48 Fun Facts About Nicaragua

Nicaraguan-born human rights campaigner Bianca became famous in the 1970s as the wife of which rock star?

Mick Jagger. Bianca Jagger, born in the capital, married him in 1971 and, after the marriage ended, traded the jet set for a second career as a human-rights advocate.

Nicaragua holds which distinction among Central America's seven countries?

Largest in area. Yet it ranks only third in population: almost all of its people live in the western half, leaving the Caribbean side thinly settled.

Which two countries border Nicaragua by land?

Honduras and Costa Rica. In the 1980s the rebels fighting Nicaragua's government kept their camps just across both borders, striking from the north and from the south.

In 1980 the new Sandinista government launched a national 'crusade' that sent teams across the countryside to teach what?

Reading. The literacy crusade cut adult illiteracy from more than half of the population to under 15 percent and won Nicaragua a UNESCO prize.

Which crop, grown on the cooler slopes of Nicaragua's northern highlands, is one of the country's largest exports?

Coffee. The bushes need the mild air of the higher slopes, so the crop comes mostly from the hills of the north, a region that also raises cattle and mines gold.

Lake Nicaragua is famous for containing which unusual animals for a freshwater lake?

Sharks. They were once classed as a species found nowhere else, but they proved to be bull sharks, an ocean shark that is able to live for long spells in fresh water.

Lake Nicaragua drains to the Caribbean through which river?

The San Juan. Because it links the lake to the Caribbean, pirates sailed up it to raid the lakeside towns, and Gold Rush travellers later followed it on their way to California.

Which island in Lake Nicaragua is made of two volcanoes joined by a low isthmus?

Ometepe. Its name is said to come from Nahuatl words for 'two mountains': Concepción, the northern cone, is still active, while forested Maderas in the south holds a crater lake.

Which two rival colonial cities did the same conquistador found in the 1520s?

Granada and León. One became the Conservatives' stronghold and the other the Liberals', and their feud grew so bitter that a compromise capital was finally chosen between them.

The first city of León, abandoned in 1610, lies in ruins at the foot of which volcano?

Momotombo. After years of eruptions and a damaging earthquake in 1610, the settlers voted to move their city west, and the buried ruins of León Viejo are now a World Heritage site.

Nicaragua gained independence from which colonial power in 1821?

Spain. The Caribbean shore went a different way: Britain held a protectorate over the Mosquito Coast, which passed to Nicaragua only decades after independence.

What is the capital and largest city of Nicaragua?

Managua. Only an indigenous town in colonial times, it was made capital in the 1850s to end the feud between two older rival cities, and earthquakes in 1931 and 1972 levelled much of it.

Which American filibuster made himself president of Nicaragua in 1856?

William Walker. Invited in by one side of a civil war, he took power with a private army, was driven out within a year, and on a later expedition was captured and shot in Honduras.

Which American tycoon ran steamboats and stagecoaches across Nicaragua to carry Gold Rush travellers toward California?

Cornelius Vanderbilt. His Accessory Transit Company took passengers by steamer up the river and across the great lake, then by coach over the last narrow strip of land to the Pacific.

A 1914 treaty gave the United States exclusive rights over what in Nicaragua?

A proposed canal route. Washington never dug it: the point of buying the rights was to stop any rival power building a waterway to compete with its new Panama Canal.

Which occupying force did the guerrilla general Augusto César Sandino fight for more than five years, until it left in 1933?

The US Marines. He fought on for as long as they stayed and made peace once they had gone, only to be seized a year later on leaving a dinner at the presidential palace and shot.

Which US-trained force did Somoza García command to seize power in Nicaragua?

National Guard. The departing Americans built it as army and police in one, and command of it kept three Somozas in power, in the presidency or behind it, for more than four decades.

Anastasio Somoza García was shot dead in 1956 by a 27-year-old of what profession?

A poet. Rigoberto López Pérez slipped into a party and shot the dictator, dying on the spot in a hail of bullets; the regime barely paused, handing the presidency straight to Somoza's son.

Which 1998 hurricane, one of the deadliest ever recorded in the Atlantic, devastated Nicaragua and Honduras?

Hurricane Mitch. Its stalled rains soaked the Casita volcano in western Nicaragua until one flank gave way, and the mudslide buried the villages below.

Which baseball star died in a plane crash flying relief supplies to Nicaragua on New Year's Eve 1972?

Roberto Clemente. Hearing that earlier earthquake aid was being stolen by the army, the Pittsburgh Pirates star boarded the next relief plane himself, and it crashed soon after take-off.

In which country was the exiled dictator Somoza Debayle assassinated in 1980?

Paraguay. He was ambushed in the capital, Asunción, fourteen months after fleeing; Nicaragua's new rulers disclaimed any part in it, and an Argentine guerrilla group was blamed.

Which newspaper's editor, a leading critic of the Somoza regime, was assassinated in 1978?

La Prensa. The murder set off a general strike and rioting, and the uprising it fed brought the dictatorship down eighteen months later.

The rebel groups that fought the Sandinista government in the 1980s were known as what?

The Contras. Their first recruits were soldiers of the fallen dictatorship, and the CIA trained, armed and paid them in camps just across the borders.

The Reagan administration funded the anti-Sandinista rebels with arms sales to which country?

Iran. Congress had banned military aid to the rebels, so White House officials secretly sold weapons to Tehran and diverted the profits, a scheme that ended in felony convictions.

In which city did a court rule in 1986 that the US illegally mined Nicaragua's harbours?

The Hague. The International Court of Justice there told Washington to pay reparations, but the United States had walked out of the case and never paid.

Who defeated Daniel Ortega in the 1990 election to become Nicaragua's first woman president?

Violeta Chamorro. The widow of a murdered newspaper editor, she led an opposition coalition to an upset win, then disarmed the rebels and shrank the army to a fraction of its size.

A 35% threshold spared Daniel Ortega what in 2006?

A runoff. A pact between the two biggest parties had lowered the bar for a first-round win to 35% with a five-point lead, and his 38% cleared it.

Who became Nicaragua's co-president alongside Daniel Ortega in February 2025?

Rosario Murillo. Ortega's wife, long his spokeswoman and then his vice president, was raised to equal rank by a constitutional change that the couple's own legislature approved.

Mass protests in Nicaragua in April 2018 were sparked by a decree changing what?

The pension system. The decree raised contributions and cut benefits; it was withdrawn within days, but the killing of protesters had already turned the marches into a demand that Ortega go.

Which Caribbean islands off Nicaragua, now a tourist draw, were leased to the United States in 1914?

The Corn Islands. The lease was written to run for 99 years, yet the Americans never took the islands over, and the deal was cancelled in 1971 with decades still to run.

Which Nicaraguan poet initiated the literary movement modernismo?

Rubén Darío. Beginning with his collection Azul, his experiments with rhythm and imagery remade poetry in his language on both sides of the Atlantic.

Gallo pinto, which Nicaragua claims as its national dish, is made from what?

Rice and beans. The rice is fried together with the beans, which stain it the speckled colour the dish is known for; a neighbouring country claims it as a national dish too.

What is Nicaragua's currency?

The córdoba. It honours Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, the conquistador who founded the country's first colonial cities, only to be beheaded on the orders of his own jealous governor.

The Bosawás Biosphere Reserve in northern Nicaragua protects what kind of landscape?

Tropical rainforest. The reserve takes in about 15% of the country, and because it lies where the two halves of the Americas join, animals of both north and south meet in it.

Which bird, known locally as the guardabarranco, is Nicaragua's national bird?

The turquoise-browed motmot. Its local name means ravine-guard, apt for a bird that nests at the end of a long tunnel dug into an earth bank; El Salvador has made it a national symbol too.

Nicaragua's flag is one of few to feature which colour, thanks to a rainbow in its coat of arms?

Purple. It is one thin band of the rainbow that arches over five volcanoes in the central emblem, one for each state of the old Central American federation whose blue and white flag Nicaragua kept.

By the traditional account, Nicaragua's name joins 'agua', meaning water, to the name of what?

A local chieftain. The conquistador Gil González Dávila is said to have named the land for Nicarao, a chief he met in 1522; a rival theory reads the name as Nahuatl for 'here surrounded by water'.

Which British naval hero led an expedition up the San Juan River in 1780?

Disease forced the campaign to be abandoned.

Nicaraguan Sign Language fascinated linguists because it let them observe what?

A new tongue being born. Deaf children brought together in schools around 1980 arrived with only home-made gestures, and within a few years had turned them into a full language with a grammar of its own.

The 2,100-year-old footprints of Acahualinca were found on the shores of which body of water?

Lake Managua. A group of up to fifteen people crossed fresh volcanic mud that hardened behind them, and the tracks lay buried until building workers dug them up in 1874.

Which Nicaraguan volcano sits just outside the colonial city on Lake Nicaragua's northwest shore?

Mombacho. Long ago it shed part of its cone into the lake, scattering the hundreds of islets that lie off the city's shore, and cloud forest now cloaks its summit.

The Nahua-speaking people who held western Nicaragua when the conquistadors arrived had migrated from where?

Central Mexico. Kin to the Aztecs in language, they are said to have left the Cholula valley and moved south in stages, by way of Chiapas, over several centuries.

On which of his voyages did Columbus reach the coast of Nicaragua in 1502, before any other known European?

Fourth. On this last voyage he was hunting for a sea passage through to Asia, and he coasted Central America for months before giving up without finding one.

What did early European explorers call the vast Lake Nicaragua?

The Sweet Sea. The lake seemed as vast as a sea to them, yet its water was fresh, which their language calls 'sweet'.

Which volcano near León has become a popular spot for sand skiing?

Cerro Negro. Visitors hike up and slide down its bare slope of black cinders, even though it is one of the country's most active volcanoes and its ash has repeatedly damaged the farmland around it.

What is the name of the satirical drama regarded as Nicaragua's signature folkloric masterpiece?

El Güegüense. Its hero, a wily old man, meets every charge the colonial officials bring against him with clever wordplay, bowing to their faces while mocking them; Diriamba still performs it at its patron saint's feast.

Which port is the chief town of Nicaragua's Caribbean coast?

Bluefields. It takes its name from a Dutch pirate, Blewfeldt, who made its sheltered bay his base in the 1600s, and today it is known as the home of Nicaraguan reggae.

Which Nicaraguan pitcher threw a perfect game for the Montreal Expos at Dodger Stadium in 1991?

Dennis Martínez. 'El Presidente', the first Nicaraguan to reach the major leagues, had beaten an alcohol problem that nearly ended his career before he became the first Latin American-born pitcher to throw a perfect game.