49 Fun Facts About Nauru

Nauru lies in which subregion of Oceania?

Micronesia. Nauru's long isolation there is believed to explain why its language doesn't clearly resemble any other in the Pacific.

Besides Vatican City, which country is smaller than Nauru by area?

Monaco. Both it and Vatican City are in Europe, which makes Nauru the smallest country outside it, yet phosphate once made its people among the richest on Earth.

In 2025, roughly how many people lived on Nauru?

About 12,000. Most of them live on the narrow coastal rim, around an interior that phosphate mining left uninhabitable.

Nauru's squandered mining wealth is often cited as a classic example of what?

The resource curse. When the phosphate ran out, so did the money: the national bank went broke, and in 2004 Australian officials were brought in to run the state's finances.

What is Nauru's name in the Nauruan language, adopted as the country's official name in 2026?

Naoero, pronounced 'Now-ero'. The government said 'Nauru' took hold only because foreign tongues couldn't pronounce the original, and it dropped a planned referendum to make the switch.

What did British captain John Fearn call Nauru when he sighted it in 1798?

Pleasant Island. Hundreds of islanders canoed out to greet his ship, and the welcome so charmed Fearn that the name lasted 90 years, though he never let his crew land.

Nauruans traditionally took their clan from which relative?

Their mother. There were twelve of these matrilineal clans, each with its own chief, which is why the star on Nauru's flag has twelve points.

Traditional Nauruans raised which fish in Buada Lagoon after acclimatising them to fresh water?

Milkfish. Islanders caught the young fish, called ibija, in the shallows along the shore and carried them inland to fatten in the lagoon as a living larder.

Nauru's ten-year civil war of 1878 was fought mainly with which weapons, traded from visiting ships for food?

Firearms. Deserters and beachcombers brought them ashore, and the clan feuds they armed cut the island's population by more than a third before colonial annexation ended the fighting.

Which empire annexed Nauru in 1888?

Germany. Its marines marched around the island, rounded up all twelve chiefs and held them under house arrest until the islanders gave in.

The phosphate dug out of Nauru for a century was sold abroad mainly as what?

Fertiliser. It was sold at below-market rates to farmers in Australia and New Zealand, so the island's soil enriched their pastures while Nauruans saw only a sliver of the profits.

A lump of rock propping open an office door in which city led Albert Ellis to Nauru's phosphate?

Sydney. Told the lump was petrified wood, Ellis tested it anyway and found high-grade phosphate ore, the start of a century of mining.

Nauru landed on an international money-laundering blacklist after selling cheap licences for what in the 1990s?

Offshore banks. Their founders never had to visit the island, let alone open a branch, yet Russia's central bank reckoned that some US$70 billion passed through them in 1998 alone.

Under the 1919 Nauru Island Agreement, mining was handled by which intergovernmental body?

The British Phosphate Commission, a joint venture of Britain, Australia and New Zealand, mined the island until newly independent Nauru bought out its assets and took control in 1970.

During World War II, Japan deported 1,200 Nauruans to work as labourers where?

The Chuuk Islands, then known as Truk. About two-thirds of all Nauruans were shipped there, and hundreds died of starvation and bombing before the war ended.

In 1963 Canberra offered to resettle every Nauruan on Curtis Island, off the coast of which Australian state?

Queensland. Nauruans refused because the offer came with Australian citizenship but not sovereignty over the island, and they chose independence at home instead.

Who was Nauru's first president?

Hammer DeRoburt. A schoolteacher who survived wartime deportation, he led the independence talks and then held the presidency for most of the next two decades.

Nauru has no official capital, but which district houses parliament and is usually listed as one?

Yaren. Its airstrip, now the country's only airport, was laid by Japanese occupiers in World War II and drew American bombing for two years.

Most members of Nauru's 19-seat parliament sit as what?

Independents. With no real party system, governments rest on family ties and shifting alliances, which is why Nauru's presidents are so often toppled by no-confidence votes.

Mining stripped four-fifths of Nauru down to a forest of jagged pinnacles made of which rock?

Limestone. The pinnacles are the island's bedrock, left standing when miners dug the phosphate out from between them, and nothing can be built or grown among them.

Which ridge, still dotted with rusting Japanese guns from World War II, is Nauru's highest point?

Command Ridge. It rises no more than about 70 metres above the sea; Japanese forces kept watch from it during the war and left a communications bunker with their writing on its walls.

In 1989 Nauru took Australia to which court over the damage phosphate mining had done?

The International Court of Justice. Australia settled out of court in 1993, after the judges had refused to throw the case out, agreeing to pay towards restoring the mined-out land, and Britain and New Zealand later chipped in.

What was repossessed from Air Nauru in December 2005?

Its only Boeing 737. A US bank seized the jet on the ground in Melbourne over unpaid loans, leaving Nauru with no air service until a replacement arrived the following year.

What currency does Nauru use?

The Australian dollar. It is a holdover from colonial days: Australian money was legal tender while Canberra ran the island, and independent Nauru simply kept it.

Nauru's detention centre was opened in 2001 as part of which Australian government policy?

The Pacific Solution. It sent people who arrived by boat to camps on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea instead of the mainland; scrapped in 2008, it was revived four years later.

In the mid-1970s Nauru's income per head was reported as second in the world only to which oil state's?

Saudi Arabia. Phosphate money gave every Nauruan free schooling and health care with no income tax to pay, until the ore, and then the money, ran out.

Nauru's 2001 detention arrangement grew out of which incident involving a Norwegian ship?

The Tampa affair. The freighter had rescued more than 400 asylum seekers from a sinking boat; Canberra refused it entry, sent troops aboard, then paid Nauru to take the passengers.

In 2009 Nauru became the fourth country to recognise which two breakaway regions of Georgia?

Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia was reported to have promised Nauru about US$50 million in aid for the move, which the island reversed in July 2026.

Which government did Nauru drop in 2002, return to in 2005 and drop again in 2024?

Taiwan. Nauru has won aid from both Taipei and Beijing by switching between them, and each change of sides has brought the charge that its loyalty was bought.

In 2025 Nauru began selling what to fund moving 90% of its people to higher ground?

Golden passports. They cost at least US$105,000 each, though an earlier citizenship sale ended in scandal when al-Qaida suspects were caught carrying Nauruan passports.

World Health Organization estimates in the 2000s ranked Nauru first in the world for which condition?

Obesity. With most of the farmland mined away, islanders came to rely on imported processed food such as rice and sugar, and more than nine in ten adults were rated overweight.

In the 2000s Nauru was ranked as having the world's highest rate of which chronic disease?

Type 2 diabetes. Health authorities responded by urging islanders to walk the three-mile perimeter of the airport every Wednesday, and by laying on regular exercise classes.

What is Nauru's most popular sport?

Australian rules football, a legacy of decades under Australian rule. The main ground has no grass at all: matches are played on an oval of crushed phosphate dust.

Before 2012, every athlete who competed for Nauru at the Olympics did so in which sport?

Weightlifting. The tradition grew from Marcus Stephen, a Commonwealth Games champion who lifted for Nauru at its first two Olympics and later became the country's president.

What does the narrow gold stripe on Nauru's flag represent?

The Equator. The star sits just below the stripe because Nauru lies just south of the line, and it is white for the phosphate that made the island rich.

Angam Day, held on 26 October, celebrates what?

The recovery of the Nauruan population. War and epidemics had cut the islanders' numbers so low that 1,500 became the target for survival, and the holiday marks the October birth of the baby who reached it.

Alongside Nauruan, which language does Nauru use for most government and business?

English. Nauruan is what some 95% of islanders speak at home, but decades of Australian administration left English as the working language of government and commerce.

Which seabird, long caught and tamed by islanders, is Nauru's national bird?

Frigatebird. Catchers sling a weighted line in front of a passing bird lured in by tame decoys, and one perches on the national coat of arms.

Riverless Nauru long shipped in fresh water as what?

Ballast. Ships coming to load phosphate needed weight in their holds on the empty inbound run, so they carried fresh water to an island with no rivers, no streams and unreliable rain.

As of 2025, Nauru's national airline did most of its business from which foreign city?

Brisbane. The airline that once flew a whole fleet of airliners around the Pacific on phosphate money now runs its jets, and most of its business, out of a hangar there.

Which body did Nauru join only in 1999?

The United Nations. Nauru waited 31 years after independence to take its seat, then treated it as an asset, accepting tens of millions of dollars from larger powers for its diplomatic recognition.

Nauru's nearest neighbour, Banaba, about 300 km to the east, belongs to which country?

Kiribati. Banaba, once called Ocean Island, was stripped for phosphate as thoroughly as Nauru, and after World War II Britain resettled most of its people on an island in Fiji.

What rings Nauru so completely that ships long had to unload at sea by barge?

A coral reef. It dries out at low tide and bristles with pinnacles, leaving only channels for small boats, so the island grew rich on phosphate without ever having a real harbour.

After its 1888 annexation, Nauru was first administered as part of which island protectorate?

The Marshall Islands. The takeover had been urged by a handful of traders on Nauru, who feared that the island's long civil war was ruining their business.

What do Nauruans call the mined-out central plateau that covers most of Nauru?

Topside. Islanders always lived down on the cooler shore, but the plateau's rich soil grew their food trees until a century of mining stripped it bare.

Makatea, the Pacific's third great phosphate island after Nauru and Banaba, belongs to which territory?

French Polynesia. Mining there ended in the 1960s, and the island emptied to a few families living beside a ghost town.

At Nauru's 2021 census, the Nauru Congregational Church led which rival by under one percentage point?

The Catholic Church. Each claims about a third of islanders, and the gap is closing: it stood at nearly three points at the census ten years earlier.

Nauru sank phosphate money into a disastrous 1993 West End musical about which Renaissance artist?

Leonardo. 'Leonardo the Musical: A Portrait of Love' imagined a love affair behind the Mona Lisa, flopped within weeks, and became the most notorious of the island's lost investments.

In 2021 Nauru triggered a two-year deadline for global rules on mining metal-rich nodules from where?

The deep seabed. Nauru sponsors a Canadian miner's claim in the Pacific, and its notice meant that once the two years were up, companies could apply to mine before any rulebook was finished.