50 Fun Facts About Trivia for Kids

Which is the fastest land animal?

It can hit 100 km/h in short bursts, but only for a few hundred metres before it has to stop and cool down.

Which is the largest animal known to have ever lived?

Some blue whales reach around 30 metres long, and even the biggest dinosaurs were lighter than a full-grown one.

Which is the tallest land animal on Earth?

A giraffe's neck alone can be about 2 metres long, yet it has only seven neck bones, the same number as a human.

Which is the largest planet in the Solar System?

More than 1,300 Earths could fit inside it, and its Great Red Spot is a storm bigger than our whole planet.

Which planet is closest to the Sun?

Even though it is closest to the Sun, it is not the hottest planet, because it has almost no atmosphere to trap the heat.

Which planet is nicknamed the Red Planet?

The rusty colour comes from iron oxide, the same stuff that makes an old bike go rusty, covering its dusty surface.

Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?

He stepped onto the surface in July 1969, and his footprints are probably still there because the Moon has no wind or rain to wipe them away.

Which is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level?

It sits on the border of Nepal and China and is still growing a few millimetres every year as the plates push together.

Which is the largest and deepest ocean on Earth?

It covers about a third of the planet's surface, more than all the land on Earth put together.

Which is the largest hot desert in the world?

It stretches across northern Africa and is almost as big as the whole United States, though only the icy deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic are larger.

Which continent is, on average, the coldest, driest and windiest?

Temperatures there have dropped as low as minus 90 degrees Celsius, and almost nobody lives there apart from visiting scientists.

What is a baby kangaroo called?

A newborn is only about the size of a jelly bean when it climbs into its mother's pouch to finish growing.

How many hearts does an octopus have?

One heart pumps blood around the body while the other two push it through the gills, and its blood is blue rather than red.

Roughly how many bones does an adult human have?

Babies are actually born with around 270 bones, but many of them fuse together as a child grows.

How many keys does a modern piano have?

Fifty-two of the keys are white and 36 are black, and a full-size piano has more than 200 strings inside it.

How many squares are on a chessboard?

The board is 8 squares by 8 squares, and each player starts with 16 pieces lined up on the two rows nearest to them.

In basketball, how high off the floor is the top of the rim?

That height, about 3 metres, has stayed the same since the game was invented in 1891 using peach baskets nailed to a balcony.

How many interlocking rings are on the Olympic flag?

The rings are blue, yellow, black, green and red, and they stand for the inhabited continents of the world joined together.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from the people of which country?

Its inner metal frame was built by Gustave Eiffel, the same engineer whose company later built the famous tower in Paris.

Which Italian city is home to a famous bell tower with a nearly four-degree lean?

The tower started tilting while it was still being built in the 1100s, because the ground underneath was too soft to hold it up straight.

Which are the only mammals capable of true, sustained flight?

Flying squirrels and sugar gliders can only glide, but a bat flaps its wings and flies for real, and many find their way in the dark using echoes.

Which is the largest living land animal?

A full-grown male can stand over 3 metres tall at the shoulder and eat more than 100 kilograms of plants in a single day.

A caterpillar turns into a butterfly inside what?

Inside, the caterpillar's body almost completely breaks down and rebuilds itself into a butterfly with wings.

Which planet has a bright, wide system of rings made mostly of ice?

The rings look solid from Earth but are made of countless chunks of ice and rock, some as small as dust and some as big as houses.

Which is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun?

It is so far away that it takes about 165 Earth years to travel once around the Sun, and it has only completed one full orbit since it was discovered in 1846.

What is the name of the process plants use to turn sunlight into food?

As a bonus, the process releases the oxygen that people and animals breathe.

Kitty Hawk, site of the Wright brothers' 1903 flight, is in which US state?

Their very first flight lasted just 12 seconds and covered about 37 metres, shorter than the wingspan of a modern jumbo jet.

The ocean liner Titanic sank on her maiden voyage in April of which year?

The ship was sailing from Southampton in England to New York when it struck an iceberg late at night.

Who painted the Mona Lisa?

The painting hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris and is surprisingly small, not much bigger than a large poster.

Who wrote the play Romeo and Juliet?

The same playwright also wrote Hamlet and Macbeth, and he invented or popularised hundreds of English words still used today.

What is the name of the school of magic in the Harry Potter books?

Students are sorted into four houses, and the school's motto warns, in Latin, never to tickle a sleeping dragon.

In the book Charlotte's Web, what kind of animal is Charlotte?

Charlotte saves her friend Wilbur the pig by weaving words like "Some Pig" into her web so the farmer will not eat him.

Who wrote and illustrated the 1957 children's book The Cat in the Hat?

The whole book uses only about 236 different words, because it was written to help young children learn to read.

In which year was Mickey Mouse created?

His first big hit was the cartoon Steamboat Willie, one of the first cartoons with sound that matched the picture.

The Lego company is based in which country?

The name comes from the Danish words "leg godt", which mean "play well", and the very first Lego toys were made of wood.

What does a giant panda mostly eat?

A panda spends around 12 hours a day eating and can munch through more than 12 kilograms of it, because it is not very nutritious.

What do a camel's humps mainly store?

Many people think the humps hold water, but they are really stores of fat the camel can live off when food is scarce.

Owls can turn their heads as much as how many degrees?

Their eyes are fixed in their sockets and cannot swivel, so an owl has to turn its whole head to look around.

A dolphin is which type of animal?

Like people, dolphins breathe air, are warm-blooded and feed their babies milk; they come up to the surface to breathe through a blowhole.

At sea level, water boils at what temperature?

High up a mountain, where the air pressure is lower, water boils at a lower temperature, which is why cooking takes longer there.

How many primary, or baby, teeth do children usually have?

The baby teeth fall out to make room for a set of up to 32 permanent teeth, including the four wisdom teeth.

How many players does each team have on the pitch in a soccer match?

One of the eleven is the goalkeeper, the only player allowed to use their hands and arms during normal play.

Chameleons are best known for being able to do what?

They also have eyes that can look in two different directions at once and a sticky tongue that can be longer than their body.

Which is the largest living bird?

It cannot fly, but it can run faster than any other bird and lays the biggest eggs of any land animal alive today.

Which is the hottest planet in the Solar System?

Its thick blanket of clouds traps heat so well that the surface is hot enough to melt lead, even hotter than the planet nearest the Sun.

Which is the largest country in the world by area?

It is so wide that it stretches across eleven time zones, so when people are eating breakfast at one end, others are going to bed at the other.

Which is the smallest country in the world by area?

It sits entirely inside the city of Rome and is small enough to walk all the way around in under an hour.

What is the capital city of Japan?

More people live in the wider metropolitan area than in any other city region on Earth.

Which famous composer kept writing music even as he lost his hearing?

He wrote some of his most famous works, including his Ninth Symphony, when he could barely hear at all.

Alexander Graham Bell is credited with patenting the first practical version of which invention?

He got his patent in 1876, and he later refused to have one of the devices in his own study because he found it a distraction.