100 Fun Facts About History and Geography

Which Egyptian queen, who died in 30 BC, lived closer to the Moon landing than to the Great Pyramid's construction?

Cleopatra died in 30 BC, roughly 2,500 years after the Great Pyramid was built but only about 2,000 before Apollo 11 landed in 1969; she was Egypt's last active pharaoh.

Which country, the largest on Earth without a permanent river, gets about half its drinking water from desalination?

Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the world without permanent rivers, so around 50% of its drinking water comes from desalinated seawater. Seasonal wadis carry water only after rare rains.

Which US state's islands cross the 180th meridian, making it technically the easternmost state as well as the westernmost?

Alaska's Aleutian Islands stretch across the 180th meridian into the Eastern Hemisphere, so one state holds the country's northern, western and, on paper, eastern extremes.

Which sultanate fought Britain on 27 August 1896 in a war that was over in under 45 minutes?

Zanzibar surrendered after 38 to 45 minutes of British naval bombardment, making the Anglo-Zanzibar War the shortest recorded war in history. Britain then installed a sultan of its own choosing.

Thanks to the isthmus's bend, the Panama Canal's Pacific end lies in which direction from its Atlantic end?

Southeast: the canal runs south from Colón and then swings east, so its Pacific end sits about 25 miles east of its Atlantic end, not west.

Which English university, teaching by 1096, is more than three centuries older than the Aztec Empire?

Oxford was teaching by 1096, and the Aztec Triple Alliance formed only in 1428; even Cambridge began in 1209 with scholars who fled Oxford after clashes with the townspeople.

Which country, on 1 April 2001, became the first in the world to legalise same-sex marriage?

The Netherlands began at the stroke of midnight: Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, married four couples in a ceremony broadcast live on national television.

Which bay between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia has the highest tides on Earth?

The Bay of Fundy owes its record tides to its shape: the long, funnel-like basin makes the incoming Atlantic tide pile up as it runs inland between the two provinces.

Which South Asian country elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1960, making her the world's first female prime minister?

Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, turned to her after her husband, the prime minister, was assassinated in 1959: his party persuaded the widow to lead it, and it won the 1960 election.

Which Southeast Asian archipelago of about 7,641 islands has Luzon and Mindanao as its two largest?

The Philippines was long credited with 7,107 islands; the tally rose to 7,641 after the national mapping agency charted hundreds of previously uncounted ones in 2016.

Which African country, bordering the Spanish exclaves Ceuta and Melilla, has both an Atlantic and a Mediterranean coast?

Morocco claims both cities, but each has been Spanish for centuries: Melilla since 1497 and Ceuta since 1580.

Which country was carved up by three neighbours in 1772, 1793 and 1795 and vanished from the map for 123 years?

Poland disappeared when its three imperial neighbours completed the third partition in October 1795, and it did not return as a sovereign state until 1918. The Kościuszko Uprising of 1794 had failed to prevent it.

Which Italian volcano, over 3,300 m tall and almost constantly active, dominates the east coast of Sicily?

Etna's height is never settled: the summit grows as eruptions pile up new rock and shrinks when the crater rim collapses, so surveys run from about 3,320 to 3,400 metres.

In which Central American country do bull sharks swim up the San Juan River into a lake that shares the country's name?

Nicaragua's great lake holds sharks and tarpon as well as freshwater fish, and bull sharks tagged there have turned up in the Caribbean after riding the San Juan River's rapids almost like salmon.

Which Norse explorer, founder of the settlement the sagas call Vinland, reached America five centuries before Columbus?

Leif Erikson named the land Vinland for the grapes found there; in one saga he reached it only because his ship was blown off course on the way to Greenland.

Which sandy, semi-arid expanse, with the vast Makgadikgadi salt pans, covers much of Botswana and parts of Namibia?

The Kalahari Desert covers almost all of Botswana, yet it is no empty waste: rivers flowing south from Angola spill into its swamps and salt pans, flooding part of a region short of water.

Which country split peacefully into two republics on 1 January 1993, in what was dubbed the 'Velvet Divorce'?

Czechoslovakia's Velvet Divorce borrowed its name from the bloodless Velvet Revolution that ended Communist rule in 1989; Czech and Slovak leaders settled the split in talks.

Which Asian city was known as Batavia under Dutch rule until the Japanese occupation renamed it in 1942?

Jakarta was Jayakarta until the Dutch captured and razed it in 1619 and built the walled town of Batavia on the ruins; the Japanese occupiers brought the old name back.

Which country lost more than a fifth of its population to death and emigration in the Great Famine that began in 1845?

Ireland lost about a million people to hunger and disease and at least a million more to emigration after blight ruined the potato, the crop its rural poor lived on.

Which South American country, independent from the Dutch since 1975, is the continent's smallest by area and population?

Suriname kept Dutch as its official language, and tens of thousands of its people moved to the old colonial power as independence approached.

Which Caribbean island, the second-largest after Cuba, is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic?

Hispaniola covers 76,192 km², with the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic holding the eastern two-thirds and French- and Creole-speaking Haiti the west; it is the most populous island in the West Indies.

Which civilisation's Long Count calendar completed a cycle of more than 5,000 years on 21 December 2012, sparking doomsday predictions?

The Maya Long Count simply rolled over into a new cycle that day, counted from a base date in August 3114 BC; no ancient Maya text foretold an ending, as scholars and NASA kept pointing out.

Which desert fills the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, its northern and southern edges skirted by two branches of the Silk Road?

The Taklamakan Desert is walled in by the Tian Shan, Kunlun and Pamir ranges, and Silk Road caravans split into northern and southern routes along its rim rather than cross the sands.

Which US president bought Louisiana from France in 1803 for $15 million, nearly doubling the country's territory?

Thomas Jefferson had long wanted New Orleans, and Napoleon offered all of Louisiana after failing to crush the revolt in Saint-Domingue and facing renewed war with Britain; the 828,000 square miles cost under three cents an acre.

Which mountain range, with the microstate Andorra tucked among its peaks, walls off the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe?

The Pyrenees became the Franco-Spanish border under a 1659 treaty that gave France the villages of one high valley but not its town, Llívia, which is still a pocket of Spain inside France.

Which country was proclaimed an empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in January 1871, while still at war with France?

Germany's princes acclaimed Prussia's King Wilhelm I as emperor in the French kings' own palace while their armies were still besieging Paris; France signed an armistice ten days later.

Which African capital, named Léopoldville by Henry Morton Stanley for Belgium's king, took its present name in 1966?

Kinshasa took its present name during Mobutu Sese Seko's drive to replace colonial names with African ones; it honours Nshasa, the village that stood there before the colonial town.

In which ancient city did Alexander the Great die in 323 BC, aged 32?

Babylon is where he fell ill after his return from India; he died in the old palace of Nebuchadnezzar II after about two weeks of fever, a month short of his 33rd birthday.

Which densely populated country lies largely on the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers?

Bangladesh sits on the world's largest river delta; until 1971 it was East Pakistan, ruled from a capital more than 1,500 km away on the far side of India.

Ararat, the peak on Armenia's coat of arms and the legendary resting place of Noah's Ark, stands in which country?

Turkey holds the whole mountain, in its far east where the Turkish, Iranian and Armenian borders meet, yet Ararat looms over Armenia's capital, Yerevan, from across the frontier.

Which country's 1979 revolution replaced the Pahlavi monarchy with an Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Khomeini?

Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi left for exile on 16 January 1979, and Ruhollah Khomeini, himself banished since 1964, returned to become supreme leader of the new Islamic Republic.

Which Pacific kingdom's last queen, Liliʻuokalani, was overthrown in an 1893 coup, five years before US annexation?

Hawaii's queen was deposed in a bloodless coup backed by the US minister and Marines from the USS Boston; she yielded to avoid bloodshed, and annexation followed in 1898.

Which country's Lake Balaton, fed by the Zala River and drained only by the Sió, is the largest lake in Central Europe?

Hungary's Lake Balaton is so shallow, barely a dozen metres at its deepest, that all the water in it is replaced about every two years.

Which South American country lost most of its population, by some estimates, in the 1864–70 War of the Triple Alliance?

Paraguay took on three neighbours at once under Francisco Solano López and, by some historians' estimates, lost the majority of its people to battle, hunger and disease; demographic studies range from 7% up to 69% of the prewar population.

Which West African country, formerly the Gold Coast, was the first sub-Saharan colony to gain independence, in 1957?

Ghana took its new name from a medieval trading empire that never included it: old Ghana lay far to the north-west, in what are now Mali and Mauritania.

In which city did Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin meet in February 1945 to plan post-war Europe?

Yalta, a Black Sea resort in Crimea, was Stalin's choice: he turned down every Mediterranean venue the others proposed, insisting his doctors opposed any long trip.

Which island nation, 80 km south of Italy and the tenth-smallest country on Earth, joined the European Union in 2004?

Malta was bombed so heavily in the Second World War that King George VI awarded the George Cross to the whole island in 1942; the medal still appears on its flag.

Under the 1667 Treaty of Breda, the Dutch kept the nutmeg island of Run while England kept which island seized from them?

Manhattan had been seized from the Dutch in 1664 and its town renamed New York; the peace let each side keep what it held, so England dropped its claim to nutmeg-rich Run.

On which Canadian Arctic island does Alert, the northernmost continuously inhabited place on Earth, sit at 82°30' N?

Ellesmere Island's Alert is named after HMS Alert, the Royal Navy ship that wintered nearby in 1875-76; only rotating military and weather staff live there, with no permanent residents.

Which waterway, widened for dreadnoughts before 1914, links the North Sea to the Baltic across the base of Jutland?

The Kiel Canal was dug and then widened for the Kaiser's navy, but the peace treaty of 1919 threw it open to the warships and merchant ships of other nations.

The 1917 October Revolution fell in November by the Western calendar because Russia still used which calendar?

Julian dates ran 13 days behind, so Russia's 25 October was 7 November in the West; the Bolsheviks switched calendars within months, and 31 January 1918 was followed by 14 February.

Which country became the last in the Americas to abolish slavery, under its 'Golden Law' of 1888?

Brazil's Golden Law was signed by Princess Isabel, regent while her father the emperor was abroad; the monarchy that ended slavery was itself overthrown the following year.

Which European country gave women the federal vote only in 1971, after male voters rejected it in 1959?

Switzerland's men voted women the federal ballot in 1971, twelve years after refusing it two to one; one canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, kept women out of local votes until a court forced its hand in 1990.

Which 1939-40 war saw Finland's ski troops hold off the Red Army for three and a half months?

The Winter War left Finland independent but smaller: after inflicting severe losses on a far larger army, it had to cede the Karelian Isthmus and the city of Viipuri in March 1940.

Which British prime minister sent a task force to retake the Falklands after Argentina invaded in April 1982?

Margaret Thatcher's government assembled the task force within days, built around two aircraft carriers, with cruise liners pressed into service as troopships; Argentina's garrison surrendered on 14 June.

The Blue Nile from Ethiopia and the White Nile merge into a single river at which city, far upstream of Cairo?

Khartoum stands where the two rivers join, and the Blue Nile is the stronger partner: in the rainy season it supplies most of the water the Nile carries on to Egypt.

Jikji, the oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type, was made in 1377 under which Korean dynasty?

Goryeo printers produced Jikji 78 years before Gutenberg's Bible; the one surviving volume was bought in Seoul by a French diplomat and is still kept in France's national library.

Which southern African kingdom did Shaka forge in the 1810s with a standing army that consolidated rival clans?

The Zulu owed their rise to Shaka's reforms: he rearmed his regiments with a short stabbing spear for close combat and drilled them to pin an enemy with the 'chest' while two 'horns' encircled it.

Which country's Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 toppled the Estado Novo dictatorship with almost no shots fired?

Portugal's dictatorship, nearly 50 years old, fell in an almost bloodless dawn coup by army officers; crowds handed the soldiers carnations, then in full bloom, and the flowers named the revolution.

Which Roman emperor began a 73-mile wall across northern Britain in AD 122 to mark the empire's frontier?

Hadrian's Wall was abandoned by his own successor, who built a new wall further north in Scotland; within two decades the army had pulled back to Hadrian's line.

Which continent, the driest and windiest on Earth, is classed as the world's largest desert?

Antarctica is a polar desert so dry that meteorites more than a million years old lie preserved on its surface, easy to spot against the ice.

Which country's first emperor was buried with 8,000 clay soldiers, found in 1974 by farmers digging a well?

China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, also took 130 chariots and hundreds of clay horses to the grave, and most of his army remains unexcavated.

Which disease, carried by fleas on black rats aboard ships, caused the Black Death in Europe from 1346 to 1353?

Plague killed an estimated 30 to 60 percent of Europe's people in those seven years, and the population did not recover until the 16th century.

Which leader walked 240 miles to the sea in 1930 to make salt in defiance of a British tax?

Mahatma Gandhi set out with 78 volunteers on a 24-day walk to the village of Dandi, where making salt by evaporation broke Britain's monopoly.

Where in the Pacific, named for the day a European first saw it in 1722, stand nearly 1,000 moai statues?

Easter Island was sighted by Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday, 5 April 1722, while he was searching for somewhere else entirely, a place called Davis Land.

Which capital did Hernán Cortés found on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec stronghold built on a lake island?

Mexico City stands where Tenochtitlan, the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, once rose from an island in Lake Texcoco.

After escaping Elba and losing at Waterloo, Napoleon was exiled to which remote island, where he died in 1821?

Saint Helena lies in the South Atlantic, 1,860 km from the nearest major landmass, and held Napoleon under British guard until he died there aged 51.

Which desert was covered in grasses, trees and lakes until a humid period ended about 6,000 years ago?

The Sahara swings between desert and savanna grassland on a roughly 20,000-year cycle driven by a wobble in Earth's axis, and is expected to turn green again.

Which ruler, born Temüjin, took his famous title in 1206 and founded the largest contiguous empire in history?

Genghis Khan lost his father at eight and saw his family abandoned by its tribe, yet by his death his realm ran from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea.

Which lake bordered by Jordan and Israel has shores over 400 metres below sea level, the lowest land on Earth?

The Dead Sea is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean, which makes swimming there feel like floating and leaves almost nothing able to live in it.

Which explorer, killed in battle in 1521, led the 1519 expedition that first sailed around the world?

Ferdinand Magellan never finished the trip himself, so it fell to Juan Sebastián Elcano to bring the one surviving ship home to Spain in September 1522.

Which slab, found by a French army officer in Egypt in 1799, became the key to reading hieroglyphs?

The Rosetta Stone repeats one decree of 196 BC in hieroglyphic, Demotic and Ancient Greek, and that repetition is what let scholars crack the Egyptian scripts.

Which empire built Machu Picchu around 1450, shaping its stone blocks to fit together without any mortar?

Inca builders are thought to have raised it as an estate for the emperor Pachacuti, and the outside world only heard of it in 1911 through Hiram Bingham.

Which Roman town near Naples was buried under 4 to 6 metres of volcanic ash and pumice in AD 79?

Pompeii's victims decayed inside the hardened ash, leaving hollows that archaeologists filled to make casts of people in their final moments.

Which river delivers about a fifth of all river water reaching the oceans, more than the next seven combined?

The Amazon enters Brazil with only a fifth of its final flow, yet is already bigger at that point than any other river on Earth.

Where in the western Pacific is Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the oceans at almost 11,000 metres?

The Mariana Trench is so deep that Mount Everest, set down inside it, would have its summit more than 2 km underwater.

Which capital was founded in 1913 as a compromise between two rival cities, Sydney and Melbourne?

Canberra had to be built in New South Wales yet at least 100 miles from Sydney, and Melbourne served as the temporary capital in the meantime.

Which pharaoh's tomb, holding over 5,000 artefacts, did Howard Carter's team discover in Egypt in November 1922?

Tutankhamun's tomb had escaped the archaeologists because it sat so close to another tomb that digging there would have blocked the tourists.

Which explorer led the party of five that became the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911?

Roald Amundsen kept his goal secret even from his own crew, telling them at Madeira and only then cabling the news to his rival Robert Falcon Scott.

Which Japanese city, an army headquarters and embarkation port, was the target of the first atomic bomb used in war?

Hiroshima was the primary target on 6 August 1945, with Kokura and Nagasaki named as the alternatives; the bomb itself was code-named Little Boy.

Which strait, the narrowest used for international shipping, divides Istanbul between Europe and Asia?

The Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and at its tightest point the two banks are just 700 m apart.

Which lake, the world's deepest and oldest, holds more water than all of North America's Great Lakes combined?

Lake Baikal is 25 to 30 million years old and 1,642 m deep, and it holds more than a fifth of all the fresh surface water on Earth.

Which dormant volcano, made of three cones called Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira, is the highest mountain in Africa?

Kilimanjaro is also the highest free-standing mountain in the world, rising 4,900 m above the plateau at its base.

Which autonomous territory of Denmark has almost no roads between its towns because fjords cut up the coast?

Greenland is the world's largest island, and an ice sheet covers 81% of its area.

Which country's parliament, the Althing, was founded in 930, making it one of the oldest legislatures in the world?

Iceland's Althing first met outdoors at Thingvellir, the 'assembly fields', about 45 km east of the site of the present capital.

Which empire ended in 1453 when the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II stormed its capital, Constantinople?

The Byzantine Empire was the last of the Roman state, which had lasted nearly 1,500 years, and its walls fell to cannons firing 500 kg balls.

Which document did King John of England seal at Runnymede in 1215 under pressure from rebel barons?

Magna Carta was soon annulled by Pope Innocent III, yet three of its clauses, reissued in 1297, remain in force in England and Wales.

Which South American country lost its entire coastline to Chile in an 1879–83 war yet keeps a navy?

Bolivia marks a Day of the Sea every year to restate its claim to the coast, and its navy patrols Lake Titicaca instead.

Which 12th-century temple, built for the Hindu god Vishnu, is ranked the largest religious structure in the world?

Angkor Wat slowly became a Buddhist temple from the late 13th century, and a depiction of it appears on Cambodia's national flag.

Which river flows through or along ten countries on its way from the Black Forest to the Black Sea?

The Danube passes through four national capitals, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade, more than any other river in the world.

Which Mali ruler gave away so much gold in Cairo in 1324 that its value there is said to have dropped?

Mansa Musa was passing through on his pilgrimage to Mecca, and back home he recruited scholars who helped turn Timbuktu into a centre of Islamic learning.

Which volcano's 1883 eruption was heard 4,800 km away near Mauritius and killed more than 36,000 people?

Krakatoa's third blast that day is the loudest sound ever measured, and its pressure wave circled the globe more than three times.

Which mountain range, about 2,500 km long, separates European Russia from Siberia and so divides Europe from Asia?

The Urals are among the oldest mountain ranges on Earth, by some estimates 250 to 300 million years old, and became Russia's largest mineral base.

Which country became independent in 1965 when Malaysia's parliament voted unanimously to cut it from the federation?

Singapore became a sovereign state that same day, 9 August, after a 126–0 vote taken with none of its governing party's members in the chamber.

Which country flies the only national flag that is not a rectangle, a double pennant taller than it is wide?

Nepal's flag joins the pennants of two rival branches of the ruling dynasty, and until 1962 its sun and moon had human faces.

Which city, carved from rose-coloured sandstone, was the capital of the Nabataean Kingdom from the second century BC?

Petra grew rich as a hub on the incense trade routes, then lay unknown to the Western world until a traveller rediscovered it in 1812.

Which North African city, the capital of a Punic empire, did Rome destroy in 146 BC after a three-year siege?

Carthage was rebuilt on the same ground by Julius Caesar, and by the first century it was the second-largest city in the western Roman Empire.

Which lake, Africa's largest by area, did John Hanning Speke reach in 1858 and declare the source of the Nile?

Lake Victoria was named by Speke for his queen, and his claim outraged his travelling partner Richard Burton, who thought the question unsettled.

Which river rises on the Tibetan Plateau and passes Laos and Cambodia before fanning into a delta in southern Vietnam?

When the Mekong floods, it forces a tributary, the Tonlé Sap, to flow backwards, sending the floodwater upstream.

Which waterfall, the world's tallest at 979 m, is named after a US aviator who flew over it in 1933?

Angel Falls in Venezuela bears the name of Jimmie Angel, who was hunting for an ore bed and later wrecked his plane trying to land on the plateau above.

Which African country is the only one in the world that lies entirely above 1,000 metres in elevation?

Lesotho's lowest point, at 1,400 m, is the highest low point of any country, and South Africa surrounds it on every side.

Which mountain, the highest in the Americas at nearly 7,000 m, is also the tallest anywhere outside Asia?

Aconcagua stands in the Andes of Argentina and is the second most prominent peak in the world, as well as one of the Seven Summits.

Which African country is named after a ruined medieval city whose 11-metre stone walls were built without mortar?

Zimbabwe takes its name from Great Zimbabwe, the largest stone structure in precolonial southern Africa, which was abandoned in the 16th or 17th century.

Which country was the only one in Southeast Asia never colonised by a European power, serving instead as a buffer state?

Thailand, then called Siam, was kept as a buffer between British and French territory, though it gave up land and trade rights in unequal treaties.

Which leader, born a slave in Saint-Domingue, made himself governor for life in 1801 but died in a French jail?

Toussaint Louverture died in 1803 at the Fort de Joux, months before the colony he had led declared its independence as Haiti on 1 January 1804.

Which Central Asian country is one of only two in the world that are doubly landlocked, alongside tiny Liechtenstein?

Uzbekistan is ringed by five neighbours, Afghanistan and four fellow 'stans', and every one of them is landlocked too.

Which 1648 settlement, signed in the cities of Osnabrück and Münster, ended the Thirty Years' War?

The Peace of Westphalia took 109 delegations years to hammer out, and they never once met together in a single full session.

Which sea, bounded by four Atlantic currents instead of coasts, is the only named sea with no land boundary?

The Sargasso Sea takes its name from the brown seaweed drifting on it, and European and American eels cross the ocean to spawn there.

Which Pacific island republic, the world's third-smallest country, was strip-mined for phosphate for about a century?

Nauru's mines once made its people among the richest in the world, but the reserves gave out in the 1990s and the money was mismanaged.

Which country, home of the ancient kingdom of Kush, holds about 255 pyramids, more than Egypt itself?

Sudan's pyramids were tombs for Kushite royalty, and in the 1830s the treasure hunter Giuseppe Ferlini raided and demolished several of them.