208 Fun Facts About General Knowledge

What is the chemical symbol for gold?

Au comes from aurum, Latin for gold, yet an Olympic gold medal today must be at least 92.5% silver, with only about 6 grams of gold.

Which is the longest river in South America?

The Amazon River pushes so much fresh water into the ocean that explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón named it Santa María de la Mar Dulce, the 'fresh-water sea'.

Which Paris landmark did a crowd storm on 14 July?

The Bastille held only seven prisoners, but the crowd came for its gunpowder, and within months the building had been demolished.

Who wrote the dystopian novel '1984'?

George Orwell's dystopian novel 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' popularized terms like 'Big Brother' and 'Thought Police,' serving as a warning against totalitarianism.

Mixing red and green light, as screens do, makes which colour?

Yellow: most screens have no yellow elements at all, so the yellow you see on one is red and green lights glowing side by side.

Which is the only mammal capable of true flight?

The bat flies by flapping membranes stretched across long finger bones, while flying squirrels, sugar gliders and colugos can only glide.

Which ancient civilization built the pyramids at Giza?

The Egyptian workers who built them were probably not slaves: their tombs lie beside the pyramids, stocked with bread and beer for the afterlife.

Who wrote the play "Romeo and Juliet"?

William Shakespeare didn't invent the story: he closely followed Arthur Brooke's poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.

Which artist painted "The Starry Night"?

Vincent van Gogh painted it while living in the asylum at Saint-Rémy, which he had admitted himself to, working from sketches of the view from his bedroom window.

Which organ is responsible for pumping blood throughout the body?

The heart sets its own beat with a natural pacemaker, the sinoatrial node, which fires by itself while nerves only speed it up or slow it down.

Who is credited with inventing the light bulb?

Several inventors, including Britain's Joseph Swan, made incandescent lamps before Thomas Edison, but his was the first practical one, thanks to a better filament and a higher vacuum.

How often are the Summer Olympic Games held?

The Summer Olympics come every 4 years, and since 1994 the Winter Games have run in the even years between them, so there is an Olympics every two years.

Which ingredient gives sushi rice its sour tang?

Vinegar: sushi began as fish packed in fermenting rice for months, and mixing vinegar into the rice gave the same sourness at once, turning sushi into fast food.

Which of these is a string instrument?

The violin is played with a bow strung with horsehair, which players rub with rosin so the hair grips the strings instead of sliding over them.

In Greek mythology, who was the king of the gods?

Zeus drew the sky when he and his brothers split the world by lot after defeating the Titans: Poseidon got the sea and Hades the underworld.

Which large flightless bird, the world's second-tallest, is endemic to Australia?

The emu is the world's second-tallest bird after the ostrich, reaching up to 190 cm. The cassowary is also found in Australia, but only in the far north-eastern rainforests, and it is bulkier rather than taller.

Which national capital stands on the river that divides Ontario from Quebec?

Ottawa got the job when Queen Victoria was asked to choose, ending years in which the seat of government kept moving between Kingston, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City.

What is the force that pulls objects towards the center of the Earth?

Gravity still grips astronauts on the space station; they float because they are in constant free fall, moving sideways fast enough to keep missing Earth.

Which novelist created Mr Darcy?

Jane Austen sold the copyright to Mr Darcy's story outright for £110, so the novel's later success earned her nothing more.

What element has the chemical symbol K?

K comes from kalium, which traces back to the Arabic for plant ashes, and potassium was the first metal ever isolated by electrolysis, by Humphry Davy.

What is the highest mountain in Africa?

Mount Kilimanjaro sits close to the equator yet still carries ice, although almost 85% of its ice cover vanished between 1912 and 2011.

Who is widely credited with inventing the telephone?

Alexander Graham Bell patented the first practical telephone in 1876. His mother and his wife were both deaf, which shaped his lifelong work on speech and hearing.

Which ocean lies between Europe and America?

The Atlantic Ocean is still widening: along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the plates carrying Europe and North America drift apart by a few centimetres a year.

Which planet is known for its Great Red Spot, a high-pressure storm that has been raging for centuries?

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is shrinking: it is now less than half as wide as in the late 1800s, though still wider than Earth.

What is the currency of Japan?

Yen means 'round', after round silver coins, and the Chinese yuan and Korean won take their names from the same word.

Which country is famous for the tango dance?

Argentina's elite once scorned tango as a dance of port bars and brothels, yet by the 1910s it was a craze in Paris.

What is the chemical formula for water?

Water is H2O, and unlike most substances it is less dense as a solid, which is why ice floats and lakes don't freeze from the bottom up.

Who is generally credited with inventing the printing press?

Johannes Gutenberg lost his workshop to his investor Johann Fust, who sued him to get his loans back.

What is the largest organ of the human body?

Skin is the body's largest organ, and pig skin is close enough to ours that it is used as a temporary covering for severe burns.

Who wrote the novel "The Great Gatsby"?

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel sold poorly, and when he died in 1940 it had fallen into near obscurity; its fame as a classic came only after his death.

Which Apollo 11 astronaut followed Neil Armstrong onto the Moon?

Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the Moon 19 minutes after Armstrong, while crewmate Michael Collins circled overhead alone in the command module Columbia.

Which country is famous for its fjords?

Norway's fjords are valleys carved by Ice Age glaciers and then flooded by the sea, and the longest, the Sognefjord, plunges about 1,300 m deep.

Who composed the ballet "The Nutcracker"?

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's score is famous for the celesta, the chiming keyboard instrument behind the tinkling Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

What is a group of lions called?

In a pride, the lionesses do most of the hunting together, while the males usually stay out of group hunts and defend the territory.

What is the fastest land animal?

The cheetah's highest reliably measured speed is about 104 km/h, and popular claims of 114 km/h or more have been discredited.

Which artist painted the "Mona Lisa"?

Leonardo da Vinci's portrait became one of the world's best-known paintings after Louvre worker Vincenzo Peruggia stole it in 1911, sparking worldwide headlines.

What is the tallest living land animal?

A giraffe gives birth standing up, so her newborn calf drops to the ground.

Who discovered penicillin?

Alexander Fleming came back from holiday to find a mould had killed the bacteria around it on a culture plate, and he later shared a Nobel Prize for penicillin.

What is the study of birds called?

Ornithology is the study of birds, from Greek ornis; entomology is insects, ichthyology fish and herpetology reptiles and amphibians.

What is the main ingredient in guacamole?

The word comes from Classical Nahuatl āhuacamōlli, literally 'avocado sauce', from āhuacatl plus mōlli, the same root as mole.

Which Italian city is home to the famous leaning tower?

Pisa's tower began sinking on soft ground by its third floor, and when building resumed, the upper floors were made taller on one side, so the tower curves.

Who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web?

Tim Berners-Lee never patented his invention or charged royalties, and CERN made the web's code free for anyone to use in 1993.

What is a baby kangaroo called?

A newborn joey is blind, hairless and only a few centimetres long, yet it climbs through its mother's fur into the pouch by itself.

What is the hardest natural substance on Earth?

Diamond can be scratched only by other diamonds, yet it is brittle enough to shatter if hit with an ordinary hammer.

Who wrote "Don Quixote"?

Miguel de Cervantes was captured by pirates and held as a slave in Algiers, and those experiences fed into Don Quixote.

Which purpose-built city became Australia's capital as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne?

Canberra was laid out from scratch to a plan by American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, winners of an international design competition.

What is the process plants use to make their own food?

Photosynthesis is where Earth's breathable air came from: early microbes using it released so much oxygen that it transformed the atmosphere.

What is the primary gas in Earth's atmosphere?

Nitrogen is 78% of dry air; oxygen, the gas most people guess, is only about 21%, argon under 1% and carbon dioxide a mere 0.04%.

In heraldry, the unicorn is best known as the symbol of which country?

Two unicorns supported the arms of Scotland's kings, and since the crowns united in 1603 one has shared the royal arms with the English lion, its supposed natural enemy.

Which instrument's standard modern version has 88 keys?

The piano's full name, pianoforte, means 'soft-loud': unlike the harpsichord, it could play quietly or loudly depending on how hard a key was struck.

Which planet takes longer to spin once on its axis than to orbit the Sun?

Venus spins so slowly, and backwards, that one rotation takes about 243 Earth days while a trip around the Sun takes only about 225.

What is the smallest bone in the human body?

The stapes is just 2 to 3 mm long, sits in the middle ear and takes its name from the Latin for stirrup, which it resembles.

The Ryder Cup, a biennial Europe-versus-United States contest named after an English seed merchant, is played in which sport?

Golf's Ryder Cup is named for Samuel Ryder, the English seed merchant who donated the trophy in the 1920s.

Which is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population?

Vatican City has been independent only since 1929, when the Lateran Treaty ended decades of dispute between Italy and the 'prisoner' popes.

Who wrote the 1818 Gothic novel Frankenstein?

Mary Shelley was just 20 when Frankenstein appeared anonymously on New Year's Day 1818, having started it at 18 during a ghost-story contest with Lord Byron.

Ernő Rubik, inventor of the Rubik's Cube, is a sculptor and architecture professor of which nationality?

The Hungarian inventor needed about a month of trial and error to solve his own cube the first time he scrambled it.

Which city hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896?

Athens hosted them, and a local water carrier, Spyridon Louis, won the marathon and became a Greek national hero.

Which is the only metallic element that is liquid at standard room temperature and pressure?

Mercury stays liquid at room temperature, while gallium and caesium melt just above it, which is why a gallium spoon famously melts away in hot tea.

What is the longest bone in the human body?

The femur, or thigh bone, is the only bone in the upper leg and also the body's largest and thickest.

Istanbul is Turkey's largest city, but which city is its capital?

Ankara was the headquarters of the independence movement while Allied forces occupied Istanbul, and the new Turkish Republic made it the capital in 1923.

Which chess piece can move only diagonally?

Because the bishop moves only along diagonals, each one stays on the square colour it started on for the whole game.

Which country has the longest coastline in the world?

Canada's coastline measures about 243,000 km, and it also shares the world's longest land border, with the United States.

Which country's national flag is the only non-rectangular one in the world?

Nepal's flag is a double pennon, two stacked triangular pennants, and it is also the only national flag that is taller than it is wide.

Which element has the highest melting point of all known elements?

Tungsten melts at 3,422 °C, which is why it served as the filament inside incandescent light bulbs for about a century.

Which bone in the human body touches no other bone?

The hyoid sits in the front of the neck, held in place by muscles and ligaments, and helps with swallowing and tongue movement.

As of 2026, which planet has the most confirmed moons in the Solar System?

Saturn's count jumped when 128 new moons were announced at once in March 2025, and it now has more than twice as many as any other planet.

As of 2026, which show is the longest-running in Broadway history?

Phantom of the Opera closed in 2023 after 13,981 performances, and it was also the first Broadway show ever to reach 10,000.

Which film won the first Academy Award for Best Picture?

Wings, a war film about two rival fighter pilots, remains the only fully silent film to win Best Picture.

As of 2026, which artist holds the record for the most Grammy Awards won?

Beyoncé's 35th Grammy came in 2025, when Cowboy Carter won Album of the Year, the first win in that category for a Black woman since Lauryn Hill in 1999.

Which bitter Italian liqueur is one of the three equal parts of a Negroni?

Campari joins gin and sweet red vermouth in a Negroni; drop the gin and top with soda and you have an Americano instead.

The Fosbury flop is a technique used in which athletics event?

Dick Fosbury went over the high jump bar backwards to win gold at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and almost everyone has jumped that way since.

Which team sport puts six field players and a goalkeeper per side in a pool?

Water polo is usually played in a pool too deep to stand in, so players tread water with an eggbeater kick that leaves their hands free for the ball.

Which self-governing nation first let all women vote in parliamentary elections?

New Zealand's campaign was led by Kate Sheppard, whose portrait now appears on the country's ten-dollar note.

As of 2026, which single video game has sold the most copies?

Minecraft has passed 400 million copies across phones, PCs and consoles; Tetris beats it only when all of its many versions are added together.

Which is the longest river in Europe?

The Volga runs 3,531 km through Russia into the Caspian Sea, the longest river flowing into a closed basin; the Danube, the usual guess, is second.

Which country has three capital cities?

South Africa splits them: Pretoria is administrative, Cape Town legislative and Bloemfontein judicial, while its largest city, Johannesburg, is none of the three.

What is the largest moon in the Solar System?

Ganymede is the only moon known to generate its own magnetic field, and it is wider than the innermost planet of the Solar System.

Who painted "Girl with a Pearl Earring"?

Johannes Vermeer painted it around 1665, and it went by several names for centuries before taking its present title in the late 20th century.

Which nation won the first FIFA World Cup, held in 1930?

Uruguay were hosts as well as favourites, and they won the final 4–2 in front of 68,346 people in Montevideo.

Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of which number?

Triskaidekaphobia comes from the Greek word for thirteen plus the word for fear, and fear of 13 is why many buildings skip that floor number.

Which country typically tops the world rankings for coffee consumption per person?

Finland's 12 kg per person a year leads the world, and the rest of the Nordics fill most of the top spots, well ahead of Italy.

Which strait divides the city of Istanbul between Europe and Asia?

The Bosphorus links the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and since 2013 the Marmaray rail tunnel has carried trains beneath it between Europe and Asia.

Which president urged Gorbachev to "tear down this wall"?

Ronald Reagan said it at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin in June 1987, and the Wall fell about two years later, on 9 November 1989.

Which dynasty built the best-known sections of the Great Wall of China?

Ming builders used brick and stone rather than the rammed earth of earlier walls, which is why their sections are the ones visitors see today.

What name does the country on Mount Everest's southern side officially use for the peak?

Sagarmatha also names the national park around the peak, which became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

Which Nile tributary, flowing out of Ethiopia's Lake Tana, supplies most of the river's water?

The Blue Nile supplies over half of the Nile's water in a typical year, and roughly 70 to 85% of it during the summer flood season.

Which ocean covers more of Earth than all of the land put together?

The Pacific Ocean spans about 165 million km², and Ferdinand Magellan named it the 'peaceful sea' after the calm waters he found there.

Which sea, whose shores are the lowest land on Earth, is nearly ten times saltier than the ocean?

The Dead Sea is so dense with salt that people float on it without swimming, and its shoreline sits more than 430 metres below sea level.

What is the name of the deepest known point in the world's oceans?

Challenger Deep lies in the Mariana Trench about 10,935 m down, and Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh first reached it in the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960.

Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, is in which country?

Angel Falls in Venezuela is named after US pilot Jimmie Angel, whose plane got stuck in marsh on top of the tepui in 1937 and stayed there for 33 years.

Which lake holds more fresh water than all of North America's Great Lakes combined?

Lake Baikal is also the world's deepest lake, reaching 1,642 metres, about 170 metres deeper than Africa's Lake Tanganyika.

The world's largest island belongs to which kingdom?

Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, which still handles the island's foreign affairs and defence.

What is the soft spot on a newborn baby's head called?

A fontanelle lets the skull bones shift during birth and makes room for the growing brain; the front one usually closes within about 18 months.

Which two blood group systems are the most important for transfusions?

ABO and Rh set the familiar types such as O-negative; Rh is short for rhesus, after the monkeys whose blood was used in early experiments.

Marie Curie won her 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering which two elements?

Radium and polonium won her the 1911 prize, and she is still the only person with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.

Marie Curie was born in which city?

Warsaw was then under Russian rule, so she studied at the secret Flying University before leaving for Paris in 1891.

Edmond Halley paid to publish which Isaac Newton masterpiece?

Principia set out Newton's laws of motion and gravitation; the Royal Society had spent its budget on a book about fish, and even paid Halley's salary in leftover copies.

Newton shares credit for inventing calculus with which German mathematician?

Gottfried Leibniz published first, in 1684, and the Royal Society inquiry that sided with Newton was secretly steered by Newton himself.

Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for explaining which phenomenon?

Not relativity: the prize cited 'his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect'.

What was Einstein's day job during his 1905 miracle year?

Einstein was an assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern, a job he took after failing to find a teaching post.

Which islands' finches helped shape Darwin's theory of evolution?

On the Galápagos, Darwin failed to label his finches by island, so he later relied on specimens that FitzRoy and other crewmates had labelled to sort them.

Which company licensed Nikola Tesla's AC induction motor patents in 1888?

Westinghouse Electric paid about $60,000 in cash and stock, plus royalties, in the middle of the 'war of the currents' between AC and DC.

Where did King John seal Magna Carta in June 1215?

King John sealed it at Runnymede, near Windsor, but at his request Pope Innocent III annulled the charter, and the First Barons' War followed.

Which shipping company operated the Titanic?

The White Star Line lost Titanic on her maiden voyage in 1912 and, weakened by the Depression, merged with its chief rival, Cunard, in 1934.

Near which North Carolina town did the Wright brothers first fly in 1903?

Kitty Hawk gets the credit, but the 1903 flights took off about 4 miles south, at Kill Devil Hills, a spot the Wrights chose for its steady winds.

Napoleon was born on which island?

Corsica was Napoleon's birthplace; Elba, the island people confuse it with, was where he was exiled in 1814, a decade after crowning himself emperor.

Napoleon's victory at which battle led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire?

Austerlitz, the 'Battle of the Three Emperors', knocked Austria out of the war, and by August 1806 Francis II had dissolved the empire.

What was Genghis Khan's birth name?

Temüjin was reportedly named after a Tatar chief his father had defeated, and he took the title Genghis Khan at a great assembly in 1206.

In which street did the Great Fire of London start in 1666?

Pudding Lane was home to Thomas Farriner's bakery, and the fire went on to destroy about 13,200 houses, though only six deaths were officially recorded.

Which bacterium caused the Black Death?

Yersinia pestis was only confirmed as the culprit in 2010 and 2011, when DNA from Black Death victims matched it; the plague killed 30 to 60% of Europe.

Which skiffle group, formed by a teenage John Lennon in Liverpool, grew into the Beatles?

The Quarrymen were named after a line in the song of Lennon's school, Quarry Bank, and Paul McCartney joined after meeting Lennon at a church fete in July 1957.

Mozart was born in which city?

Salzburg was Mozart's birthplace; at five he was already composing little pieces, and at six his father Leopold took him to play for the Elector in Munich.

With which composer did Beethoven study composition after moving to Vienna at 21?

Joseph Haydn took him on after meeting him in Bonn, and a patron sent Beethoven off to 'receive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands'.

Picasso's Guernica depicts the bombing of a town during which conflict?

During the Spanish Civil War, Germany's Condor Legion and Italy's air force bombed Guernica on 26 April 1937 at the behest of Franco's Nationalists.

Michelangelo's David has been housed where since 1873?

The Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence took David indoors in 1873 to protect it from damage, and a replica has stood in its old outdoor spot since 1910.

Which pope commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling?

Julius II commissioned it, though Michelangelo, a reluctant painter, suggested Raphael instead; the chapel is named after Julius's uncle, Sixtus IV.

Which is Shakespeare's longest play?

Hamlet is so long that an uncut version can run past four hours, as Kenneth Branagh's full-text film does.

Which UK publisher first released Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997?

Bloomsbury signed it after a string of rejections elsewhere, helped by the enthusiasm of its chairman's eight-year-old daughter.

Which country won the 2026 FIFA World Cup, its second title?

Spain won the final 1–0 after extra time at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, its first World Cup title since 2010.

Which tennis major is the sport's oldest tournament and the only one still played on lawns?

Wimbledon has been held since 1877, while the US Open and the Australian Open both abandoned lawns for other court surfaces long ago.

The Tour de France was created in 1903 to boost sales of which newspaper?

L'Auto was printed on yellow paper, which is probably why the race leader's jersey, introduced in 1919, is yellow.

Which jersey does the Tour de France's best climber wear?

The polka-dot jersey arrived in 1975, when chocolate maker Poulain sponsored the King of the Mountains prize.

From whom did Pierre de Coubertin borrow the Olympic motto 'Citius, Altius, Fortius'?

Henri Didon, a Dominican priest, coined the motto for an 1891 school sports meeting, and Coubertin proposed it for the IOC in 1894.

In 2017 UNESCO added which pizza-making tradition to its intangible heritage list?

UNESCO honoured the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo's craft, dough-twirling and all, while the tale of Raffaele Esposito inventing the Margherita for a queen is now doubted.

Which three grapes make almost all champagne?

Pinot noir, Pinot meunier and Chardonnay; the two Pinots are dark grapes, but pressing them gently keeps the juice white, so the base wine is white too.

Which two West African countries grow most of the world's cocoa?

Ivory Coast and Ghana grow over half the world's cocoa, yet the cacao tree is native to South American rainforests, far from West Africa.

Which engineer working with Samuel Morse is often credited with creating Morse code's dot-and-dash alphabet?

Alfred Vail's alphabet replaced Morse's number-based codebook plan, though historians still argue over which of the two devised it.

How did Louis Braille lose his sight?

A childhood accident: at three he hurt one eye with an awl in his father's workshop, and infection probably spread to the other, leaving him blind by five.

Which sixth Nobel category was established in 1968 by Sweden's central bank?

Economic Sciences isn't one of the five prizes in Nobel's will; its full name is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Which Nobel Prize is the only one that can be awarded to organisations as well as individuals?

The Peace Prize has gone to groups such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which won it three times; every other prize goes only to individuals.

Which famous annual book was created to settle pub arguments?

Guinness World Records grew from brewery boss Sir Hugh Beaver's argument over Europe's fastest game bird, which no reference book could settle.

Chess traces its recorded history to which 7th-century Indian game?

Chaturanga means 'four divisions' of an army, and its infantry, cavalry and chariots became today's pawns, knights and rooks.

Monopoly derives from The Landlord's Game, created in 1903 by whom?

Lizzie Magie designed it to show how rent enriches landlords and ruins tenants, and Parker Brothers later bought her patent for just $500.

In 2012 London's Big Ben clock tower was renamed in honour of whom?

The Clock Tower became Elizabeth Tower to mark Queen Elizabeth II's 60 years on the throne, and 'Big Ben' is properly the nickname of the Great Bell inside.

Which New York skyscraper ended the Eiffel Tower's 41-year reign as tallest structure?

A 1957 aerial later made the tower 11 metres taller than the Chrysler.

Which Mughal emperor commissioned the Taj Mahal for his wife Mumtaz Mahal?

It stands on the Yamuna in Agra and also holds Shah Jahan's own tomb.

Which Roman emperor began building the Colosseum?

Vespasian built it on the site of the lake in Nero's palace grounds, and his son Titus finished it in AD 80.

Machu Picchu is believed to have been built as an estate for which Inca emperor?

Pachacuti, the ruler who turned the small Kingdom of Cusco into the Inca Empire, is thought to have had it built as a royal estate around 1450.

Petra, Jordan's 'Rose City', was the capital of which ancient Arab people?

The Nabataeans grew rich on the incense trade and carved Petra from rose-coloured sandstone, until Rome annexed their kingdom in AD 106.

Panama Canal locks lift ships to which artificial body of water?

Gatun Lake was made by damming the Chagres River, and when it filled in 1913 it was the largest artificial lake in the world.

Which diplomat formed the company that built the Suez Canal?

Ferdinand de Lesseps later led a canal attempt in Panama, but that company collapsed in 1889 amid deaths from malaria and other tropical diseases, and a bribery scandal followed.

Which spacecraft has had people living aboard continuously since November 2000?

The International Space Station's first crew arrived on 2 November 2000, and in 2010 it broke Mir's record for continuous human presence in space.

What flaw compromised the Hubble Space Telescope after its 1990 launch?

Its mirror was ground incorrectly, too flat at the edge by about 2 micrometres, until astronauts fitted corrective optics in December 1993.

The Sun is about how many times as massive as everything else in the Solar System?

About 700 times: the Sun holds about 99.86% of all the mass in the Solar System, and it outweighs Earth some 330,000 times.

Which author, born as Halley's Comet passed, died when it returned?

Mark Twain predicted he would 'go out with' the comet that marked his 1835 birth, and he died in 1910, the day after its next perihelion; it is due back in 2061.

What do blue whales eat almost exclusively?

Krill are mostly just 1–2 cm long, yet they make up almost the entire diet of the blue whale, the largest animal known to have existed.

Bamboos are botanically classified as what?

Bamboos are giant grasses, and some species can grow more than 90 cm in a single day.

The coldest air temperature recorded by a weather station, −89.2 °C, was measured at which base?

Vostok Station logged it on 21 July 1983, and about 4 km beneath the station's ice lies Lake Vostok, the largest of the continent's buried lakes.

About 60% of the world's largest tropical rainforest lies in which country?

Brazil holds about 60% of the forest, followed by Peru with 13% and Colombia with 10%, and nine nations share it in all.

Which desert is so dry that some of its weather stations have never recorded rain?

The Atacama Desert is the driest desert outside the polar regions, and parts of it are thought to have gone centuries without rain.

As of 2025, which two non-member states held permanent observer status at the United Nations?

The Holy See and Palestine are the UN's two non-member observer states, a status Switzerland also held until it joined as a full member in 2002.

Which country adopted bitcoin as legal tender from 2021 to 2025?

El Salvador became the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, then dropped that status in early 2025 as part of a loan deal with the International Monetary Fund.

Which is the world's second-smallest sovereign state by area?

Monaco covers just 2.08 square kilometres, so the whole country is smaller than New York's 3.41 km² Central Park.

Who created Esperanto in 1887 as 'the International Language'?

L. L. Zamenhof published it under the pen name Doktoro Esperanto, 'one who hopes', and early speakers adopted that name for the language itself.

Which Russian chemist produced the first generally accepted periodic table, in 1869?

Dmitri Mendeleev left gaps for undiscovered elements, and gallium, found in 1875, matched the 'eka-aluminium' he had predicted.

The 1884 conference that fixed Greenwich as the prime meridian was held in which city?

Delegates met in Washington, D.C., and Greenwich won largely because most nautical charts already measured longitude from it.

The kilogram, once defined by a metal cylinder near Paris, is now defined using which constant?

The Planck constant has fixed the kilogram since 2019, retiring Le Grand K, the platinum-iridium cylinder kept in a vault outside Paris.

Since 2004, the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat has been headquartered in which city?

Buenos Aires hosts the Secretariat of a treaty that grew directly out of the International Geophysical Year, when 12 nations ran research on the continent.

Which marsupial's fingerprints look so human that electron microscopes can barely tell them apart?

Koala fingerprints suit a life of climbing and grasping, which is also why gorillas and chimpanzees have unique prints of their own.

Because true wasabi is costly and hard to farm, which pungent root is widely used in its place?

Horseradish belongs to the same plant family as true wasabi, alongside mustard. All three stimulate the nose more than the tongue, unlike chilli peppers.

Which fruit's main export variety was devastated by Panama disease and replaced by the Cavendish?

Banana growers lost the Gros Michel variety to a soil fungus, and a shortage of the fruit is said to have inspired the 1923 novelty song 'Yes! We Have No Bananas'.

Which metal covers the Statue of Liberty, which was shiny reddish-brown before weathering to green?

Copper won out over bronze or stone because it was cheaper, lighter and easier to ship. Its green layer, called verdigris, formed within about twenty years and protects the metal beneath.

Which is the only human internal organ that can regrow itself from just a quarter of its tissue?

Liver regrowth is strictly compensatory growth: the removed lobes never return, but what remains enlarges until its function is restored.

Which Australian mammal did scientists in 1799 judge a fake made of several animals sewn together?

Platypus males carry a spur on each hind foot that delivers an extremely painful venom. The animal is also one of only five living species of mammal that lay eggs.

Which film was both Pixar's first feature and the first feature film animated entirely by computer?

Toy Story drew its animators less with pay, which was mediocre, than with the allure of making the first computer-animated feature. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen head the voice cast.

Which bird of prey can exceed 320 km/h in a hunting dive, making it the fastest animal on Earth?

Peregrine falcon dives are called stoops: the bird soars to a great height, then plunges steeply at its prey. One trained falcon was reportedly clocked at 389 km/h.

Which Carthaginian general invaded Italy by crossing the Alps with North African war elephants?

Hannibal's elephants that survived the mountain crossing went into battle against the Romans a few weeks later, at the River Trebia in northern Italy.

Which crimson spice needs about 150,000 hand-picked crocus flowers to produce a single kilogram?

Saffron is the dried stigmas of the crocus, and that hand harvest keeps premium grades above US$5,000 per kilogram. Buddhist monks' saffron-coloured robes are dyed with cheaper turmeric or jackfruit.

In which winter sport do players sweep the ice with brooms ahead of a sliding granite stone?

Curling is nicknamed 'the roaring game' for the sound its stones make as they travel. Their granite comes from just two sources: the island of Ailsa Craig and a quarry in Wales.

Which detective was modelled on an Edinburgh Royal Infirmary surgeon who employed his author as a clerk?

Sherlock Holmes was, as Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to that surgeon, 'as inhuman as a Babbage's Calculating Machine and just about as likely to fall in love'.

Which animated sitcom is set at 742 Evergreen Terrace in the fictional town of Springfield?

The Simpsons overtook The Flintstones in 1997 as the longest-running prime-time animated series in the United States. It later became the longest-running American sitcom of any kind.

Which Swedish pop group won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton with the song 'Waterloo'?

ABBA's 'Waterloo' was voted the best song in Eurovision's history at the contest's fiftieth-anniversary show in 2005.

Which volcano buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum when it erupted in AD 79?

Vesuvius was treated as a divinity at the time: it appears as a serpent, labelled by name, in frescoes on Pompeii's surviving household shrines.

Which is the largest hot desert on Earth, exceeded in size only by the two polar deserts?

Sahara comes from an Arabic plural meaning simply 'deserts', so calling it the Sahara Desert says the same thing twice. It covers about 9.2 million square kilometres.

Which future president spent 18 of his 27 years as a prisoner on Robben Island?

Nelson Mandela helped start the 'University of Robben Island' there, in which prisoners lectured one another on their own areas of expertise.

Which nutrient can the human body make for itself when the ultraviolet B rays in sunlight reach it?

Vitamin D is unlike every other vitamin in being only conditionally essential in the diet: with enough sun exposure, none needs to be eaten.

Which language is usually ranked first by number of native speakers, with nearly one billion?

Mandarin is really a group of related dialects, and many native speakers would not recognise their own variety as part of it. Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing form.

Which artist's melting watches in The Persistence of Memory were inspired by a Camembert in the sun?

Dalí denied that the soft watches had anything to do with the theory of relativity, crediting the surrealist perception of a melting cheese instead.

Which empire's island capital, Tenochtitlan, lies beneath the historic centre of modern Mexico City?

Aztec Tenochtitlan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas at its peak, built on an island in Lake Texcoco. Hernán Cortés founded Mexico City on its ruins.

Which astronomer published his Sun-centred model of the heavens just before his death in 1543?

Copernicus was still working on the book, unsure he wanted it published, when the Wittenberg mathematician Rheticus came to visit in 1539. It appeared as On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.

Which scale, named after an American pharmacist's 1912 test, measures the heat of chilli peppers?

Scoville ratings began as a taste test: dried pepper was dissolved in alcohol, then diluted in a sugar solution until three of five trained tasters could no longer detect the heat.

Which aviator vanished in 1937 on the way to Howland Island while trying to fly around the world?

Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan took off from Lae in a heavily loaded Electra and were never seen again. A US government report concluded the plane ran out of fuel.

Which heir of the assassinated dictator Caesar became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC?

Augustus was born Gaius Octavius and took his great-uncle's name along with the estate. In 8 BC the Roman month of Sextilis was renamed August in his honour.

Photo 51, an X-ray image key to finding DNA's structure, was taken by a student of which chemist?

Rosalind Franklin died four years before the 1962 Nobel Prize went to Watson, Crick and Wilkins. Wilkins had shown the image to Watson without her permission.

Which Greek hero slew the Minotaur, then escaped the Labyrinth by following a ball of thread?

Theseus got the thread from Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, who had fallen in love with him. He promised to take her away with him if he came out alive.

Which city served as Japan's capital for over a thousand years until the emperor moved to Tokyo?

Kyoto was founded as Heian-kyō and laid out on the model of the ancient Chinese capitals Chang'an and Luoyang. It is sometimes called the thousand-year capital.

Which particle was finally detected at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in 2012 after a 40-year search?

The Higgs boson is often called the 'God particle' in the media, after a 1993 book by the physicist Leon Lederman. Peter Higgs was one of six scientists behind the 1964 theory.

Which former textile worker and amateur skydiver became the first woman in space in 1963?

Tereshkova had trained as a competitive parachutist in secret from her family, which mattered: the rules required every candidate cosmonaut to be a parachutist.

Which organ, tucked behind the stomach, holds the islets of Langerhans that secrete insulin?

Pancreas tissue from a dog yielded the first isolated insulin in 1921, extracted by Frederick Banting and Charles Best at the University of Toronto.

Which red-brown element, liquid at room temperature, is named from the Greek word for 'stench'?

Bromine was isolated independently by two chemists, in 1825 and 1826, and named for its sharp, pungent smell. It evaporates readily into a vapour of the same colour.

Which West African country, called Upper Volta until 1984, has a name honouring its 'upright' people?

Burkina Faso takes its two words from different local languages: 'Burkina' comes from Mooré and means 'upright', a nod to the people's integrity.

Which Byzantine emperor built the Hagia Sophia after the Nika riots of 532 nearly toppled him?

Justinian I used the destruction left by the revolt as an opening for his building programme. When finished in 537, the church enclosed the world's largest interior space.

Which Dutch draper, using microscopes he made himself, was first to observe and document bacteria?

Leeuwenhoek was largely self-taught in science and described the tiny creatures he saw as 'animalcules'. He is commonly known as the Father of Microbiology.

What is the name of the small dot written above a lowercase letter i or j?

Tittle appears in the King James Bible's 'one jot or one tittle', meaning the smallest detail of the law. The phrase 'to a T' may come from the older 'to a tittle'.

Which western Pyrenees language is Europe's only known isolate, related to no other living tongue?

Basque is the only surviving language of Paleo-European origin, and the Romance languages that surround it on every side are no kin to it at all.

Which Russian composer's ballet The Rite of Spring caused a sensation at its 1913 premiere in Paris?

Stravinsky was young and virtually unknown when Diaghilev recruited him for the Ballets Russes. The ballet ends with a chosen girl dancing herself to death as a sacrifice.

Which Asian capital has no traffic lights, relying on police whose arm signals resemble a dance?

Thimphu is the capital of Bhutan. A set of traffic lights was once installed there but soon removed, leaving the junctions to the police.

Which sea, where European eels go to breed, is the only named sea with no land boundaries?

The Sargasso Sea is bounded by four ocean currents rather than coasts. Portuguese navigators named it after the brown Sargassum seaweed growing there.

Roughly how long does sunlight take to travel from the surface of the Sun to Earth?

About 8 minutes, or 8.3 to be more exact, is all the trip takes, so anyone looking up sees the Sun as it was a little earlier.

The Moon's distance from Earth varies along its elliptical path, but what is the average distance?

About 384,000 km separates the two on average, though the gap swings between roughly 357,000 and 407,000 km over the course of a year.

Buckingham Palace, whose garden is the largest private garden in London, contains how many rooms?

All 775 rooms grew out of Buckingham House, a large townhouse built for a duke in 1703 that forms the core of the palace.

Found by farmers digging a well in 1974, the Terracotta Army holds roughly how many clay soldiers?

More than 8,000 soldiers fill the three pits, along with 130 chariots and 520 horses, and the majority remain where they were buried.

With eight corners and twelve edges, a standard Rubik's Cube has about how many possible arrangements?

About 43 quintillion arrangements exist, yet a team proved in 2010 that every one of them can be solved in 20 moves or fewer.

Papua New Guinea, the world's most linguistically diverse country, has about how many known languages?

Around 840 languages are spoken there, though many of the groups that speak them are small. English and Tok Pisin serve as the common tongues.

The Empire State Building, the world's tallest until 1970, has about how many bricks in its facade?

About 10 million bricks went into the facade, along with 730 short tons of aluminium and stainless steel. The design was changed fifteen times to make sure it would be the tallest.

The Great Pyramid, the tallest human-made structure for over 3,700 years, has about how many blocks?

An estimated 2.3 million blocks make up the monument, weighing about 6 million tonnes in all. Granite blocks brought from Aswan for the King's Chamber weigh up to 80 tonnes each.

Measured back to the Big Bang, the universe is estimated to be roughly how old?

About 13.8 billion years is the accepted figure, worked out from the Planck satellite's map of the afterglow left by the Big Bang.

A 2013 statistics report counted roughly how many islands in Sweden, under 1,000 of them inhabited?

Close to 270,000 islands, 267,570 by that count, lie within Swedish borders, and the great majority have no residents at all.