50 Fun Facts About Islands

What is the world's largest island?

Australia is usually counted as a continent rather than an island; the island's ice sheet covers 81% of it.

According to the sagas, why did Erik the Red give the world's largest island its pleasant-sounding name?

He had been exiled from Iceland along with his father, who had committed manslaughter.

Roughly what proportion of the world's largest island is covered by its ice sheet?

The island's population of about 56,000 makes it the least densely populated country on Earth.

What is the world's second-largest island?

It is split between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and has the highest plant biodiversity of any island.

Borneo, the third-largest island, is shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and which small sultanate?

It sits at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia and is crossed by the equator.

The world's fourth-largest island split from Africa roughly how many million years ago?

Over 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else.

Which island is the world's most populous, with about 158 million people?

It holds about 56% of Indonesia's population on just 7% of its land.

Which is the world's most remote inhabited island, a six-day boat trip from Cape Town?

There is no airstrip, and its one settlement is called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas.

What forced the evacuation of the entire population of the world's remotest inhabited island in 1961?

All 264 islanders took to open boats; most later returned.

The people of Pitcairn Island are descended from the mutineers of which ship?

Nine mutineers and twelve Tahitian women settled it; the population in 2023 was just 35.

Easter Island got its name because Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen arrived on Easter Sunday of which year?

The island's Polynesian name Rapa Nui was coined after slave raids in the 1860s.

Roughly how many moai statues survive on Easter Island?

Chile annexed the island in 1888.

Which country owns the Galápagos Islands, visited by Darwin aboard HMS Beagle in 1835?

They were UNESCO's first natural World Heritage Site in 1978.

The Palm Jumeirah artificial islands are in which city?

Seen from the air they form a trunk, fronds and an outer crescent.

Which of these has uncontacted inhabitants who killed an American missionary trying to land in 2018?

Indian law bans approaching within five kilometres, and the navy patrols the waters.

Brazil's Ilha da Queimada Grande, closed to the public, is famous for what?

The snakes were marooned when sea levels rose after the last ice age; only the navy and vetted researchers may visit.

Socotra, famed for its dragon's blood trees, belongs to which country?

About a third of its plant life grows nowhere else.

The Global Seed Vault sits on which Norwegian Arctic archipelago?

The 1920 Svalbard Treaty recognised Norwegian sovereignty while making it a free economic zone.

Alcatraz federal prison, closed in 1963, was thought escape-proof mainly because of what?

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers vanished in 1962; no bodies were found.

From November 1969, Alcatraz was occupied for 19 months by which group?

About 1.4 million tourists now visit the island each year.

Nelson Mandela spent how many of his 27 prison years on Robben Island?

The island's name comes from the old Dutch word for seals.

Devil's Island penal colony is best known for holding which wrongly convicted officer?

At its worst the colony had a death rate of 75 percent.

The Komodo dragon, the world's largest lizard, can weigh up to how much?

Females have laid fertile eggs without males in zoo cases of parthenogenesis.

Lemurs are found in the wild only on which island?

Their name comes from the Latin for ghosts or spirits of the dead.

The kiwi lays an egg that can weigh up to what proportion of the female's body?

It is the smallest of the ratites and detects prey with nostrils at the tip of its beak.

Great Britain is the largest island in Europe. Where does it rank in the world?

Ireland, to the west, is about 40 per cent of its size.

Which island's most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, Europe's tallest active volcano?

The Strait of Messina separates it from Calabria.

Which of Japan's main islands is the world's seventh-largest and second-most populous?

It holds about 82% of Japan's population.

Bermuda's colony began with the 1609 wreck of which ship, bound for Jamestown?

The survivors built two ships and St George's, founded 1612, is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World.

How many immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954?

The first, on 1 January 1892, was 17-year-old Annie Moore from Cork.

Zanzibar merged with which mainland territory in 1964 to form Tanzania?

Freddie Mercury was born on the island, and Stone Town is a World Heritage Site.

The 1896 Anglo-Zanzibar War, the shortest in history, lasted about how long?

The Royal Navy shelled the palace and a cease-fire followed almost at once.

Sri Lanka's old Arabic name Sarandib gave English which word?

The Portuguese called it Ceilão, anglicised as Ceylon.

Which uninhabited Norwegian dependency in the South Atlantic is the world's most remote speck of land?

It is 93 percent glacier and 1,700 km from Antarctica.

Roughly what share of the world's independent countries are island countries?

Indonesia is the largest and most populous of them.

Sandy Island, shown on Coral Sea maps for over a century, was confirmed not to exist in which year?

It is a classic 'phantom island', a purported island later found never to have existed.

Japan's abandoned Hashima 'Battleship Island' was the villain's lair in which Bond film?

Its coal mine closed in 1974; at its 1959 peak 5,259 people lived on 16 acres.

Sable Island, off Nova Scotia, is famous for its wild horses and for what grim nickname?

More than 350 shipwrecks are recorded on the crescent of sand.

Vulcan Point in the Philippines is remarkable for being what?

It sits in Taal volcano's crater lake, which briefly disappeared after the 2020 eruption.

Graham Island, which surfaced off Sicily in 1831, sparked a sovereignty dispute between how many parties?

It sank again after six months and now lurks six metres below the surface.

Japan's Okunoshima, once a secret poison gas factory, became overrun by which animals?

It is nicknamed Usagi Shima, Rabbit Island.

Where in the Channel Islands are cars banned, leaving only tractors, bicycles and horse-drawn carts?

It became the world's first Dark Sky Island in 2011 and was a feudal fiefdom until 2008.

Nauru, the third-smallest country, grew briefly rich by strip-mining what?

The reserves ran out in the 1990s and it now hosts an Australian detention centre.

Mexico's Isla de las Muñecas holds a Guinness record for the world's largest collection of what?

Its former owner hung dolls all over the chinampa in Xochimilco's canals.

Canada and Denmark ended the 'Whisky War' in 2022 by splitting which tiny Arctic rock roughly in half?

For years each side left a bottle of its national spirit and a flag when it visited.

Which of these is an oceanic island type, formed from coral reefs, rather than a continental island?

Oceanic islands were never part of a continent; continental islands split off through plate tectonics.

What did the Dutch name their 1626 settlement on Manhattan?

It became New York in 1664 after the Duke of York.

Bermuda's House of Assembly dates from which year, making it one of the world's oldest legislatures?

Islanders famously march at the Olympics in Bermuda shorts.

Easter Island's population fell to a low of how many native inhabitants by 1877 after disease and slave raids?

Peruvian raiders in the 1860s and emigration to Tahiti had devastated a population once 2,000-3,000 strong.

Which archipelago's marine reserve is second in size only to the Great Barrier Reef and became a whale sanctuary?

UNESCO took them off its endangered list in 2010.