49 Fun Facts About Libya

In which 1985 hit film do Libyan terrorists gun down a scientist who cheated them out of their plutonium?

Back to the Future: Doc Brown swindled the Libyans out of the plutonium that powers his DeLorean, and their revenge attack is what sends Marty racing back to 1955.

Tripoli's name comes from the Greek for 'three cities': Oea, Sabratha and which other?

Leptis Magna: after it was abandoned, dunes buried it for centuries, which is why its ruins, dug out in the 1920s, rank among the best-preserved Roman cities anywhere.

Which of these countries is larger than Libya, Africa's fourth-largest?

Algeria has been Africa's largest country since Sudan split in two in 2011; Libya, at almost 1.8 million square kilometres, is about two and a half times the size of Texas.

Gaddafi drew a 'Line of Death' across the mouth of which gulf, daring the US Navy to cross it?

Gulf of Sidra: Washington treated most of it as international waters and kept sailing across the line, and in 1981 US Navy jets shot down two Libyan fighters there.

Which Roman emperor, born in Libya's greatest Roman city, expanded it into one of North Africa's finest?

Septimius Severus ended his days about as far from home as the empire reached: after invading Scotland he fell ill and died at York in 211.

Which man from Cyrene, in eastern Libya, was made to carry Jesus's cross in the Gospels?

Simon: his home city gave eastern Libya the name Cyrenaica and grew rich on silphium, a medicinal plant that appeared on its coins and is said to have died out in Roman times.

In 1551 the Ottomans took Tripoli from which order of knights?

Knights of St John: Spain had captured the city in 1510 and handed it to the order along with Malta, and the corsair Dragut, who helped storm it, went on to rule there as an Ottoman governor.

Which German general landed at Tripoli in February 1941?

Erwin Rommel was sent only to shore up Italy's beaten army and told to hold a defensive line, but within six weeks he attacked instead and won the nickname 'the Desert Fox'.

Libya's Barbary corsairs fought which country in the First Barbary War of 1801 to 1805?

United States: President Jefferson refused to pay Tripoli tribute for safe passage, and the campaign that followed is remembered in the Marines' Hymn line 'to the shores of Tripoli'.

Italy's 1911 invasion of Libya saw the first use in war of which tactic?

Aeroplane bombing: the pilot Giulio Gavotti leaned out of his monoplane and dropped four grenades by hand onto Ottoman positions, having told his father he hoped to be the first to try it.

Which resistance leader, hanged by the Italians in 1931, is honoured as Libya's national hero?

Omar Mukhtar, a Koran teacher turned guerrilla leader, fought for nearly twenty years and was hanged at 73; Anthony Quinn played him in Lion of the Desert, a film Italy banned in 1982.

What was the Lady Be Good, found almost intact in the Libyan desert in 1958, fifteen years after it vanished?

An American bomber: on its first mission the crew flew past their base in a sandstorm, bailed out when the fuel ran dry, and died trying to walk out of the desert, 440 miles inland.

Libya became independent in 1951 under a resolution passed by which international body?

United Nations: with Britain and France running the former Italian colony, the General Assembly ruled in 1949 that it must be independent by the start of 1952, and King Idris proclaimed it with a week to spare.

King Idris I was the leader of which Islamic religious brotherhood, founded by his grandfather?

The Senussi: the order won over the desert Bedouin, joined the armed resistance to Italian rule and supplied Libya's only king, whose fall in 1969 ended the monarchy.

The last phase of Libya's 1980s war with Chad is named after which make of vehicle, driven by the Chadians?

Toyota: Chadian fighters in fast pickup trucks armed with anti-tank missiles routed Libya's tank columns in 1987, costing it, by American estimates, about a tenth of its army.

The young officers who overthrew Libya's King Idris in 1969 took which Arab leader as their hero?

Gamal Abdel Nasser: the plotters called themselves the Free Officers, after the group that brought Egypt's president to power, though Nasser privately judged Gaddafi 'a nice boy, but terribly naive'.

In March 1977 Gaddafi declared Libya to be what form of state?

Jamahiriya, a word Gaddafi coined, usually rendered 'state of the masses': on paper the people ruled through local congresses, and he soon gave up his formal leadership of the government, yet he stayed in charge for 34 more years.

Until 2011, Libya's flag was unique in the world for what reason?

It was plain green with no design: Gaddafi adopted it in 1977, and the rebels of 2011 fought instead under the red, black and green flag of the old kingdom, which became the national flag again that August.

Gaddafi ruled Libya for four decades at which army rank?

Colonel: a junior officer of 27 when he seized power, he took that one promotion after the coup and kept the rank for life, even while insisting he held no office at all.

The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, blamed on Libyan agents, took place over which Scottish town?

Lockerbie: eleven townspeople died along with all 259 people on board, and the one man convicted, a Libyan agent, was freed on compassionate grounds in 2009 and flew home to a hero's welcome.

Which US president ordered air strikes on Libya over a West Berlin disco attack?

Ronald Reagan, who called Gaddafi the 'mad dog of the Middle East', sent the aircraft ten days after the 1986 blast; France and Spain refused to let them fly overhead.

Libya's 2011 uprising broke out within a week of which neighbouring president's fall?

Hosni Mubarak: Egypt's president quit on 11 February as the Arab Spring spread, protests began in eastern Libya four days later, and within eight months the revolt had ended Gaddafi's 42 years in power.

In March 2011 UN Security Council Resolution 1973 imposed what over Libya?

No-fly zone: Russia and China abstained and let it pass, and its licence for 'all necessary measures' to protect civilians became the basis for months of NATO air strikes.

Gaddafi was captured and killed on 20 October 2011 in which Libyan city, his home town?

Sirte: he had fled there when the capital fell, and after a NATO strike stopped his convoy as it tried to break out, rebel fighters dragged him from a drainage pipe.

From 2014 Libya's rival governments were based in Tripoli and which other city?

Tobruk, the port famous for its 1941 siege: the elected parliament fled there when militias took over the capital, and for want of housing its members first lived and met on a chartered Greek car ferry.

Which Libyan field marshal launched 'Operation Flood of Dignity' against the Tripoli government in April 2019?

Khalifa Haftar helped Gaddafi seize power in 1969, was captured while fighting in Chad, turned against him and spent nearly twenty years in exile in Virginia before returning in 2011.

Storm Daniel's floods of September 2023 devastated which Libyan port city after two dams failed?

Derna: the two dams above the city, built in the 1970s, had shown cracks as early as 1998 and gone years without repair, and when they burst in the night whole neighbourhoods were swept into the sea.

On official trips abroad, Gaddafi famously brought along and stayed in what?

A Bedouin tent: it went with him to Europe and America, where the one pitched on an estate owned by Donald Trump in New York State had to be hastily taken down over zoning rules.

Libya's 'Aziziya held the world heat record, 58 °C from 1922, until what happened?

The WMO invalidated it in 2012: investigators concluded that an untrained observer had misread the thermometer by about 7 °C, which handed the record back to the 56.7 °C logged in Death Valley in 1913.

Libya's Great Man-Made River, a vast network of pipes, pumps its water from which source?

The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer: drilling in the 1950s revealed its 'fossil' water, some of it 40,000 years old, and because none of it is being replaced the pipes are draining a one-time supply.

Libya holds the largest proven reserves in Africa of which resource?

Oil: the first big strikes came in 1959, and within a decade the exports had turned one of the poorest countries in the world into one of the richest in Africa.

What is the currency of Libya?

Dinar: it replaced the Libyan pound one for one in 1971, two years after the monarchy fell, and is split into 1,000 dirhams, not the usual 100.

After his son Hannibal was arrested there in 2008, Gaddafi called for which country to be abolished and shared among its neighbours?

Switzerland: after police held Hannibal for two days over claims that he had beaten his servants, his father pulled billions out of Swiss banks and proposed dividing the country between France, Italy and Germany.

Which indigenous people of Libya were forbidden to teach or even use their own language under Gaddafi?

Berbers, or Amazigh: Gaddafi denied they were a separate people at all, calling them an invention of colonialism, and their mountain towns were among the first to rise against him in 2011.

In Libya's old town of Ghadames, 'the pearl of the desert', who traditionally had the rooftop terraces to themselves?

Women: the linked rooftops let them cross the whole town and visit neighbours out of public view, while the men kept to the shaded, covered alleys at ground level.

Libya's Acacus Mountains, in the far south-west, are famous for what?

Prehistoric rock art: thousands of paintings and carvings, the oldest about 14,000 years old, show giraffes and elephants roaming what is now bare desert.

Which British prime minister flew to Libya to shake hands with Gaddafi, ending its long isolation?

Tony Blair: his 2004 visit, the first by a British prime minister since 1943, came three months after Gaddafi promised to give up his programmes for weapons of mass destruction.

During his marathon 2009 speech to the UN General Assembly, what did Gaddafi do to his copy of the UN Charter?

Tore pages out: it was his first address to the Assembly in four decades in power, and he ran more than an hour past his allotted time.

Libya's three historic regions are Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and which southern desert region?

Fezzan: Free French troops took it in 1943 and France went on running it, while Britain held the other two regions, until all three were joined in the new kingdom in 1951.

In 2008 more than 200 of Africa's traditional rulers, gathered in crowns and robes, gave Gaddafi which title?

King of Kings: Gaddafi wanted the royals to press Africa's presidents into his plan for a single government for the whole continent, an idea the presidents themselves were lukewarm about.

Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam took a doctorate in 2008 from which university, whose director later resigned over its Libyan ties?

London School of Economics: Saif's foundation had pledged the school £1.5 million, and when the regime turned on protesters in 2011 its director, Howard Davies, resigned, citing errors of judgement.

The 2012 attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya took place in which city?

Benghazi: Ambassador Chris Stevens had first come to the city a year earlier as America's envoy to the rebels who made it their base, and the attack fell on the anniversary of 11 September.

Between 1925 and 1940 Libya's capital hosted a glamorous annual event, tied to a state lottery, in which sport?

Motor racing: the Tripoli Grand Prix was run on a fast circuit beside a salt lake, and its 1933 edition has long been dogged by claims that drivers fixed the result with holders of lottery tickets.

Which African dictator, backed by Gaddafi, fled to Libya when Tanzanian forces drove him from power in 1979?

Idi Amin: Gaddafi had sent several thousand Libyan soldiers to fight for him in Uganda and took him in when the capital fell; Amin later settled in Saudi Arabia, where he died in 2003.

In 96 BC the heirless Greek king of Cyrenaica, in eastern Libya, left his kingdom in his will to which power?

Rome, which was in no hurry to collect: it left the territory largely alone for some twenty years and only made it a province in 74 BC, later pairing it with Crete.

Gaddafi's footballing son Al-Saadi, who went on to sign for an Italian top-flight club, hired which legend as his adviser?

Diego Maradona, with the sprinter Ben Johnson as trainer: it did little good, for at Perugia the leader's son managed a doping ban and about a quarter of an hour of league football.

Libya has six land neighbours; which of these countries is one of them?

Niger: when the regime fell in 2011 one of Gaddafi's sons escaped across this desert border, and Niger sheltered him for more than two years before sending him back to face trial.

Which band, planning a comeback concert in 1969, seriously considered staging it in the Roman theatre at Sabratha in Libya?

The Beatles: no venue won all four of them over, so instead of a Roman stage with a three-storey backdrop they ended up playing on the roof of their own London office.

In Greek myth, which hero beat the Libyan giant Antaeus by lifting him off the ground that gave him his strength?

Heracles met him on the way to fetch the golden apples: Antaeus, a son of the Earth, was unbeatable while he touched the ground and had roofed a temple with the skulls of travellers he had out-wrestled.