50 Fun Facts About Icebreaker

Which mythical creature, a heraldic symbol since the 12th century, is Scotland's national animal?

Unicorn imagery suited Scotland because the beast was believed to be the natural enemy of the lion, a symbol English royals had adopted. Both animals now support the United Kingdom's royal arms.

Which burrowing Australian marsupial leaves cube-shaped droppings that won researchers an Ig Nobel Prize?

Wombat droppings are thought to be cubes so that they stack and stay put where the animal leaves them to signal its territory. Round ones would roll away.

Which planet spins so slowly that one full turn on its axis takes longer than its year?

Venus needs 243 Earth days to rotate once but only about 225 to circle the Sun. It also spins backwards compared with most planets.

Which sweet food does not spoil when stored properly, because most microorganisms cannot grow in it?

Honey is so sugary and acidic that bacteria cannot take hold, and objects sealed in it have been preserved for centuries.

Which country spans the most time zones, thanks to territories scattered across several oceans?

France uses 12 time zones once its overseas territories are counted, though the mainland keeps just one, Central European Time.

In which country did a Greek-born restaurateur invent Hawaiian pizza, experimenting with canned pineapple?

Canada gave the world Hawaiian pizza when Sam Panopoulos tried pineapple on a pie at his Ontario restaurant in 1962. The name came from the brand of canned fruit he used.

Which African country, once home to the kingdom of Kush, has more ancient pyramids than Egypt?

Sudan holds roughly 255 pyramids, built by Kushite rulers as tombs for their kings and queens. Many of them stand at Meroë, a later capital of the kingdom.

Aircraft flight recorders, nicknamed black boxes, are required to be painted which bright color?

Orange paint helps search teams spot the recorders in wreckage. One account traces the nickname to wartime radar gear, which was housed in dark, non-reflective cases.

Which children's modeling compound was first sold in the 1930s as a wallpaper cleaner?

Play-Doh was made to lift coal soot off walls, and found its real audience after a nursery school teacher let her class model with it. She persuaded the makers to relaunch it for children in the 1950s.

Which of these fruits counts as a true berry in botany, even though the strawberry and raspberry do not?

Banana flesh grows from a single flower's ovary with the seeds inside, which is what makes a berry to a botanist. Grapes and tomatoes qualify too.

Which sea animal has three hearts, two of them devoted to pumping blue blood through its gills?

Octopus blood is bluish because it carries oxygen with hemocyanin rather than hemoglobin. The main heart goes quiet whenever the animal swims.

Which sinister-sounding word, one of the old 'terms of venery', is the collective name for a group of crows?

Murder is one of the fanciful group names that courtly hunters coined for animals. Most such terms, this one included, had fallen out of everyday use by the 16th century.

Which Arctic mammal has black skin and hollow, transparent guard hairs that only appear to be white?

Polar bear fur has no pigment and looks white only because it scatters light. The coat turns yellowish as the animal spends more time in the sun.

Which tree-dwelling mammal climbs down to the ground only about once a week, to relieve itself?

Three-toed sloths dig a hole for the purpose and cover it afterwards. Why a sloth risks the trip instead of going from the branches is still debated among biologists.

Which slow-swimming fish of the North Atlantic can live for centuries, longer than any other vertebrate?

Greenland shark lifespans are estimated at 272 years at the very least. The oldest one studied was put at about 392 years, give or take 120.

In which country did restaurateur Caesar Cardini invent the Caesar salad on a busy Fourth of July in 1924?

Mexico is the home of the Caesar salad: Cardini, an Italian immigrant, threw it together at his Tijuana restaurant when the kitchen was overwhelmed and short of ingredients.

Fortune cookies most likely grew out of cookies made by immigrants to the United States from which country?

Japan has a similar-looking cookie, made in Kyoto as far back as the 19th century and tied to a temple tradition of random fortunes. Despite their place on restaurant menus, the cookies are not Chinese in origin.

Which fairground treat was invented in 1897 by a dentist, William Morrison, working with a confectioner?

Cotton candy reached a wide public at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, where it was sold by the box under the name Fairy Floss.

Which frozen treat began in 1905, when an 11-year-old left a powdered soft drink mix outside overnight?

Popsicle inventor Frank Epperson waited until 1923 to sell his frozen pops, at an amusement park in California. He patented the idea a year later as the Epsicle.

Which popular snack is really a legume, related to beans and lentils, with pods that ripen underground?

Peanut flowers bloom above ground, then send a stalk called a peg down into the soil, where the pods form. Linnaeus named the species hypogaea, Greek for 'under the earth'.

Which purpose-built city became Australia's capital as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne?

Canberra had to be built in New South Wales but at least 100 miles from Sydney, under the deal that ended the dispute. Melbourne hosted the government while building went on.

Which Asian country's flag, made of two stacked pennants, is the only national flag that is not rectangular?

Nepal's flag combines the two separate pennons once flown by rival branches of its ruling dynasty. It is also the only national flag that is taller than it is wide.

Which continent gets so little precipitation that it ranks as the largest desert in the world?

Antarctica outranks even the Sahara, the largest hot desert, which comes only third in the world rankings. The dry cold preserves meteorites there for more than a million years.

Panama hats, despite the name, are a straw hat that originated in which other Latin American country?

Ecuador's woven hats were shipped to the Isthmus of Panama before sailing on to buyers abroad, and they took the name of the place where they were sold. They are still made in the country today.

Which Hawaiian volcano is often called the world's tallest mountain when measured from its base on the ocean floor?

Mauna Kea rises about 9,330 meters from the seabed, though less than half of that shows above the waves. Its high, dry summit is one of the best sites on Earth for telescopes.

Which sea in the North Atlantic is the only one bounded by ocean currents instead of land?

Sargasso Sea waters are named after the brown Sargassum seaweed that floats there. Columbus, crossing in 1492, feared the weed would trap his ship.

Which sultanate lost a war to Britain in 1896 that was over in less than an hour, the shortest on record?

Zanzibar's new sultan had taken the throne without the British consul's permission, so warships shelled his palace. The fighting lasted between 38 and 45 minutes.

Which city of over 15 million people straddles the Bosphorus, with districts in both Europe and Asia?

Istanbul's European and Asian sides were first joined by a permanent bridge only in 1973. Trains have run beneath the strait since the Marmaray Tunnel opened in 2013.

Which country launched the first nuclear-powered surface ship in 1957, an icebreaker for its Arctic sea routes?

Soviet Union planners chose nuclear power for the Lenin because a ship working in such remote waters could go without regular refueling. The vessel is now a museum ship in Murmansk.

The bee hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world, is native to which Caribbean island?

Cuba's bee hummingbird, known locally as the zunzuncito, is the smallest living bird. Because birds count as dinosaurs, it has also been called the smallest known dinosaur.

Which Hollywood figure holds the record for most Academy Awards won by one person, with 22 Oscars?

Walt Disney also holds the record for nominations, with 59. One of his last productions, Mary Poppins, received five Academy Awards.

Which British prime minister won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature for his histories and his speeches?

Winston Churchill had been nominated 23 times since 1946 before he won. His books include a multivolume history of the Second World War and a life of his ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough.

Which country offered Albert Einstein its largely ceremonial presidency in 1952, an offer he declined?

Israel's prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, made the offer after the death of President Weizmann. Einstein wrote that he was deeply moved, but saddened and ashamed that he could not accept.

The Great Fire of London in 1666 started shortly after midnight in what kind of business on Pudding Lane?

Bakery owner Thomas Farriner saw his premises catch light early on a Sunday, and the wind fanned the flames into a firestorm. On the Tuesday the blaze destroyed Old St Paul's Cathedral.

Which day of the week takes its name from Thor, the Norse god of thunder?

Thursday was the day of Thunor, the Old English form of the god, and most Germanic languages follow suit: Torsdag in Swedish, Donnerstag in German. Romance languages name the day after Jupiter instead.

Which symbol's name is a slurred form of 'and per se and', the way the character was once spelled aloud?

Ampersand began as a spelling habit: any character that could stand as a word on its own was recited with the Latin 'per se', meaning by itself. The sign itself goes back to Roman times.

Which word, paired with 'jot' in the King James Bible, names the dot over a lowercase i or j?

Tittle stands in Matthew 5:18 for the tiniest written detail of the law. In English the dot appears only on those two letters, though other languages dot more of them.

Which English word comes from the Venetian for 'forty days', the time ships once had to wait?

Quarantine followed the trentino, a thirty-day isolation first imposed in 1377 at Ragusa, modern Dubrovnik. During the plague, nobody aboard an arriving ship could go ashore until the period was up.

Which facial hair style is named after a Union general of the Civil War, with the halves of his surname swapped?

Sideburns were first called burnsides, after the thick whiskers General Ambrose Burnside joined with a mustache while keeping his chin clean-shaven. The word flipped during the 19th century.

Which name did Bell Labs workers invent in the 1960s for the # symbol on telephone keypads?

Octothorpe was coined when the company added an eleventh and a twelfth key to the keypad and needed names for the symbols on them. The word first turned up in a US patent in 1973.

Which planet is the only one in the Solar System less dense than water, so that in theory it would float?

Saturn has only an eighth of Earth's average density, yet it is over 95 times more massive. It is about 30 percent less dense than water.

Which element was first detected in sunlight during an 1868 eclipse, decades before it was found on Earth?

Helium showed up as an unknown yellow line in the Sun's spectrum, and astronomer Norman Lockyer named the new element after the Sun. It was finally found seeping from a uranium ore in 1895.

Which eight-legged micro-animals, also known as moss piglets, have survived exposure to outer space?

Tardigrades can suspend their metabolism and dry out into a dormant state called a tun, which resists vacuum, radiation and extreme cold. A German zoologist first described them in 1773.

Which sport did astronaut Alan Shepard bring to the Moon in 1971, hitting two balls in his bulky spacesuit?

Golf reached the Moon because Shepard had fixed a six-iron head to the handle of a sampling tool for the Apollo 14 mission. One of the balls ended up in a crater.

Which sport, invented at a Massachusetts YMCA in 1895, was originally called mintonette by its creator?

Volleyball was meant by its inventor, William Morgan, to be less physically demanding than basketball. He based it on badminton, which is where the first name came from.

In which sport is a run of three strikes in a row known as a turkey?

Bowling also has a 'wild turkey' for six strikes in a row and a 'golden turkey' for nine. Two in a row is merely a double.

Which 1995 release was the first feature-length film made entirely with computer animation?

Toy Story was also the first feature produced by Pixar, and it earned director John Lasseter a Special Achievement Academy Award in 1996.

In L. Frank Baum's original Oz novel, what color are Dorothy's magic shoes, later ruby on film?

Silver shoes carry Dorothy home in the 1900 book, and screenwriter Noel Langley changed them to red for the 1939 movie.

Which British duo's song about radio's decline was the first music video shown when MTV launched in 1981?

The Buggles opened the channel with Video Killed the Radio Star one minute past midnight on August 1. Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, the pair behind it, had by then joined the rock band Yes.

Which American humorist called small talk 'a mere ice-breaker' in an 1883 memoir of his steamboat years?

Mark Twain used the word in Life on the Mississippi for a chat that two traveling salesmen struck up over a late breakfast. The idea of breaking the ice with a stranger is far older: Shakespeare used it in The Taming of the Shrew.