50 Fun Facts About Guam

Which invasive reptile, a stowaway after World War II, wiped out most of Guam's native forest birds?

The brown tree snake probably arrived hidden in ship cargo or aircraft landing gear. Officials now airdrop bait laced with acetaminophen, a painkiller the animal is unusually sensitive to.

Which American discount chain's store in Tamuning, Guam, outsold all its other branches as of 2018?

Kmart's Guam store rang up about $100 million a year, helped by tourists and a lack of nearby rivals. By 2026 it was one of only three Kmarts left.

Shoichi Yokoi, the soldier who hid in Guam's jungle until 1972, had trained in which trade?

Tailor was his trade as an apprentice before he was conscripted in 1941, a skill he put to use in hiding by making clothes and bedding from native plants.

Japan began bombing Guam on December 8, 1941, just hours after its surprise attack on which American base?

Pearl Harbor was struck the same morning. Japan then held Guam for about 31 months and renamed it Ōmiya-jima, or Great Shrine Island.

Guam's unofficial motto says America's day begins there, because the island lies close to which boundary?

The International Date Line runs to Guam's east, so each new calendar day reaches the island before it reaches any of the 50 states.

Measured from which seabed point is Guam's Mount Lamlam sometimes called the world's tallest mountain?

Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the oceans, lies in the Mariana Trench southwest of Guam, so by that reckoning the modest peak caps a rise of more than 37,000 feet.

In the legend of Guam's Two Lovers Point, what did the couple tie together before leaping from the cliff?

Their hair, tied into a single knot, joins the pair in a folktale first written down by the French explorer Louis de Freycinet in 1819.

Which Guam holiday on July 21 marks the day American forces returned in 1944 to end Japanese occupation?

Liberation Day recalls the landings of July 21, 1944, which opened a battle that ran until August 10 and ended two and a half years of occupation.

Which Portuguese navigator, sailing for Spain, became the first European to reach Guam in March 1521?

Ferdinand Magellan sighted Guam during the first voyage around the globe, yet Spain did not formally claim the island until Miguel López de Legazpi did so in 1565.

Which two-letter postal abbreviation does the US Postal Service use for mail addressed to Guam?

GU is the code, and the Postal Service treats mail between Guam and the mainland as domestic, so a letter needs no extra postage.

Which coastal village of only about 1,000 residents serves as the capital of Guam?

Hagåtña held nearly half of Guam's people in 1940, yet today it is the second smallest of the island's 19 villages in both area and population.

Which northern Guam village, known for its weekend flea market, is the island's most populous?

Dededo also opened Guam's first large enclosed shopping mall in 1988, and its market draws crowds of vendors every weekend.

Guam is the largest island in which subregion of Oceania, which also includes Palau and Chuuk?

Micronesia has no island bigger than Guam, which is only about 30 miles long and sits at the southern end of the Mariana chain.

Guam residents eat an average of 16 cans a year each of which canned food, introduced during World War II?

Spam arrived with wartime rations and stuck: Guam even stages Spam Games, where locals compete with their best homemade recipes.

B-52 bombers flew from Guam's Andersen Air Force Base on Operation Arc Light missions during which war?

The Vietnam War kept Guam's bombers flying from 1965 to 1973, and in 1975 the same base sheltered thousands of evacuees during Operation New Life.

Judd Bankert became tropical Guam's first Olympian at the 1988 Winter Games, competing in which sport?

Biathlon gave Guam its Olympic debut on snow; by 2026 that was still its only Winter Games, against ten appearances at the Summer Games.

Most people on Guam follow which branch of Christianity, brought from Spain in 1668?

Catholicism arrived with a mission led by Diego Luis de San Vitores, who founded Guam's first church; villages still hold yearly fiestas for their patron saints.

Which legal status has Guam held within the United States since the Organic Act of 1950?

Unincorporated territory status arrived with the act that made Guam's people American citizens and gave the island its first civilian government.

The 15 members of Guam's single-chamber legislature, elected every two years, are known by which title?

Senators is the title even though there is no lower house; until a 1996 change in the law, the single chamber seated 21 of them.

Which capped pillars, found only in the Mariana Islands, once held up ancient Chamorro houses on Guam?

Latte stones pair a pillar with a bowl-shaped cap set flat side up; the tallest still standing rises 16 feet at the House of Taga on Tinian.

The almond-shaped seal at the centre of Guam's flag recalls which weapon of the ancient Chamorro?

Sling stone shapes inspired Helen Paul, who designed the flag in 1917; inside the seal, a proa sails past a coconut palm at a river mouth.

What insulting name did European sailors give Guam and its neighbours on first reaching them in 1521?

Islands of Thieves, or Islas de los Ladrones, came after islanders made off with a ship's boat; the crew's first choice was Islands of the Lateen Sails.

For 250 years, Spanish galleons resupplied at Guam while sailing to Manila from which port in Mexico?

Acapulco was the galleons' American terminus from 1565 to 1815, a link that left Guam's cooking with tortillas, tamales and atole.

The first American shots of World War I were fired in Guam's Apra Harbor at a launch from which country's ship?

Germany's raider SMS Cormoran had sat interned at Guam since 1914; when America entered the war, her crew blew her up rather than hand her over.

Which animal, known as fanihi in the Chamorro language, is a traditional soup delicacy on Guam?

Fruit bat soup, kå'du fanihi, is a prized Chamorro dish, but habitat loss and hunting have left the Mariana flying fox a threatened species.

Guam's signature red rice, a staple of Chamorro fiestas, takes its colour from which spice?

Annatto, called achoti on Guam, is simmered into a broth that turns the rice a deep orange; the dish is known as hineksa' aga'ga'.

Which animal, known locally as the carabao, did Spanish missionaries bring to Guam as a beast of burden?

Water buffalo once numbered in the thousands on Guam, and the carabao is now treated as the island's unofficial national animal.

Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz opened on Guam in 2020 to house Marines relocating from which Japanese prefecture?

Okinawa's Marines are bound for Camp Blaz, the Corps' first new base since 1952, named for Guam's own Brigadier General Vicente "Ben" Blaz.

Which bay-side district of Guam, lined with dozens of hotels, is the centre of the island's tourist industry?

Tumon's bay, once dredged by hotel chains to please their guests, is now a marine preserve where biologists monitor the fish.

Guam's international airport is named for which politician, the island's first delegate to the US House?

Antonio Won Pat took the oath in January 1973 as the first Guam resident seated in Congress, and he held the seat until 1985.

On which neighbouring island in the Northern Marianas have more than 100 Guam rails been released since 1995?

Rota took in the nearly flightless birds, known as ko'ko', after predators wiped them out at home; in 2019 the species was moved up from Extinct in the Wild.

Point Udall on Guam, billed as America's westernmost point, has a namesake at the easternmost point in which territory?

The Virgin Islands point honours Stewart Udall, and Guam's Orote Point was renamed in 1987 for his brother, Arizona congressman Mo Udall.

Which president lifted the security clearance once required to visit Guam, opening the island to tourism in the 1960s?

John F. Kennedy removed the requirement, and tourism has been one of the two main supports of Guam's economy since the 1960s, alongside the military.

Chamorro, an official language of Guam alongside English, belongs to which widespread language family?

Austronesian roots shape Chamorro grammar, yet about half of its modern vocabulary is estimated to come from Spanish after three centuries of colonial rule.

Guam's football team took which nickname in the 2010s, after the top class of ancient Chamorro society?

Matao became the nickname when coach Gary White took charge, replacing the plain "Chamorros"; the side went on to beat Turkmenistan and India in World Cup qualifying.

Diego Luis de San Vitores, who led the 1668 mission that began Spanish rule on Guam, belonged to which order?

Jesuits under San Vitores built Guam's first church on land granted by Chief Quipuha, but the priest was killed in 1672 as resistance to the mission grew.

Which typhoon struck Guam in May 2023 as the strongest storm to affect the island since Pongsona in 2002?

Mawar dropped at least 20 inches of rain on parts of Guam, most of it within three hours, yet structural damage was relatively limited.

Which airline built a seaplane base at Sumay on Guam for its trans-Pacific China Clipper service?

Pan Am chose Sumay, where the Marines had based a seaplane squadron in the 1920s, and built Guam's first hotel there for its Clipper passengers.

Kelaguen, a signature Chamorro dish on Guam, 'cooks' raw shrimp or fish using the acid in which ingredient?

Lemon juice does the work, as in ceviche; the dish descends from Filipino kilawin and can be wrapped in a Chamorro flatbread called titiyas.

During the bloodless 1898 capture of Guam, Spanish officials mistook the USS Charleston's cannon fire for what?

A salute, they assumed: no mail had arrived since April, so nobody on Guam knew war had begun, and officials apologised for lacking the ammunition to reply.

Spain ceded Guam to the United States under which 1898 agreement, which took effect the following April?

The Treaty of Paris ended more than three centuries of Spanish claims to Guam, which dated from Miguel López de Legazpi's formal claim in 1565.

Guam is a major Pacific hub for which kind of infrastructure, linking the US, Hawaii, Australia and Asia?

Undersea cables meet at Guam in such numbers that, by one 2012 account, the island's internet prices matched those on the mainland.

Guam and its neighbours were the first islands settled in Remote Oceania, by voyagers who set out from where?

The Philippines was the starting point around 1500 BC, on what was the first and longest of that seafaring people's ocean-crossing voyages.

In Guam folklore, the taotaomo'na are ancestral spirits said to live within which kind of tree?

Banyan trees are their reputed home, and stories warn that the spirits can turn malicious when their land is not respected.

On Guam, what traditional role does a Chamorro suruhånu or suruhåna play in the community?

Healer is the role: suruhånu make medicine from plants, and are said to be the only people who can gather them in the jungle without angering the spirits of the ancients.

The Mariana Islands, Guam among them, were named in 1668 for Mariana of Austria, the widow of which Spanish king?

Philip IV's widow was ruling Spain's empire as queen regent for her young son, Charles II, when the colony received its official title.

Which major US carrier uses Guam's international airport as a hub, a legacy of its merger with Continental?

United Airlines inherited the hub through Continental, whose island subsidiary, Continental Micronesia, was Guam's largest private employer in the 2000s.

Which kind of Guam bird, wiped out in the wild, was released on Palmyra Atoll in 2024 from American zoos?

Kingfishers from five zoos, nine birds in all, were set free on Palmyra's Cooper Island, with a possible return to Guam's forests as the longer aim.

Radioman George Tweed, hiding on occupied Guam since 1941, signalled two American destroyers in 1944 using what?

A mirror, along with semaphore, caught the destroyers' attention in July 1944, and a whaleboat from USS McCall brought him off after more than two and a half years in hiding.

Which president ended military rule on Guam by appointing Carlton Skinner its first civilian governor?

Harry S. Truman issued the order in September 1949, and Skinner went on to found the teacher-training college that became the University of Guam.