeward Islands until 1940, then moved it into the Windward group, where it has been counted ever since.

Which people had the Kalinago displaced from Dominica by the 15th century?

The Arawak. The Kalinago who replaced them then held off Europeans so fiercely that France and England agreed in 1660 to leave the island in their hands.

Raymond Breton, a Frenchman who lived among Dominica's Kalinago in the 1640s, was what?

A missionary. The French friar preached to the islanders in their own tongue, then wrote a dictionary and grammar of it in the 1660s to train the priests who followed him.

Dominica's land area is roughly how large?

750 km². Most of that is a steep volcanic spine with only a thin rim of coast below it, which is why most Dominicans live along the shore.

Which medical school trained thousands of American doctors on Dominica before moving to Barbados in 2019?

Ross University. Robert Ross opened its school of medicine on Dominica in 1978, and it stayed for four decades until hurricane damage forced a permanent move.

What title is held by the elected leader of Dominica's Kalinago Territory?

Chief. Despite the grand title, the post is elected and carries the same powers as the chairman of any other village council on the island.

Which sport, a legacy of British rule, is Dominica's national game?

Cricket. Dominica has no Test side of its own, so its best players join a combined Caribbean team, which first played a Test match at the capital's Windsor Park in 2011.

Dominica's national motto, written in Creole, names what as coming straight after God?

The land. 'Après Bondie, C'est La Ter' has sat on the coat of arms since 1961, the creed of an island that has always depended on its soil.

What kind of head of state does Dominica have?

Largely ceremonial president. Parliament elects the president while the prime minister runs the government; in 2023 it chose Sylvanie Burton, the first woman and first Kalinago in the post.

Thea LaFond won Dominica's first Olympic medal, a gold at the 2024 Olympics, in which event?

Triple jump. Her second-round leap of 15.02 metres, a national record, held up as rain swept the stadium, five months after she had won the world indoor title.

Dominica's classic breakfast pairs saltfish with which fried-dough staple?

Bakes. Despite the name they are fried, not baked: rounds of flour dough puffed in hot oil and sold with salt cod at roadside stands across the island.

Which country paid for Dominica's Windsor Park stadium, opened in 2007, as a gift?

China. Beijing promised the stadium when the two countries established diplomatic ties in 2004, and work began on the first anniversary of that deal.

Which musical genre native to Dominica is built around the accordion?

Jing ping. The accordion is a European import, yet it is the band's only melody instrument, backed by a bamboo boom pipe, a scraper-rattle and a tambourine-like drum.

In which sport did Dominica's first Winter Olympians, a married couple, compete at Sochi in 2014?

Cross-country skiing. Gary di Silvestri, an American financier, and his Italian-born wife Angelica had no family ties to the island; she never started her race and he stopped, ill, after about 300 metres.

In 1981, ten white supremacists were arrested in New Orleans while preparing to sail to Dominica and do what?

Overthrow its government. The plotters, mostly Ku Klux Klan members, meant to restore ousted prime minister Patrick John, but were seized at a marina with guns and explosives; even federal agents joked about a 'Bayou of Pigs'.

At which village on Dominica's southwestern tip does a thin strip of land divide the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic?

Scotts Head. The British fort on its headland was the first target when France retook the island in 1778: French residents got the garrison drunk and plugged its cannon with sand the night before.