100 Fun Facts About Trivia for Kids

Which is the fastest land animal?

The cheetah can hit about 100 km/h in short bursts, but only for a few hundred metres before it must 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?

Jupiter is so big that more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside it, and its Great Red Spot is a storm wider than our whole planet.

Which planet is closest to the Sun?

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, circling it once every 88 Earth days, and it has almost no atmosphere to hold on to heat.

Which planet is nicknamed the Red Planet?

Mars looks red because its dusty surface is coated in iron oxide, the same rust that forms on an old bike.

Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?

Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon on 20 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?

Mount Everest, 8,849 metres high, sits on the border of Nepal and China and keeps growing a few millimetres a year as the plates push together.

Which is the largest and deepest ocean on Earth?

The Pacific covers about a third of the planet's surface, more than all the land on Earth put together, and holds the deepest spot, the Mariana Trench.

Which is the largest hot desert in the world?

The Sahara stretches across northern Africa and is almost as big as the whole United States; only the icy deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic are larger.

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

Antarctica recorded the coldest air temperature ever measured, about minus 89 degrees Celsius at Vostok Station in 1983, and nobody lives there permanently apart from visiting scientists.

What is a baby kangaroo called?

A baby kangaroo is called a joey; 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?

An octopus has three hearts: one 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?

An adult has 206 bones; babies are born with around 270, but many of them fuse together as a child grows.

How many keys does a modern piano have?

A modern piano has 88 keys, 52 white and 36 black, and a full-size piano has more than 200 strings inside it.

How many squares are on a chessboard?

A chessboard has 64 squares, 8 rows by 8 columns, and each player starts with 16 pieces lined up on the two rows nearest them.

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

The rim is 10 feet (about 3 metres) high, unchanged since James Naismith nailed peach baskets to a gym balcony in 1891.

How many interlocking rings are on the Olympic flag?

The five 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?

France gave the statue, dedicated in 1886; its inner metal frame was built by Gustave Eiffel, whose company later built the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

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

The Leaning Tower of Pisa started tilting while it was being built in the 1100s, because the soft ground beneath could not hold it straight.

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

Bats flap their wings and truly fly, while flying squirrels and sugar gliders can only glide; many bats find their way in the dark using echoes.

Which is the largest living land animal?

The African elephant is the biggest land animal; a full-grown male can stand over 3 metres at the shoulder and eat more than 100 kilograms of plants in a day.

A caterpillar turns into a butterfly inside what?

Inside the chrysalis, 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?

Saturn's 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?

Neptune is so far out that it takes about 165 Earth years to orbit the Sun, and in 2011 it completed only its first full orbit since its discovery in 1846.

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

Photosynthesis uses sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to make sugar, and as a bonus it releases the oxygen that people and animals breathe.

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

Kitty Hawk is on North Carolina's Outer Banks; the first flight on 17 December 1903 lasted just 12 seconds and covered about 37 metres, shorter than a jumbo jet's wingspan.

The ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in which year?

Titanic went down in the early hours of 15 April 1912, sailing from Southampton in England to New York, after striking an iceberg late at night.

Who painted the Mona Lisa?

Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa in the early 1500s; it hangs in the Louvre in Paris and is surprisingly small, about 77 by 53 centimetres.

Who wrote the play Romeo and Juliet?

William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in the 1590s; he also wrote Hamlet and Macbeth, and he coined or popularised hundreds of English words.

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

Hogwarts sorts students into four houses, and its Latin motto, Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus, warns never to tickle a sleeping dragon.

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

A spider: Charlotte weaves words like 'Some Pig' into her web so the farmer will not eat her friend Wilbur.

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

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) wrote and drew The Cat in the Hat using only 236 different words, because it was meant to help young children learn to read.

In which year was Mickey Mouse created?

Mickey Mouse debuted in 1928; his first big hit, Steamboat Willie, came out in November that year and was one of the first cartoons with synchronised sound.

The Lego company is based in which country?

Lego is based in Billund, Denmark; the name comes from the Danish words 'leg godt', meaning 'play well', and the first Lego toys were made of wood.

What does a giant panda mostly eat?

Bamboo makes up almost all of a giant panda's diet; it spends around 12 hours a day eating and can munch more than 12 kilograms, because bamboo 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?

An owl can rotate its head about 270 degrees because its eyes are fixed in their sockets and cannot swivel, so it must turn its whole head to look around.

A dolphin is which type of animal?

Dolphins are mammals: like people they breathe air, are warm-blooded and feed their babies milk, surfacing to breathe through a blowhole.

At sea level, water boils at what temperature?

Water boils at 100 °C at sea level; high on a mountain, where air pressure is lower, it boils at a lower temperature, which is why cooking takes longer there.

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

Children usually have 20 baby teeth, which fall out to make room for up to 32 permanent teeth, including the four wisdom teeth.

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

Each side fields 11, one of them 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?

Chameleons change colour with mood, light and temperature; they also have eyes that look in two directions at once and a sticky tongue that can be longer than their body.

Which is the largest living bird?

The ostrich cannot fly, but it can run faster than any other bird, about 70 km/h, and lays the biggest eggs of any living land animal.

Which is the hottest planet in the Solar System?

Venus is hottest because its thick blanket of clouds traps heat; the surface reaches about 465 °C, hot enough to melt lead and hotter than Mercury.

Which is the largest country in the world by area?

Russia covers about 17 million square kilometres and spans eleven time zones, so people at one end are eating breakfast while others at the far end are going to bed.

Which is the smallest country in the world by area?

Vatican City, about half a square kilometre, sits entirely inside Rome and is small enough to walk all the way around in under an hour.

What is the capital city of Japan?

Tokyo has been Japan's capital since 1868, when the emperor moved there from Kyoto; its metropolitan area is home to well over 30 million people.

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

Beethoven wrote some of his most famous works, including the Ninth Symphony, when he could barely hear at all, and once recorded his despair about it in a letter to his brothers.

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

Bell's telephone patent was granted in March 1876; he is said to have kept no telephone in his own study because he found it a distraction.

Which Arctic animal has black skin under a pale coat of hollow, see-through hairs?

Polar bear hairs are hollow, which helps the animal trap heat and float in the water. It is also the largest bear and the largest meat-eater on land.

Which fish swims upright and leaves the father to carry the eggs in a pouch until they hatch?

Seahorse mothers place up to 1,500 eggs in the male's pouch, and he later pushes the babies out with muscular squeezes.

Laika, the first animal to orbit Earth aboard Sputnik 2, was which kind of animal?

A dog picked up as a stray from the streets of Moscow, Laika flew in 1957 to show that a living thing could survive a launch into orbit.

Which Australian animal sleeps up to twenty hours a day and eats mostly eucalyptus leaves?

Koala meals are low in energy and contain toxins that put most other animals off the leaves.

Which organ uses about a fifth of the body's energy but makes up only about 2% of body weight?

Brain tissue runs mostly on sugar from the blood, and its energy use hardly changes over time, even though an adult's weighs only about 1.2 to 1.4 kilograms.

Which tiny birds can hover at flowers and include the smallest bird in the world?

Hummingbirds make their humming sound with wings that can beat up to 99 times a second. The smallest, the bee hummingbird, weighs about 2 grams.

What do we call molten rock once it has erupted from a volcano onto Earth's surface?

Lava is simply magma that has reached the surface, and most of it flows about as thickly as ketchup.

Which sugary liquid do bees collect from flowers and turn into honey?

Nectar is made by plants in special glands called nectaries, as a sweet reward that draws in the animals that pollinate them.

Which gemstone, made of pure carbon, is the hardest natural material known?

Diamond is hard enough to tip industrial cutting and polishing tools, yet it is built from the same element as soft graphite.

In Pixar's 'Toy Story', which toy arrives as Andy's birthday present and becomes his new favourite?

Buzz Lightyear starts the first film convinced that he is the real space hero rather than a toy, unlike the playthings around him.

What is a young frog called while it still has a tail and breathes through gills?

A tadpole swims with its tail and even has a fish-like lateral line, features that the adults may no longer have.

Which big cat lives in family groups called prides, where the females usually hunt together?

Lion prides are built around related females and their cubs, joined by one or a few adult males who are not related to them.

Which seabird's father balances the egg on his feet for over two months of dark, stormy winter?

Emperor penguin fathers wrap the egg in loose skin and feathers on top of their feet while the mother goes back to the sea to feed.

Which furry Australian animal lays eggs, and has males with venomous spurs on their back feet?

Platypus hunting is done with eyes, ears and nostrils shut, using a sense that picks up the electric signals of prey underwater.

Which plant-eating dinosaur had kite-shaped plates along its back and spikes on its tail?

Stegosaurus plates still puzzle scientists, who have long debated what they were for. With a short neck and small head, it most likely ate low bushes.

Which bird of prey holds arrows and an olive branch on the Great Seal of the United States?

The bald eagle on the seal turns its head toward the olive branch, a sign that the United States prefers peace to war.

Frogs, toads and salamanders belong to which group of animals that usually start life in water?

Amphibians usually hatch as water-living larvae with gills and grow into air-breathing adults with lungs, a change called metamorphosis.

Which animal's shadow do crowds look for each February 2 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania?

Groundhog Day lore says that a shadow means six more weeks of winter, though studies have found no real link with the arrival of spring.

In Disney's 'Frozen', which snowman built by Elsa dreams of seeing summer?

Olaf was first written as one of a whole legion of snowman guards at Elsa's castle before he became the film's friendly sidekick.

In Pixar's 'Finding Nemo', Nemo and his father Marlin are which kind of fish?

Clownfish got the part after the director saw a photograph of two of them peeking out of an anemone, their shelter from predators.

Which galaxy, seen from Earth as a hazy band of light in the night sky, contains the Solar System?

The Milky Way is a barred spiral, and the Solar System sits about 27,000 light-years from its centre, on the inner edge of the Orion Arm.

The Sun, which holds about 99.86% of the Solar System's mass, is which kind of object?

A star sits at the centre of the Solar System: the Sun, whose mass is around 330,000 times that of Earth.

Which icy visitor, seen roughly every 74 to 79 years, is named after an English astronomer?

Halley's Comet last came by in 1986 and is due back in mid-2061. Edmond Halley worked out in 1705 that the old sightings were one object returning.

Which force pulls a dropped ball toward the ground and gives everything on Earth weight?

Gravity is also behind the ocean's lunar tides, and it even helps to guide the way plants grow.

Which event happens when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, hiding the Sun from view?

A solar eclipse is total only along a narrow track across Earth, where the Moon's dark outline lets the Sun's faint corona show.

Which gas, making up about a fifth of the air around us, do people need to breathe to stay alive?

Oxygen makes up only about 21% of dry air; the largest share by far, about 78%, is nitrogen.

Which metal, the main ingredient of steel, forms much of Earth's inner and outer core?

Iron is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, and its alloys such as steel are by far the most widely used industrial metals.

Which process turns liquid water into a gas, drying puddles and cooling skin as sweat disappears?

Evaporation carries heat away as it happens, which is why sweat cools the human body. It is also an essential part of the water cycle.

Which navigation tool uses a magnetised needle that swings to line up with magnetic north?

The compass began in Han dynasty China as a fortune-telling device, and was only adopted for navigation centuries later.

What do we call a scientist who digs up and studies fossils, such as dinosaur bones?

A paleontologist studies all the life of the past, mainly but not only through fossils, so the job covers far more than dinosaurs.

Which river flows north through the Nubian Desert and Egypt to reach the Mediterranean Sea?

The Nile has two branches, the White Nile from near Lake Victoria and the Blue Nile from Ethiopia, and its basin spreads across eleven countries.

The Great Barrier Reef, the biggest structure made by living things, was built by which animals?

Coral polyps in their billions built a system of over 2,900 separate reefs, stretching more than 2,300 kilometres and visible from outer space.

Which US state is a chain of volcanic islands and the only state not on the North American mainland?

Hawaii was an internationally recognised country of its own before it became a state, and its state flag still carries a Union Jack.

Which Paris landmark from the 1889 World's Fair was the world's tallest structure for 41 years?

The Eiffel Tower kept the height record until New York's Chrysler Building was finished in 1930, even though leading artists criticised its design at first.

Which white marble tomb in Agra, India, did a Mughal ruler build for his late wife?

The Taj Mahal was ordered in 1631 by Shah Jahan to hold the tomb of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, and Shah Jahan himself now lies there too.

Mount Rushmore, where the heads of four US presidents are carved in granite, is in which state?

South Dakota's Black Hills hold the carving, which sculptor Gutzon Borglum oversaw from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son.

Which US president, who led the country through the Civil War, is the only one to hold a patent?

Abraham Lincoln patented a device in 1849 for floating riverboats over shallow water, though it was never put on sale.

Which seafaring people from Scandinavia were the first Europeans to reach North America?

Vikings are usually drawn in horned helmets, but there is no evidence that they wore them; the costume idea first appeared in the 19th century.

Which ship carried the Pilgrims from England to America in 1620, after ten weeks at sea?

Mayflower sailed alone only because a second ship, Speedwell, proved unseaworthy and had to be left behind in England.

Which pharaoh, who died at about 19, lay in a tomb that Howard Carter's team found in 1922?

Tutankhamun's own royal tomb was unfinished when he died, so he was buried in a small non-royal one adapted for the purpose.

Which scientist, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, discovered the elements radium and polonium?

Marie Curie named polonium after Poland, her native country, and went on to become the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice.

Who became the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic, in 1932?

Amelia Earhart was aiming for Paris, but strong winds, ice and mechanical trouble brought her down in a pasture in Northern Ireland after almost 15 hours.

Which composer from Salzburg was writing music and playing for royalty before the age of six?

Mozart played his first little pieces to his father Leopold, who wrote them down. One of his last works was the opera 'The Magic Flute'.

Which wartime fighter pilot went on to write 'Matilda', 'The BFG' and 'Fantastic Mr Fox'?

Roald Dahl got a caning from his headmaster at age eight, after he and four friends hid a dead mouse in a gobstopper jar at the local sweet shop.

Which magical land, ruled by the evil White Witch, does Lucy Pevensie discover inside a wardrobe?

Narnia was created by C. S. Lewis, who wrote the book for his real-life goddaughter, a girl named Lucy Barfield.

In which winter sport do teammates sweep the ice with brooms ahead of a sliding granite stone?

Curling teams have four players who each throw two stones, and a gentle spin at release makes the stone curve, or 'curl'.

Which racket sport is played with a feathered shuttlecock instead of a ball?

Badminton shuttlecocks slow down much more quickly than a ball would, because their feathers create far higher drag.

Chocolate is made from the roasted seeds of which tree, first used for food over 5,000 years ago?

Cacao seeds are usually fermented to bring out the flavour, then dried, cleaned and roasted before they are ground into chocolate.

What do we call a word that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as 'racecar' or 'kayak'?

A palindrome can be a date as well as a word: 22 February 2022, written 22/02/2022, has the same digits whichever way they are read.

What is the hardest substance in the human body, covering the visible part of every tooth?

Enamel is about 96% mineral, which makes it strong but brittle, and the body cannot repair it once the damage goes too far.