50 Fun Facts About Geography Trivia for Seniors

Which river is generally listed as the longest in the world?

The Nile: the Amazon carries far more water, and some researchers argue the Amazon is longer, depending on how each river's length is measured.

Which two men made the first documented ascent of Mount Everest in 1953?

Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary: a coded telegram got the news to London in time for it to break on 2 June 1953, the day of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.

What is the world's largest hot desert?

The Sahara: Antarctica is an even bigger desert, because deserts are defined by how little precipitation they get, not by heat.

Which city was chosen as Australia's capital as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne?

Canberra: while it was being built, the federal Parliament sat in Melbourne, and it only moved to Canberra in 1927.

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

Vatican City: popes had refused to accept Italy's 1870 seizure of Rome, and the standoff ended only when Mussolini's government signed the 1929 Lateran Treaty.

Greenland, the world's largest island, belongs to which country?

Denmark: Greenland voted in 1982 to leave the European Community, mainly to keep control of its fishing, and left in 1985 while Denmark stayed in.

Which US president backed Panama's 1903 break from Colombia?

Roosevelt: when Colombia's congress rejected a US canal treaty, he sent warships to back the revolt, and within weeks Panama granted the US its canal zone.

Which US president signed the 1977 treaties that eventually handed the Panama Canal to Panama?

Jimmy Carter signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaties with Panama's Omar Torrijos on 7 September 1977; the US Senate ratified them in 1978 by 68 votes to 32, one more than the two-thirds required.

Which Egyptian leader nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, sparking the Suez Crisis?

Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalisation on 26 July 1956 to fund the Aswan High Dam, prompting the Israeli, British and French invasion that autumn; the crisis ended with a humiliating Anglo-French withdrawal.

Which Berlin crossing saw a US-Soviet tank standoff in 1961?

Checkpoint Charlie: the standoff began when East German guards demanded to check a US diplomat's papers as he headed into East Berlin for the opera.

Which Berlin landmark stood inside the Wall's restricted zone from 1961 until it reopened in December 1989?

Brandenburg Gate: in 1987 Ronald Reagan gave his 'tear down this wall' speech in front of it, and more than 100,000 people cheered its reopening.

Route 66 ran from Chicago to which California city?

Santa Monica: as Interstate highways bypassed Route 66 town by town, it was removed from the US highway system in 1985.

Which of the five Great Lakes is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area?

Superior: it covers about 82,100 square kilometres, though Lakes Michigan and Huron together cover more if counted as a single lake.

The Mississippi River traditionally rises from which body of water in northern Minnesota?

From there it flows 2,340 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Only the Missouri is longer among American rivers.

Which US Secretary of State bought Alaska in 1867, a deal mocked as his 'Folly'?

William Seward: he and Russia's envoy Eduard de Stoeckl negotiated all night, signing the treaty at 4 a.m. on 30 March 1867.

Which was the last state to join the United States, in August 1959?

Hawaii: in 1893 American expatriates and sugar planters, backed by US Marines, overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani, and the US annexed the islands in 1898.

Which sculptor carved Mount Rushmore, working from 1927 to 1941?

Gutzon Borglum: he died in March 1941, months before carving ended that October, and his son Lincoln took on the sculptor's role and put on the finishing touches.

Which river carved the Grand Canyon?

The Colorado: in 1869 John Wesley Powell, a Civil War veteran who had lost his right arm at Shiloh, led an expedition down the river through the canyon.

Which of the three Niagara waterfalls straddles the Canada-US border?

Horseshoe Falls: under a 1950 treaty, power plants may divert more of the river at night and outside the tourist season, when fewer people are watching.

Sri Lanka was known by what name before 1972?

Ceylon: the island gained independence from Britain in 1948 and became the Republic of Sri Lanka in 1972; its tea industry kept the Ceylon name as a brand.

Which country was officially called Burma in English until 1989?

Myanmar: the military government changed the English name from Burma in June 1989; many governments and news organisations kept using Burma for years afterwards.

Southern Rhodesia became which independent nation on 18 April 1980?

Zimbabwe: the country is named after Great Zimbabwe, the medieval stone city that white colonists claimed Africans could not have built.

Which country was historically known to the West as Persia?

Iran: in 1935 Reza Shah's government asked foreign countries to use Iran, the land's own name, instead of the Greek-derived Persia.

Which Southeast Asian country was never colonised by a European power?

Thailand, then Siam, gave up territory and trade rights through unequal treaties but stayed independent as a buffer between British Burma and French Indochina.

Which Indian city was officially called Bombay until 1995?

Mumbai: Portugal handed the islands to England in 1661 as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry when she married Charles II, and the city was officially renamed in 1995.

Which city was long spelled Peking in the West?

Beijing: the older spelling Peking was fixed by the imperial post office in the 1890s, and it gave way abroad after pinyin spellings took over from 1979.

Vietnam's largest city, formerly Saigon, was renamed in 1976 after whom?

Ho Chi Minh: Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 after the reunification of Vietnam, honouring the late revolutionary leader; the river through the city kept the Saigon name.

Which Russian city was called Petrograd, then Leningrad, before getting its original name back?

Saint Petersburg: when war with Germany began in 1914, Tsar Nicholas II renamed it Petrograd to strip out the German-sounding 'Sankt' and 'Burg'.

Which Soviet leader resigned on 25 December 1991, the day before the Soviet Union was formally dissolved?

Mikhail Gorbachev: that evening the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time and replaced by the Russian tricolour.

Which dissident playwright became the Czech Republic's first president in 1993?

Václav Havel: the communist regime had jailed him for years, yet on 29 December 1989 he was elected Czechoslovakia's president.

Yugoslavia broke apart about a decade after which long-time leader died?

Josip Broz Tito: he defied Stalin, and in June 1948 his party was expelled from the Soviet-led Cominform.

Which is the longest river in Europe?

The Volga: it drains into the landlocked Caspian Sea, and at Stalingrad on its banks the Red Army halted Germany's advance in World War II.

The Danube rises in southern Germany and empties into which sea?

The Black Sea: the Danube, Europe's second-longest river, runs about 2,850 km from Donaueschingen in the Black Forest to a delta on Romania's Black Sea coast.

Which is the largest and deepest of the world's oceans?

The Pacific: Ferdinand Magellan named it the 'peaceful sea' because, after stormy waters at South America's tip, his ships found it calm.

The shores of which salt lake are the lowest land on Earth, more than 430 metres below sea level?

The Dead Sea: its level has been falling by about a metre a year, largely because dams and irrigation divert water from the Jordan River that feeds it.

The Great Barrier Reef lies off the coast of which Australian state?

Queensland: in June 1770 Captain James Cook's ship Endeavour struck the reef and was nearly lost, and the crew spent weeks repairing her ashore.

Timbuktu, a byword for somewhere remote, is a real city in which country?

Mali: when Islamist militants occupied Timbuktu in 2012, librarians and local families secretly moved hundreds of thousands of its old manuscripts to Bamako.

Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in which country?

Tanzania: when missionary Johannes Rebmann reported snow on Kilimanjaro in 1848, London's geographers dismissed it as a malaria-stricken man's hallucination.

Which explorer was first to reach the geographic South Pole, in December 1911?

Roald Amundsen's Norwegian party reached the South Pole on 14 December 1911, five weeks before Robert Falcon Scott's British team, which died on the return journey.

Which leader devised the 'one country, two systems' formula for Hong Kong's return in 1997?

Deng Xiaoping: he meant it for Taiwan too, offering the island its own system in the hope of eventual reunification.

Which bridge did the US Navy want striped black and yellow?

Golden Gate: architect Irving Morrow chose International Orange instead, which stands out in fog and suits the hills around the bay.

Which is the longest continental mountain range in the world?

The Andes: the Inca built Machu Picchu high in the range, and there's no evidence the Spanish conquistadors ever attacked it.

Which South American country has Quito as its capital?

Ecuador: its name is Spanish for 'equator', and on its Galápagos Islands in 1835 Charles Darwin made observations that later fed his theory of evolution.

Which lake is the world's deepest and holds more fresh water than all the Great Lakes?

Baikal: it has its own freshwater seal, the nerpa, and nobody knows for sure how seals reached a lake so far from the sea.

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

Venezuela: the falls are named after US pilot Jimmie Angel, who flew over them in 1933 and in 1937 landed on the tepui above, where his plane got stuck.

Which mountain range forms the conventional boundary between Europe and Asia in Russia?

The Urals: in World War II the Soviets moved many factories to the range's eastern foothills, out of reach of German bombers and troops.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from the people of which country?

France: the French paid for the statue, but Americans had to fund the pedestal, and Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper raised over $100,000 by printing every donor's name.

The Suez Canal links the Mediterranean with which sea?

The Red Sea: surveys overturned the old belief that the two seas sat at different levels, so the canal could be built without locks.

Mount Everest's summit sits on the border between Nepal and which other country?

China: the summit straddles the border between Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China; climbers from the north approach via Tibet's Rongbuk Glacier and the North Col.

Which city is the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state?

Reykjavík: its name means 'bay of smoke', said to come from steam that settlers saw rising from the area's hot springs.