150 Fun Facts About Geography Trivia for Kids

Australia, New Zealand and thousands of Pacific islands are grouped into which region?

In many non-English-speaking countries, Oceania is taught as a continent in place of Australia, joining the mainland with thousands of Pacific islands.

Which is the largest continent?

Asia is the largest continent, yet it shares one landmass with Europe: counting them as two continents is a custom from history, not a split in the land.

Which city uses canals as its main roads, so its public buses are boats?

Venice is built on more than 100 small islands in a lagoon, and many of its buildings stand on wooden posts driven deep into the mud.

The deepest known point in any ocean lies in which trench?

The Mariana Trench holds the Challenger Deep, nearly 11 km down; in 1960 Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh rode the bathyscaphe Trieste all the way to its floor.

Which river is usually called the longest in the world?

The Nile flows north to the Mediterranean, and ancient Egyptians farmed the rich black silt its yearly floods spread along its banks.

Which river carries more water than any other on Earth?

The Amazon pushes so much fresh water into the Atlantic that explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, meeting it out at sea in 1500, named the river 'Mar Dulce', the sweet sea.

What is the largest hot desert in the world?

The Sahara is the largest hot desert, yet a few thousand years ago it was green, with grassland and lakes where hippos and crocodiles lived.

Which continent is the coldest, driest and windiest of all?

Antarctica gets so little rain or snow that it counts as a desert, yet its ice holds most of the fresh water on Earth.

What is the belt of volcanoes and earthquakes around the edges of the Pacific Ocean called?

The Ring of Fire traces where the Pacific's tectonic plates meet their neighbours, which is why about 90 percent of the world's earthquakes happen along it.

Which country is the largest in the world by area?

Russia is so wide that a Trans-Siberian train takes about a week to get from Moscow to Vladivostok.

What is the smallest country in the world?

Vatican City became its own country in 1929, when a treaty with Italy ended a long quarrel between Italy and the popes.

Which is the world's largest island nation?

Indonesia is home to Krakatoa, a volcano whose 1883 eruption was heard about 4,800 km away on the island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius.

What is the largest island in the world?

Greenland, at about 2.17 million square kilometres, is the largest island; Australia is bigger but is counted as a continent rather than an island.

Sydney and Melbourne both wanted to be Australia's capital; which city was built as the compromise?

Canberra was picked in 1908 as the compromise, and Parliament kept meeting in Melbourne until Canberra's first Parliament House opened in 1927.

Which country is the second-largest in the world by total area?

Canada takes its name from 'kanata', an Iroquoian word for 'village', which explorer Jacques Cartier used for the whole region in 1535.

The shore of which body of water is the lowest land on Earth, more than 430 metres below sea level?

The Dead Sea is about nine times saltier than the ocean, so swimmers float easily, and it's called 'dead' because fish and water plants can't live in it.

What is the name of the world's largest coral formation, found off Queensland?

The Great Barrier Reef nearly wrecked James Cook's ship Endeavour in 1770, and his crew threw six cannons overboard to lighten her and refloat her.

The Grand Canyon in Arizona was carved out over millions of years by which waterway?

The Colorado River cut the Grand Canyon over millions of years, exposing rock layers nearly two billion years old in its walls.

What is the highest mountain in Africa?

Mount Kilimanjaro stands alone rather than in a mountain range because it is a giant volcano that built itself up from the surrounding plains.

Which mountain range is the longest on land?

The Andes run down South America's west coast, and farmers there turned the wild potato into a crop thousands of years ago.

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

Angel Falls, in Venezuela, is named after US pilot Jimmie Angel, whose plane got stranded on the mountain above it, leaving an 11-day walk out.

What is the largest lake in the world, even though it is called a sea?

The Caspian Sea is a leftover of an ancient sea, and in 2018 the five countries around it agreed that, legally, it is neither a lake nor a sea.

Which lake is the deepest in the world?

Lake Baikal plunges 1,642 metres, and although it sits in the middle of Siberia it has its own seal, the nerpa, which lives only in fresh water.

The Panama Canal lets ships take a shortcut between which two oceans?

The Panama Canal, opened in 1914, links the Atlantic and Pacific; before it, ships had to sail around the stormy southern tip of South America.

The Great Wall of China's sections add up to about 21,000 km, roughly what distance?

Halfway around the Earth: the 2012 survey's 21,196 km adds up the walls that many different dynasties built.

Which imaginary line sits at 0 degrees latitude?

The Equator splits Earth into northern and southern halves, and places on it get about 12 hours of daylight every day, all year round.

The prime meridian, the starting line for measuring east and west, runs through which London district?

The prime meridian runs through Greenwich; at an 1884 conference in Washington, most nations voted to make it the world's starting line for longitude.

Which is the largest US state by area?

Alaska was bought by the US in 1867 for $7.2 million, a deal some critics mocked as 'Seward's Folly' until the 1896 Klondike gold strike vindicated it.

Which river carries water from the Great Lakes out to the Atlantic Ocean?

The St. Lawrence drains the Great Lakes to the Atlantic, and since 1959 its seaway's locks have let ocean-going ships sail all the way inland to the lakes.

The Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar place on Earth, lies mostly in which country?

The Atacama, mostly in northern Chile, is so dry and Mars-like that NASA has used it as a testing ground for instruments and rovers bound for Mars.

Which mountains separate the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe?

The Pyrenees are home to tiny Andorra, whose two co-princes both come from abroad, one of them a bishop from Spain.

Which two continents are the only ones completely surrounded by ocean, with no land link to any other?

Antarctica and Australia are the only continents ringed entirely by ocean; Africa touches Asia at Sinai, Europe joins Asia, and Panama links the Americas.

Which explorer gave the Pacific Ocean its name, meaning 'peaceful'?

Ferdinand Magellan never finished his round-the-world voyage: he was killed in the Philippines in 1521, and only about 18 of his crew made it home.

Which strait separates Spain from Morocco?

The Strait of Gibraltar is only about 14 km wide, and ancient peoples called the rocks on either side the Pillars of Hercules, the edge of the known world.

The famous desert city of Timbuktu is in which African country?

Timbuktu, in Mali, became a byword for a faraway place, yet it was once a rich trading city of salt and gold, full of scholars and manuscripts.

Which Great Lake is the only one lying entirely inside one country?

Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake entirely in one country, and the state of Michigan's two peninsulas were linked only by ferries until the Mackinac Bridge opened in 1957.

Which city's famous iron tower was built for a world's fair and meant to be taken down after 20 years?

Paris kept the Eiffel Tower after its 20-year permit ran out because the tower had proved useful for sending radio signals.

Which instrument do scientists use to record earthquakes?

A seismograph traces the ground's shaking; long before it, Zhang Heng's AD 132 detector in China dropped a bronze ball from a dragon's mouth, said to show a quake's direction.

The Statue of Liberty stands on an island in the harbor of which US metropolis?

The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor was shiny reddish-brown copper when built, and within about 20 years the weather had turned it green.

The Parthenon and the Acropolis stand in which city?

The Parthenon in Athens was wrecked in 1687, when a shot fired during a siege hit the gunpowder stored inside and blew out its middle.

Which president's head is carved on Mount Rushmore beside Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln?

Theodore Roosevelt made the cut because sculptor Gutzon Borglum chose four presidents to stand for the country's birth, growth, development and preservation.

Mount Rushmore is carved into the Black Hills of which US state?

Mount Rushmore stands in South Dakota's Black Hills, sacred to the Lakota; in 1980 the US Supreme Court ruled the land was taken illegally, but the Lakota refuse payment and want it back.

The Golden Gate Bridge links which city to Marin County?

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is painted 'International Orange', a colour chosen because it stands out in fog and suits the hills around it.

The name 'Big Ben' really belongs to a giant bell inside which London building?

The Palace of Westminster's Big Ben cracked soon after it was hung, so workers turned the bell and fitted a lighter hammer, and it still rings with the crack.

The Sydney Opera House was designed by Jørn Utzon, an architect from which country?

Denmark's Jørn Utzon left the opera house project in 1966 after rows over its cost and design, and never went back to see the finished building.

The Colosseum in Rome was built mainly to host what?

Gladiator fights and animal hunts were its main shows, and ancient writers say the arena was even flooded for mock sea battles in its early years.

The giant statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooks which city?

Christ the Redeemer overlooks Rio de Janeiro from a mountaintop, and lightning has struck it, damaging its head and fingers in 2008 and a finger again in 2014.

The ancient rock-carved city of Petra, the 'Rose City', is in which country?

Petra, in southern Jordan, was carved straight into rose-coloured cliffs by the Nabataeans more than 2,000 years ago, which is how it got its 'Rose City' nickname.

Chichen Itza, with its famous step pyramid, was built by which people?

The Maya built Chichen Itza, and around the spring and autumn equinoxes its big pyramid casts shadows that look like a serpent wriggling down its stairs.

The best-known brick sections of the Great Wall were built by which dynasty, also famous for its porcelain?

The Ming rebuilt much of the wall in brick and stone, mainly to keep out raiders from the north.

Angkor Wat, the largest religious complex in the world, is in which country?

Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, was built as a Hindu temple to Vishnu and slowly became a Buddhist one, and today it appears on Cambodia's flag.

What kind of building is the famous leaning landmark in Pisa?

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the bell tower of Pisa Cathedral, and engineers have eased its lean to about 4 degrees by removing soil from under its high side.

The 828-metre Burj Khalifa is in which city?

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai was renamed at its 2010 opening after UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed, after Abu Dhabi lent Dubai billions to pay its debts.

Machu Picchu, the 'Lost City of the Incas', is in which country?

Machu Picchu in Peru was made famous by Hiram Bingham in 1911, but local farmers already knew it and were growing crops on its old terraces.

Uluru, also called Ayers Rock, is a huge monolith made of what?

Uluru is sandstone whose iron has rusted, which is why it glows red, especially at sunrise and sunset.

Table Mountain, famous for its flat top, overlooks which city?

Table Mountain above Cape Town is often topped by a sheet of cloud called the 'tablecloth', formed when moist wind rises up its slopes and cools.

Which river flows through London?

The Thames smelled so bad in the hot summer of 1858, 'the Great Stink', that Parliament finally approved London's modern sewer system.

The Mississippi River empties into which body of water?

The Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico, and Mark Twain, once a Mississippi riverboat pilot, took his pen name from a call meaning 'two fathoms deep'.

The Danube, Europe's second-longest river, empties into which sea?

The Black Sea is where the Danube ends, and the Romans guarded their border along the river with army camps where Vienna and Budapest now stand.

Which is the longest river in China?

The Yangtze's Three Gorges Dam flooded so many towns and villages that more than a million people had to move to new homes.

The river Seine reaches the sea at which port?

Le Havre was almost flattened in World War II, and its rebuilt concrete city centre is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Niagara Falls sits on the border between the US state of New York and which Canadian province?

Ontario shares Niagara Falls, and in March 1848 an ice jam upriver cut the flow to a trickle for more than a day.

The great waterfall the locals call 'The Smoke that Thunders' is on which African river?

The Zambezi's falls throw up a cloud of spray that can be seen from tens of kilometres away, which is how they earned the name 'The Smoke that Thunders'.

Which is the largest body of fresh water in Africa, and the world's largest tropical one?

Lake Victoria, shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, covers about 68,800 square kilometres, making it Africa's largest lake and the largest tropical lake in the world.

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

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake by area, unless Lakes Michigan and Huron, joined by a wide strait, are counted as one lake.

Lake Titicaca, often called the world's highest navigable lake, lies on the border of Peru and which country?

Lake Titicaca is shared by Peru and Bolivia, and the Uros people there live on floating islands they build from totora reeds.

Loch Ness, home of the legendary monster 'Nessie', is in which country?

Loch Ness in Scotland is famous for a 1934 'surgeon's photo' of Nessie, which most now agree was a toy submarine with a model head.

Which of the world's five oceans is the smallest and the shallowest?

The Arctic takes in so much river water from Siberia and North America that its top layer is less salty than the water below it.

The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea to which other sea?

The Suez Canal links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and in 2021 the giant ship Ever Given got stuck across it, blocking it for six days.

The English Channel separates southern England from which country?

France and England were joined underground in 1990, when crews digging from both coasts broke through to each other beneath the Channel.

Which sea lies between Italy and the Balkan Peninsula?

The Adriatic Sea is said to be named after Adria, an ancient port town that silt from the Po river has since left stranded far inland.

Which is the largest peninsula in the world?

The Arabian Peninsula is the world's largest peninsula, and geologically it is a piece of Africa that slowly split away.

Which ocean lies between Africa and Australia?

The Indian Ocean's monsoon winds reverse direction with the seasons, and sailors used them to cross the ocean to trade.

What is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger areas of land called?

The Isthmus of Panama formed about 3 million years ago, letting land animals cross between North and South America.

A fjord is a long, narrow sea inlet with steep sides carved out by what?

A glacier carved each fjord, which is why most fjords are deepest far inland, where the ice ground hardest, and shallower at the mouth.

What do we call a green, fertile spot in a desert where underground water reaches the surface?

An oasis was a vital stop on desert trade routes, because caravans had to reach one to refill their water and food.

Mount Fuji, Japan's highest mountain, is on which island?

Honshu is home to Mount Fuji, whose last eruption, in 1707, dropped ash several centimetres deep on Edo, a city about 100 kilometres away.

Which volcano's eruption in AD 79 destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii?

Vesuvius buried Pompeii so deeply in ash that, centuries later, excavators poured plaster into hollows left by victims' bodies to recreate their shapes.

The volcano Mount Etna stands on which Italian island?

Sicily is home to Mount Etna; in 1669 its lava reached the walls of Catania, which steered much of the flow aside into the sea.

The Gobi Desert lies in China and which other country?

Mongolia shares the Gobi with China, and in 1923 explorers there dug up the first nests of dinosaur eggs known to science.

Which mountain, the second-highest on Earth, is nicknamed the Savage Mountain?

K2 earned the nickname after George Bell, a climber on the 1953 American expedition, said: 'It's a savage mountain that tries to kill you.'

Which mountain range contains Mount Everest?

The Himalayas were pushed up from an ancient seabed, so the rock at the very top of Everest is marine limestone.

What is the name of Earth's rocky outermost layer?

The crust is thinnest under the oceans, so in 1961 scientists on Project Mohole drilled from a ship at sea to try to reach the mantle.

Which mountain range is the largest mountain system in North America?

The Rocky Mountains carry the Continental Divide, so rain on one side flows toward the Pacific and on the other side mostly toward the Atlantic.

Which desert covers much of Botswana?

The Kalahari swallows the Okavango River, which spreads into a vast inland delta in Botswana instead of ever reaching the sea.

What is a giant ocean wave caused by an undersea earthquake called?

A tsunami can slip past ships at sea as a barely noticeable swell, then rear up into giant waves as the water grows shallow near the coast.

Where was the hottest air temperature ever recorded on Earth, 56.7 °C in 1913?

Death Valley, California, got the record back in 2012, when the World Meteorological Organization threw out a 58 °C reading from Libya as a probable misreading.

Yellowstone National Park is mostly in which US state?

Wyoming holds almost all of Yellowstone, and the park's geysers and hot springs are heated by the huge volcano that lies beneath it.

What is Yellowstone's most famous geyser called?

Old Faithful isn't Yellowstone's tallest geyser, Steamboat is, but it erupts so regularly that the park posts predictions of its next eruption.

Most of the world's largest rainforest lies in which country?

Brazil holds most of the rainforest, and its name probably comes from brazilwood, a tree once prized for its red dye.

Which river flows through Rome?

The Tiber, legend says, carried Rome's founders, the twins Romulus and Remus, in a basket that washed ashore where the city would rise.

In the tundra, frozen ground and short summers hold back the growth of which plants?

Trees can't take root in the frozen permafrost, and the few woody plants that survive grow low to the ground so snow can insulate them in winter.

The northern lights are also called what?

Aurora borealis means 'northern dawn'; the glow appears when charged particles, energised by the solar wind, crash into gases high in the atmosphere.

What is the capital of Japan?

Tokyo was called Edo until 1868, when the emperor moved there from Kyoto and the city was renamed 'Eastern Capital'.

Which is the largest city in Egypt?

Cairo is Egypt's biggest city by far, but the government has been moving out to a purpose-built New Capital in the desert.

Which capital city has lions and rhinos roaming a national park right on its edge?

Nairobi National Park is fenced on three sides, but its open southern edge lets migrating animals move between the park and the plains beyond.

Which planned city, built from scratch in South America's interior, became a national capital in 1960?

Brasília went from empty land to inaugurated capital in under four years, a landmark of town planning laid out by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.

What is the capital of Canada?

Ottawa became capital because rival cities couldn't agree, so the choice went to Queen Victoria, whose officials made sure she picked Ottawa in 1857.

Washington, D.C. stands on the bank of which river?

The Potomac site was picked by President George Washington himself, after the 1790 Residence Act left him to choose a spot along the river.

What is the capital of Spain?

Madrid became the capital in 1561, when King Philip II moved his royal court there from Toledo.

What is the capital of Germany?

Berlin became the capital when Germany reunified in 1990, yet some federal ministries kept their headquarters in Bonn, West Germany's old capital.

Beijing, the capital of China, was previously spelled how in English?

Peking is the older English spelling; Beijing took over after China made its pinyin spellings the official standard.

What is the capital of India?

New Delhi was built after King George V announced in 1911 that India's capital would move from Calcutta, and it was inaugurated in 1931.

Which capital has more people than any other in North America?

Mexico City stands on the old bed of Lake Texcoco, where the Aztecs built Tenochtitlan, and its soft clay makes parts of the city sink every year.

What is the capital of Argentina?

Buenos Aires was founded twice: settlers abandoned the first town within a few years, and Juan de Garay refounded it for good in 1580.

Which city replaced Lagos as the capital of Nigeria in 1991?

Abuja was planned in the middle of Nigeria as a neutral capital, so that no single ethnic or religious group could claim it.

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

Ankara was the wartime headquarters of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's resistance, and in 1923 the new republic moved its capital there from Istanbul.

What is the capital of Nepal?

Kathmandu is named after Kasthamandap, a centuries-old wooden temple in the city that collapsed in Nepal's 2015 earthquake.

Auckland is New Zealand's biggest city, but which city is its capital?

Wellington took over from much bigger Auckland in 1865, picked for its central location in the country.

What is the capital of Iceland?

Reykjavík hosted the 1986 summit where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev came close to a deal to abolish nuclear weapons before the talks collapsed.

New Zealand's Māori name, Aotearoa, is most often translated as what?

Land of the long white cloud: one story says Kupe's wife cried 'He ao!', 'A cloud!', when she first glimpsed New Zealand on the horizon.

Which South American country has coasts on both the Pacific and the Caribbean?

Colombia once included Panama, which broke away in 1903 with US backing after Colombia's congress rejected an American canal treaty.

Which tiny country, home of the Monte Carlo Casino, is the second-smallest in the world?

Monaco's casino made so much money that in 1869 the principality stopped collecting income tax from its residents.

Which Mediterranean island just south of Italy is its own country?

Malta held out under heavy Axis bombing in World War II, and in 1942 King George VI awarded the whole island the George Cross.

Which is the world's largest landlocked country by area?

Kazakhstan is home to Baikonur Cosmodrome, the launch site from which Yuri Gagarin rode Vostok 1 to become the first person in space in 1961.

Which is Japan's northernmost main island?

Hokkaido was the homeland of the Ainu people, and Japan took over the whole island and gave it its present name only in 1869.

Which Caribbean island is shared by two countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic?

Hispaniola: in 1697 Spain recognized French control of its western third, the colony that later became Haiti.

Stockholm is the capital of which country?

Sweden's capital, Stockholm, hosts the Nobel ceremony for every prize but Peace each 10 December, where the Swedish king hands laureates their prizes.

Which island is the natural home of wild lemurs?

Madagascar broke away from other land tens of millions of years ago, so its lemurs evolved in isolation, with no monkeys to compete with.

Which is the only US state that is an archipelago?

Hawaii's islands formed one by one as the Pacific Plate crept over a hotspot, and a new undersea volcano is already rising off the Big Island.

In the wild, penguins live almost entirely in which half of the world?

The Southern Hemisphere holds almost every wild penguin, so polar bears, which live in the far north, never meet them outside zoos.

Sri Lanka, formerly called Ceylon, is separated from India by which narrow stretch of sea?

The Palk Strait is so shallow and full of reefs that large ships can't easily pass, so big vessels sail around Sri Lanka instead.

Easter Island is famous for giant stone statues called what?

Moai were probably 'walked' into place: teams with ropes rocked each upright statue from side to side while pulling it forward.

The Galápagos Islands belong to which country?

Ecuador owns the Galápagos, whose unusual wildlife, studied by Charles Darwin, helped inspire his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Wild orangutans live only on Sumatra and which other island?

Borneo's orangutans have lost vast areas of their rainforest home to logging and palm oil plantations, a major threat to the apes.

Crete is the largest island of which country?

Greece's largest island, Crete, holds the palace of Knossos, whose maze-like plan later Greeks remembered as the Minotaur's Labyrinth.

Which Australian city hosted the 2000 Summer Olympics?

Sydney's 2000 Games saw Cathy Freeman light the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony and then win the 400 metres in front of her home crowd.

Which island group includes Tenerife and Lanzarote?

The Canary Islands' Latin name meant 'islands of dogs', and the canary birds that live there were later named after the islands.

Which is the largest island in the Caribbean?

Cuba wasn't an island at all, Christopher Columbus believed: exploring its south coast in 1494, he took it for part of mainland China.

Which US city is nicknamed the Windy City?

Chicago isn't America's windiest city, so the nickname may instead come from its boastful locals or its old rivalry with Cincinnati.

Bermuda, famous for its 'Triangle', is a territory of which country?

The United Kingdom's hold on Bermuda began by accident: the English ship Sea Venture, bound for Virginia, wrecked on its reef in 1609, and England sent settlers three years later.

On a compass, which direction is at 90 degrees?

East sits at 90 degrees, and 'orient', an old word for the east, comes from the Latin for the rising sun.

A compass needle turns to line up with what?

A compass needle is a small magnet that swings to line up with Earth's magnetic field, pointing to magnetic north, which lies hundreds of kilometres from the geographic North Pole.

What is a book that is a collection of maps called?

An atlas is named after Atlas, the figure from Greek myth whom the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator honoured as the first great geographer.

What must any flat map do to Earth's surface, unlike a globe?

Distort it: a round surface can't be flattened without stretching, so the popular Mercator map makes lands near the poles look far too big.

Which part of a map tells you how distances on it compare with real distances?

The scale works back to front in map talk: a 'large-scale' map, like a town plan, shows a smaller area in more detail than a 'small-scale' world map.

What do contour lines on a map show?

Elevation: in the 1770s Charles Hutton joined survey points of equal height with lines to work out a mountain's volume, for an experiment measuring the Earth's density.

The International Date Line runs roughly along which line of longitude?

The International Date Line follows roughly the 180° meridian through the Pacific, zigzagging around islands; crossing it westward moves the calendar forward a day.

The Tropic of Cancer is the northernmost line where the Sun can be seen doing what?

Directly overhead: the Sun stands straight above the Tropic of Cancer once a year, and when the line was named the Sun was then in the zodiac sign of Cancer.

Unlike the South Pole, the North Pole sits on what?

Floating sea ice covers the North Pole, so no permanent base can stand there, and the ice drifts over an ocean about 4 kilometres deep.

What is the capital of Portugal?

Lisbon was nearly wiped out by an earthquake and fire in 1755, then rebuilt with some of Europe's first buildings designed to survive earthquakes.

With oceans covering most of Earth, where are most of its volcanoes found?

Underwater, because most of the boundaries between Earth's tectonic plates, where volcanoes form, lie on the ocean floor.

Which bay lies between India and Myanmar?

The Bay of Bengal spawned the 1970 Bhola cyclone, the deadliest tropical cyclone on record, which killed at least 300,000 people.

Which mountain is the highest peak in North America?

Denali's official US name has flip-flopped: the government switched it from Mount McKinley to Denali in 2015, then back to Mount McKinley in 2025.

Which river in Europe empties into the North Sea after flowing through the Netherlands?

The Rhine flows past the Lorelei, a rock with so many shipwrecks that poets invented a siren whose song lured boatmen to their deaths.

Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas, is in which country?

Argentina's Aconcagua holds an Inca sacrifice site: in 1985, mountaineers found the frozen mummy of a seven-year-old child on its slopes.

Which vast grassland was hit by the choking dust storms of the 1930s Dust Bowl?

The Great Plains' Dust Bowl was a 1930s drought whose winds swept choking dust from Texas to Nebraska, killing livestock and ruining crops.

Which is the highest mountain in the Alps?

Mont Blanc straddles two countries, which have long disagreed over whether their border runs right across its summit.

The Ganges river flows through India and which other country?

Bangladesh is where the Ganges ends its journey, after a course through India where millions of Hindus bathe in its water at the Kumbh Mela.

Mount Kosciuszko, the highest mountain on mainland Australia, is in which state?

New South Wales holds Mount Kosciuszko, which explorer Paweł Strzelecki named partly because it reminded him of the Kościuszko Mound in Kraków.