47 Fun Facts About Lithuania

Lithuanian legend says a thunder god smashed a sea goddess's undersea palace, scattering which gem along the Baltic shore?

Amber, the tale of Jūratė and Kastytis says, is the wreckage of her palace, blasted by the thunder god because she loved a mortal fisherman; pieces still wash ashore after storms.

Who united the Lithuanian lands and was crowned the first and only King of Lithuania in 1253?

Mindaugas accepted baptism in 1251 and was crowned two years later on the authority of Pope Innocent IV; after his assassination in 1263 Lithuania stayed pagan for more than a century.

At its 15th-century peak, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania held what distinction?

Largest country in Europe: the Grand Duchy had swallowed Rus' lands left shattered by the Mongols, and under Vytautas the Great, who died in 1430, it stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Which grand duke is credited with founding the capital after dreaming of an iron wolf on a hill?

Gediminas, the legend runs, had his pagan priest Lizdeika read the dream: the howling iron wolf meant a great city whose fame would carry across the world, so he built his capital on the spot.

At which 1410 battle did Polish–Lithuanian forces crush the Teutonic Order?

The Battle of Grunwald, Žalgiris to Lithuanians, was fought on 15 July 1410; Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen died on the field and the Teutonic Order never recovered its dominance.

Which grand duke accepted baptism and the Polish crown in 1386, ending Lithuania's time as Europe's last pagan state?

Jogaila was baptised, married Poland's young queen Jadwiga and took her country's crown in 1386, then brought Roman Christianity to Lithuania in 1387; Samogitia followed only in 1413.

The 1569 union that created the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was signed in which city?

Lublin hosted the 1569 parliament where Lithuania, hard pressed in its war with Muscovy, accepted a joint state with Poland while keeping its own treasury, army and laws.

Poland–Lithuania's 3 May 1791 constitution is usually ranked the world's second modern written constitution, after which country's?

United States: its constitution dates from 1787, and France's followed the Commonwealth's by only a few months; yet the Third Partition erased Poland–Lithuania itself in 1795.

Which power annexed most of Lithuania in the partitions completed in 1795?

Russia took the bulk of Lithuania in the Third Partition of 1795, the neighbouring powers' answer to the failed Kościuszko Uprising of 1794; Prussia received only the south-western corner, Užnemunė.

After the 1863 uprising, Tsarist authorities imposed what measure against the local culture?

A ban on the Lithuanian press, lifted only in 1904, allowed Lithuanian books in Cyrillic alone; smugglers called knygnešiai carried Latin-alphabet books in from East Prussia, and the ban ended up feeding the national revival.

Which occupying power held Lithuania when its Council declared independence in February 1918?

Germany had occupied Lithuania since 1915 and wanted a satellite state, so it let a Lithuanian council meet. On 16 February 1918 that council declared full independence instead.

About two million people took part in the Baltic Way of 23 August 1989, a protest that took what form?

A human chain ran more than 600 km from Vilnius through Riga to Tallinn on the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, whose secret protocols had handed the Baltic states to Stalin.

Who led the authoritarian regime installed by Lithuania's 1926 coup?

Antanas Smetona had been Lithuania's first president; the army officers' coup of December 1926 put him back, and he ruled as an authoritarian until the Soviet ultimatum of June 1940, when he fled abroad.

Which diplomat, serving in Lithuania in 1940, issued transit visas that let more than 2,000 Jewish refugees escape Europe?

Chiune Sugihara of Japan wrote the visas in summer 1940, even for refugees who lacked the papers the rules required. Those who stayed had no such exit: almost all of Lithuania's Jews were murdered after Germany invaded in 1941.

What were the Baltic guerrillas who fought Soviet rule after 1944 called?

Forest Brothers fought an organised war in Lithuania until 1953, when their commander Jonas Žemaitis, in hiding after a stroke, was captured. He was taken to Moscow, where Beria himself questioned him, and was shot in 1954.

Where in Vilnius did Soviet troops kill 14 unarmed civilians on 13 January 1991?

The TV tower was taken, but huge crowds ringed the parliament behind barricades and the attempt to topple the government failed.

Which movement, founded in the late 1980s, led Lithuania's drive to restore independence?

Sąjūdis began in June 1988 as a group of 35 intellectuals, 17 of them Communist Party members, backing Gorbachev's reforms. Within two years it had won the elections and declared Lithuania independent of the Soviet Union.

Who became Lithuania's first directly elected president after independence, in 1993?

Algirdas Brazauskas, the former Communist Party leader, won the February 1993 election to become Lithuania's first directly elected president; the last Russian troops withdrew on 31 August 1993.

Which president told Vilnius that Lithuania's enemies were America's?

George W. Bush spoke in November 2002, days after NATO invited Lithuania to join. Membership followed in 2004, weeks before entry to the European Union, and Vilnius later made him an honorary citizen.

Why did the EU reject Lithuania's 2006 euro bid?

High inflation, by a whisker: Lithuania's rate ran at 2.7 per cent against a limit of 2.6. It swapped the litas for the euro only on 1 January 2015, the last of the three Baltic states to do so.

What are the three colours of Lithuania's flag, top to bottom?

Yellow, green, red: read as sun and golden fields, forests, and courage and blood shed for the homeland. Replaced by a red banner under Soviet rule, the tricolour came back before independence itself was declared in 1990.

Lithuania's coat of arms, an armoured knight on horseback, is known by what name?

Vytis grew out of the seals of 14th-century grand dukes, who had themselves shown charging on horseback. Banned with every symbol of statehood under Soviet rule, the knight returned as the state arms in 1990.

Lithuanian is considered the most conservative living language of which family?

Indo-European: Lithuanian keeps grammar and sounds otherwise found only in ancient tongues such as Sanskrit, so linguists use it to rebuild the lost parent language. 'Son' is sūnus in Lithuanian and sunus in Sanskrit.

Why did Lithuania's highest point change in the 2000s?

A GPS survey: readings showed an unnamed rise about a metre taller than Juozapinė Hill, long taken for the summit. It was named Aukštojas, after the chief god of Baltic myth, and tops out just under 294 m.

What is the longest river in Lithuania?

The Nemunas runs 937 km from Belarus to the Curonian Lagoon. On 24 June 1812 Napoleon's Grande Armée, some 450,000 strong, began crossing it to invade Russia.

A granite column north of Vilnius marks which spot, worked out by French geographers in 1989?

The centre of Europe, on one reckoning: France's national geographic institute took the continent's centre of gravity and landed 26 km north of Vilnius. The column, crowned with stars, went up in 2004, the year Lithuania joined the EU.

Which river flows through the centre of Vilnius?

The Neris meets the little Vilnia below the castle hill in the old town. Upstream in Belarus, where it rises, the same river goes by another name, the Viliya.

Which Russian exclave borders Lithuania to the south-west?

Kaliningrad Oblast was the northern half of German East Prussia until 1945. It became a true exclave only in 1991, when Lithuania and the other Soviet republics lying between it and the rest of Russia became independent.

Which pilgrimage site did the Soviets bulldoze repeatedly, only for believers to rebuild it?

The Hill of Crosses near Šiauliai was levelled in the 1960s and 1970s, its wooden crosses burned and its metal ones sold for scrap, yet new ones kept appearing after dark. After independence the count passed 100,000.

In which island castle did Vytautas the Great die in 1430, before he could be crowned king?

Trakai was the brick castle Vytautas built up on a lake island. His claim to a royal crown had at last been agreed, but he died there in October 1430 before the ceremony could be held.

Kernavė, a UNESCO site since 2004, was what in Lithuania's medieval history?

Kernavė was an early capital of the Grand Duchy, a 13th-century power centre guarded by five hill forts. The Teutonic Order destroyed the town in the late 14th century; its reserve calls it Europe's last pagan capital.

Vilnius University, opened in 1579, grew out of a college founded by which Catholic order?

The Jesuits came in 1569 to push back the Reformation and opened their college a year later; King Stephen Báthory raised it to a university in 1579. Russia shut it in 1832 after crushing an uprising.

The capital's bohemian district of Užupis declared itself a tongue-in-cheek republic on which date in 1997?

1 April 1997 was April Fools' Day, and Užupis, 'beyond the river', marks it each year as its national day. Its constitution, posted on a street wall in many languages, rules that a dog has the right to be a dog.

A bronze bust of which American musician, who never visited Lithuania, went up in Vilnius in 1995?

Frank Zappa had died two years earlier with no tie to the country, but fans in the newly free capital put up his bust as a symbol of freedom. They later sent a copy to Baltimore, his birthplace.

Lithuania's national potato dumplings take their name from what?

Cepelinai take their name from Count Zeppelin's airships, whose elongated shape the stuffed potato dumplings resemble; traditionally filled with minced meat, curd cheese or mushrooms, they are served with sour cream and bacon bits.

Lithuania's classic chilled summer soup is made from what?

Šaltibarščiai is cold beets grated into soured milk with cucumber and dill, and the chilled soup arrives with hot boiled potatoes on the side. Vilnius holds a yearly Pink Soup Fest in its honour.

Composer M. K. Čiurlionis gave works of his titles such as Sonata and Fugue, though they were what?

Paintings: he built them like music, in cycles of pictures marked Allegro, Andante, Scherzo and Finale, and painted seven such sonatas. He also wrote the symphonic poems In the Forest and The Sea, and died in 1911 aged 35.

Which American band helped fund Lithuania's 1992 Olympic basketball team?

Grateful Dead money helped send the newly free country's team to Barcelona, and its dunking-skeleton tie-dye came too. The players wore it to the medal stand after beating the Unified Team of ex-Soviet states for bronze.

Which Lithuanian centre, drafted by Portland in 1986, reached the NBA only in 1995, at the age of 30?

Arvydas Sabonis was barred from leaving by Soviet authorities and won Olympic gold for the USSR in 1988 instead. He reached Portland already worn down by injuries, yet still made the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2011.

Virgilijus Alekna won two Olympic golds for Lithuania and his son Mykolas broke the world record in 2024, both in which event?

Discus: Mykolas Alekna's 74.35 m in April 2024 erased a mark that had stood since 1986, the oldest world record in men's athletics, set 16 years before he was born.

Where was 15-year-old swimmer Rūta Meilutytė living when she won Olympic gold in 2012?

England: she had moved to Plymouth with her father three years earlier and went to the same school as diver Tom Daley. She led the 100 m breaststroke final from start to finish.

Lithuania's ten counties are all named after what?

Cities: Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and seven more lend their names. The ten counties survive mainly as statistical regions, while day-to-day local government belongs to 60 municipalities.

Lithuania's physicists have made the country a leading exporter of which devices, used in surgery and precision cutting?

Lasers: research begun at Vilnius University in Soviet times spun off firms such as Light Conversion, and most of the output is sold abroad. A 2012 European Commission report credited Lithuania with half the world's picosecond lasers.

The Ignalina nuclear plant's closure, a condition of EU entry, turned Lithuania into what?

An electricity importer in place of an exporter: the two Chernobyl-type reactors had covered about 70 per cent of the country's demand. The second shut at the end of 2009, and voters rejected a replacement in a 2012 referendum.

How was Lithuania's president Rolandas Paksas removed from office in 2004?

Impeachment: the former stunt pilot had granted citizenship to a Russian businessman who was a major donor to his campaign. The Seimas, Lithuania's parliament, removed him less than a month before the country joined the EU.

Lithuania moored a ship named Independence at Klaipėda in 2014 to end its total reliance on Russia for what?

Natural gas: Gazprom had supplied all of it until the ship, a floating import terminal leased from a Norwegian firm, let Lithuania buy liquefied gas by sea. In 2022 the country stopped buying Russian gas altogether.

How did Lithuania get Moscow to lift its 1990 oil blockade?

Lithuania froze its independence declaration for 100 days, the clock to start only when Moscow sat down to talks. Within a day of the vote, oil was flowing again to the country's only refinery.