70 Fun Facts About Trivia for Smart People

The Antikythera mechanism could predict which astronomical events decades in advance?

It also modelled the Moon's irregular orbit, speeding up at perigee, a motion studied by Hipparchus of Rhodes in the same century.

How many teeth did the largest gear of that ancient Greek device originally carry?

That count matches the Saros eclipse cycle of 223 lunar months, which is how the machine could forecast eclipses at all.

Machinery as complex as the Antikythera mechanism did not reappear until which century in western Europe?

The device sat unnoticed in an Athens museum for two years after being raised, looking like nothing more than a lump of corroded bronze.

Besides the heavens, what four-year cycle did the Antikythera device track?

Conservation has since broken the single retrieved lump into 82 separate fragments, only four of which contain gears.

Radiocarbon dating placed the vellum of the Voynich manuscript in which period?

Multispectral analysis also showed the pages had never been written on before, ruling out a reused palimpsest.

Which library has held the Voynich manuscript since 1969?

Yale put the whole codex online in 2020, so anyone who fancies deciphering it no longer has to travel.

The Voynich manuscript's parchment was made from the skin of which animal?

Protein testing in 2014 showed at least fourteen or fifteen entire hides went into the book.

The Challenger Deep lies inside the exclusive economic zone of which country?

The US monument declared over the trench in 2009 deliberately stops short of the deepest point for exactly that reason.

Water pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is roughly how many times that at sea level?

That works out at about eight tons pressing on every square inch, and single-celled monothalamea live in it quite happily.

Of NASA's twin outer-planet probes launched in 1977, which lifted off first?

Its twin left 16 days later on a faster trajectory and overtook it, which is why the numbering looks backwards.

NASA's choice to fly past Titan cost that mission the chance to visit which world?

Titan won because it was already known to have a thick atmosphere, and the detour flung the probe out of the planetary plane.

Budget cuts once reduced that same craft to a Jupiter-Saturn flyby under which earlier designation?

The name changed only once the spacecraft design had drifted far enough from the original programme's hardware.

The 1944 monetary conference that created the IMF was held in which US state?

Delegates from 44 Allied countries deliberated at the Mount Washington Hotel for three weeks and signed on the final day.

Which 1976 agreement formally ratified the end of the Bretton Woods system?

The practical end came five years earlier, when the United States simply stopped converting dollars into gold.

The IBRD, founded alongside the IMF in 1944, became part of which institution?

The United States, holding two-thirds of the world's gold at the time, insisted the whole system rest on gold and its own dollar.

On what date did the United States end the convertibility of its currency into gold?

Sterling and other fixed currencies floated soon afterwards, and the dollar became a fiat currency overnight.

The Rosetta Stone records a decree issued in 196 BC on behalf of which ruler?

Three other fragmentary copies of the same decree have since turned up, so the famous slab is no longer unique.

What kind of rock is the Rosetta Stone actually made of?

White chalk in the inscriptions and a protective carnauba wax coating darkened it for a century, which is why it was long misidentified.

In which year did Jean-Francois Champollion announce his transliteration of the Egyptian scripts?

The stone had been found in July 1799 by a French army officer while rebuilding a fort in the Nile Delta.

Which body of water holds between 22 and 23 percent of the world's fresh surface water?

That is more than all five North American Great Lakes combined, packed into a rift barely larger than Belgium in surface area.

How old is the world's deepest lake estimated to be?

It sits in a rift valley where the crust is still pulling apart, which keeps deepening the basin instead of silting it up.

Why did the 1908 Tunguska explosion leave no crater?

The blast still flattened a vast area of Siberian taiga, and eyewitness accounts suggest up to three people died.

The Tunguska blast is estimated at what explosive yield?

It remains the largest impact event in recorded history, caused by a stony asteroid arriving at about 27 kilometres per second.

In 1897 a bill implying a false value of pi passed the House of which US state?

The bill's real claim was that it could square the circle, offered free of royalties to the state's schools.

Who happened to be in the legislature that day and killed the pi bill?

C. A. Waldo was there on other business, saw the vote coming, and briefed the senators before it could reach them.

Squaring the circle with straightedge and compass had already been proved impossible in 1882 by whom?

His proof that pi is transcendental settled a question that had been open since antiquity, fifteen years before the bill was drafted.

Which institution created and funds the sixth Nobel, the prize in economic sciences?

Sweden's central bank endowed it in 1968 for its own 300th anniversary, and the first award followed in 1969.

How many patents did Alfred Nobel hold in his lifetime?

He also bought the Bofors ironworks in 1894 and turned it into a major arms manufacturer, which sharpened his interest in a peace prize.

Who is the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, at 41?

The prize has gone to writers in 25 languages, and has been shared between two people on only four occasions.

Who was the oldest literature laureate, aged 88 when the call came in 2007?

Of 121 laureates to 2024, only 18 have been women, and the prize was withheld entirely on seven occasions.

The literature prize has been awarded posthumously exactly once, in 1931, to whom?

The Swedish poet had turned the prize down while alive, and the rules were changed in 1974 to bar posthumous awards.

The Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 divided the newly found world between Portugal and which crown?

The deal modified an earlier papal bull of Alexander VI, and the pope of the day only ratified it in 1506.

That dividing meridian was drawn 370 leagues west of which islands?

The line fell roughly halfway between them and the Caribbean islands Columbus had just claimed, which later handed Portugal Brazil.

That dividing meridian was drawn 370 leagues west of which island group?

Originals of both treaties survive, in Seville's Archive of the Indies and Portugal's Torre do Tombo.

Who created Esperanto, publishing it in 1887 under a pseudonym?

The pen name he chose meant 'one who hopes', and it stuck to the language rather than to him.

Roughly how many native speakers does Esperanto have?

Around 100,000 people speak it at all, which still makes it the only constructed language with a sizeable native-speaking population.

Which earlier invented language did Esperanto largely displace?

Its inventor, a German priest, had proved there was demand for a neutral world language; his movement then collapsed from within.

The 1883 Krakatoa explosion was heard as far away as which inland Australian town?

It was also heard on Rodrigues near Mauritius, in the opposite direction, which makes it the loudest sound in recorded history.

Which island rose out of the 1883 caldera in 1927?

Its name means 'child of Krakatoa', and a partial collapse of it caused the deadly Sunda Strait tsunami of 2018.

Which island is the only surviving remnant of the original volcano destroyed in 1883?

The caldera left behind sits in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, in the Indonesian province of Lampung.

Who first noticed a gear wheel embedded in the corroded lump from the Greek shipwreck, in May 1902?

He thought he had found an astronomical clock; most scholars told him it was far too complex for its date.

Who found the wreck that held it, diving in 1900?

They brought up bronze and marble statues, glassware, jewellery and coins as well, all from a Roman cargo ship.

The Mariana Islands, and so the trench beside them, are named in honour of whom?

Mariana of Austria's name attached to the islands, then to the plate, then to the deepest hole in the planet.

How old is the oceanic crust being subducted at the Mariana Trench?

Old crust is cold and dense, so it sinks steeply, which is precisely why the trench is the deepest place on Earth.

Wilfrid Voynich, who bought the famous manuscript in 1912, worked as what?

The first confirmed owner was a 17th-century Prague alchemist, Georg Baresch, three centuries before the sale.

The shortest war in recorded history, in 1896, was fought between Britain and which sultanate?

It lasted somewhere between 38 and 45 minutes, ending when the palace was shelled and the sultan fled.

Which monarch holds the record for the longest verified reign of any sovereign, at 72 years?

He came to the French throne aged four and outlived his son and grandson.

How many chemical elements are named after the Swedish village of Ytterby?

Yttrium, terbium, erbium and ytterbium all take their names from one quarry, which also yielded holmium, thulium, scandium and gadolinium.

Which country has the world's only non-rectangular national flag?

Its two stacked pennants make it the only national flag that is taller than it is wide.

Which African capital city is named after a US president?

It was founded in 1822 as a settlement for freed African Americans and named for the sitting president, James Monroe.

Who is the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes?

He took the Chemistry prize in 1954 and the Peace prize in 1962, both alone.

Which body of water is the deepest in Africa?

It holds about 16 percent of the world's available fresh water and is the second-deepest lake on Earth.

Which is the only named sea with no land boundaries at all?

It is bounded instead by four Atlantic currents that form a clockwise gyre.

Which US president served the shortest term, dying 31 days after taking office?

He was also the first president to die in office, in 1841.

How many years did the Hundred Years' War actually last?

It ran from 1337 to 1453 as a series of conflicts rather than one continuous war.

In 1968 the Soviet Zond 5 mission carried the first Earth creatures around the Moon. What were they?

They were chosen because they were easy to strap down, and they came back alive after circling the Moon.

Which is the only US state with a single-chamber legislature?

Voters abolished the state's senate and house in 1934; the new body first met in 1937.

Which country's national anthem, dating to at least 1572, is the oldest still in use?

The Wilhelmus predates the country itself, having been written during the Dutch revolt against Spain.

Ouagadougou is the capital of which country?

The colonial administration made it the capital of Upper Volta in 1919.

Which chicken-sized bird lays eggs about six times the size of a hen's egg?

The egg can take up a huge share of the female's body, and the bird's closest relatives were Madagascar's extinct elephant birds.

The Vietnamese currency, the dong, takes its name from the Sino-Vietnamese word for which metal?

The word is written with the same Chinese character used for the metal.

Bluetooth technology is named after a 10th-century king of which country?

Harald Bluetooth united the Danish tribes, and the name was picked to suggest the standard would unite communication protocols.

The 1932 'Emu War' was waged by the Australian Army in which state?

Soldiers with machine guns were sent to cull emus wrecking Wheatbelt farms; the emus largely won.

The ancient city of Carthage stood in which modern country?

Legend credits its founding to the Phoenician queen Dido, on the shore of the Lake of Tunis.

Under what name was Amazon founded in 1994?

Jeff Bezos started it as an online bookstore after moving from New York to Bellevue, Washington.

Point Nemo, the ocean spot farthest from land, is named after a character by which author?

The Croatian engineer who located it in 1992 named it after Captain Nemo, and 'nemo' is Latin for nobody.

Iceland's Althing, the world's oldest legislature, was founded in which year?

It first met outdoors on the plains of Thingvellir, about 45 km from modern Reykjavik.

Which planet's existence was predicted mathematically before it was observed?

Le Verrier calculated where it should be from irregularities in Uranus's orbit, and it was found less than a degree away.

Where did the deposed Sultan Khalid seek asylum after Britain's 1896 bombardment of Zanzibar?

Khalid bin Barghash sheltered in the German consulate before escaping to German East Africa.

Which Swedish lieutenant found the unusual heavy black mineral at Ytterby in 1787 that led to new elements?

Arrhenius, an amateur chemist scouting the area for a fortification, noticed the rock; four elements are now named after the village.