99 Fun Facts About North America

Which two continents are larger than North America by area?

Asia and Africa: Mercator world maps make Greenland look almost as big as Africa, though Africa is about 14 times larger.

The Americas were named after which explorer?

Amerigo Vespucci: Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 map gave his first name a feminine Latin form, 'America', to match Europa and Asia, and placed it on South America.

Early European maps called part of North America 'Bacalaos', meaning the land of which fish?

The name nodded to the huge cod stocks off the East Coast that drew European fishing fleets to Newfoundland.

What is the highest peak in North America?

Denali: in 1910 two climbers planted a pole on its lower North Peak to prove a doubted ascent, and the 1913 first-ascent team reported spotting it through field glasses.

In 1896 a gold prospector renamed North America's highest peak after which presidential candidate?

William McKinley: prospector William Dickey reportedly picked him to spite silver-standard miners he had met; the federal name was dropped in 2015 and restored in 2025.

Which huge Canadian bay is named after an English explorer whose mutinous crew set him adrift in 1611?

Hudson Bay: the mutineers cast Henry Hudson, his teenage son John and seven sick or loyal crewmen adrift in a small boat, and Europeans never saw them again.

Which is the largest of the five Great Lakes by surface area?

Superior: its Ojibwe name gichi-gami, 'great sea', became 'Gitche Gumee' in Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, set on its south shore.

Which two Great Lakes are hydrologically one body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac?

Michigan and Huron: the Straits of Mackinac are so wide and deep that both lakes sit at the same surface level, so hydrologists study them as one lake.

Roughly what share of the world's surface fresh water do the Great Lakes hold?

20%: Siberia's Lake Baikal alone holds slightly more fresh surface water than all five Great Lakes combined.

The Mississippi River rises in which Minnesota lake?

Itasca: Henry Schoolcraft coined the name from the Latin veritas caput, 'true head', and visitors can walk across the young Mississippi there on stones.

Which tributary is longer than the river it joins, making it the longest river in the United States?

Missouri: Lewis and Clark set off up it in 1804 hoping for a water route across the continent, but found none and crossed the Rockies overland.

The Rio Grande, which forms much of the US-Mexico border, is known by what name in Mexico?

Río Bravo: floods in the 1860s shifted its course south, leaving a strip of land called the Chamizal in dispute for about a century, until a 1963 treaty settled it.

The hottest air temperature ever officially recorded on Earth was measured in which California valley?

Death Valley: rising hot air is trapped by its steep mountain walls and recycled back to the floor. Some meteorologists dispute its 134 °F reading from 1913, though as of 2025 it stood as the official world record.

Greenland, the world's largest island, is an autonomous territory of which kingdom?

Denmark: after a 1982 referendum, Greenland left the European Communities in 1985, while Denmark itself stayed in.

Greenland shares a short land border with Canada on which tiny island, disputed until 2022?

Hans: for decades each side's visitors swapped the other's flag for their own and left a bottle of liquor, until a June 2022 treaty split the island along a gorge.

What is the capital of Greenland?

Nuuk: until its longer runway opened on 28 November 2024, jets from abroad landed at Kangerlussuaq in the north, and travellers changed planes there.

What is Canada's newest territory, carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1999 for Inuit self-government?

Nunavut: with no political parties, its legislature elects the premier and cabinet from among its own members, and in Inuktitut the name means 'our land'.

Which is North America's most populous city?

Mexico City: it sits on the drained bed of Lake Texcoco, and pumping its aquifer has made parts of the city sink by metres over the last century.

Which active Mexican volcano's Nahuatl name means 'smoking mountain'?

Popocatépetl: it reawakened with a burst of gas and ash in December 1994, and in July 2013 its eruptions led US airlines to cancel more than 40 flights.

The Aztec Empire, whose capital was Tenochtitlan, was conquered in 1521 by which Spaniard?

Hernán Cortés: to eliminate any thought of retreat, he had his ships scuttled, not burned as the legend has it.

Which Spanish explorer named La Florida in 1513?

Juan Ponce de León: he is thought to have named it for its greenery or for Pascua Florida, the Easter season, and the Fountain of Youth story was attached to him only after he died.

In the Norse sagas, which North American land lay farthest south?

Vinland: butternuts found at L'Anse aux Meadows don't grow north of New Brunswick, so the Norse reached lands where wild grapes grow, though 'vin' may mean meadow.

Which Norse explorer is thought to be the first European to land on mainland North America?

Leif Erikson: in the Saga of the Greenlanders, he bought the ship of Bjarni Herjólfsson, who had sighted new lands but never landed, and hired a crew of 35.

What was the first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in 1607?

Jamestown: only about 60 settlers survived the Starving Time of 1609–10, yet John Rolfe's sweeter tobacco later turned Virginia into a profitable venture.

Which settlement did French explorer Samuel de Champlain found in 1608?

Quebec City: its name is thought to come from Kébec, an Algonquian word for 'where the river narrows', as the St. Lawrence does at the headland where the city stands.

Which leader sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803?

Napoleon Bonaparte: with his army in Saint-Domingue wrecked by yellow fever and war with Britain looming, he sold the whole territory for $15 million.

From which country did the United States buy Alaska in 1867?

Russia: skeptics mocked the $7.2 million deal as 'Seward's Folly', but an 1896 gold strike in the Yukon later made Alaska the gateway to the Klondike.

Panama separated from which country in 1903, with US backing, clearing the way for the canal?

Colombia: its congress rejected a US canal treaty, so Roosevelt sent warships to Colón and Panama City to back Panama's November 1903 revolt.

Which country began building the Panama Canal in the 1880s before abandoning the effort in 1889?

France: Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, led the effort, but yellow fever and malaria killed thousands of workers and the company went bankrupt.

The Panama Canal's locks lift ships 26 metres up to which artificial body of water?

Gatun Lake: when the Chagres River was dammed in 1913, rising water drowned the forest and left hilltops as islands, including Barro Colorado, now a Smithsonian research station.

The only land connection between North and South America is at which notoriously roadless region?

Darién Gap: a US-funded plan to build a road through it in the 1970s was halted after environmental groups raised concerns.

Which Central American country is the only one where English is the official language?

Belize: English is official because it was the British colony of British Honduras, and Guatemala refused to recognise it at independence in 1981, claiming the land.

Which Central American country permanently abolished its army in its 1949 constitution?

Costa Rica: after José Figueres abolished the military, the army's Bellavista barracks, used in the 1948 civil war, became home to the National Museum.

Which freshwater body, the largest in Central America, is famous for containing bull sharks?

Lake Nicaragua: scientists once thought its sharks were a unique species, until comparisons of specimens showed they were bull sharks.

The Chicxulub crater, left by the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs, lies beneath which peninsula?

Yucatán: the crater is buried out of sight, but a ring of water-filled sinkholes called cenotes traces its rim across the land.

Which ice-age land bridge let people walk from Siberia into Alaska?

Beringia: the strait that drowned it is about 82 km wide, yet its two Diomede islands sit only 3.8 km apart and nearly a day apart across the date line.

North America's geographic centre, as estimated by the USGS, lies in which US state?

North Dakota: the USGS puts the centre six miles west of tiny Balta, but nearby Rugby, the bigger town, calls itself the centre of the continent.

Which ancient culture, long seen as North America's oldest, is named after a New Mexico town?

Clovis: its fluted spear points turn up across the continent, but sites such as Chile's Monte Verde, about 14,500 years old, show people arrived at least 1,000 years earlier.

The 2012 doomsday craze misread a calendar cycle recorded by which civilisation?

Maya: the date only closed the 13th b'ak'tun, and a Palenque inscription refers to a date in the year 4772, so they expected time to go on.

Which of these crops was domesticated in North America?

Vanilla: planted abroad it bore no pods without its native pollinators, until Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old enslaved boy on Réunion, found a quick way to hand-pollinate it in 1841.

The Appalachian Mountains rose as continents collided to form which supercontinent?

Pangaea: the same mountain chain once ran unbroken into Scotland and Morocco's Little Atlas, until the supercontinent broke apart and the Atlantic opened between them.

Which was the first national park in the United States, established in 1872?

Yellowstone: Congress was won over partly by Thomas Moran's paintings and William Henry Jackson's photographs, which showed its wonders where written descriptions failed.

Crater Lake in Oregon fills the caldera of which collapsed volcano?

Mount Mazama: it collapsed about 7,700 years ago, and Klamath stories of a battle between the sky god Skell and underworld god Llao may preserve memories of the eruption.

Which Shakespeare play is thought to draw on the 1609 wreck of a Virginia-bound ship on Bermuda?

The Tempest: the Sea Venture's castaways built two new ships from Bermuda cedar, and survivor William Strachey's account of the wreck probably reached Shakespeare.

Sudbury, in Ontario's impact-formed basin, celebrates which metal with a giant replica coin?

Nickel: the impact nearly two billion years ago left rich nickel ores, uncovered in 1883 by blasting for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Which trade agreement, signed in 2018, replaced NAFTA?

USMCA: to cross borders duty-free, a car needs 75% of its value made in North America, up from 62.5% under NAFTA.

Which sport became Canada's official national summer sport in 1994?

Lacrosse: a 1994 bill naming hockey the national sport was amended after much debate, making hockey the winter sport and lacrosse the summer one.

Which Central American volcano erupted in 1968, killing 87 people?

Arenal: before 1968 people debated whether it was extinct and called it Cerro Arenal, until the eruption destroyed the villages of Tabacón and Pueblo Nuevo.

What is the name of the ancient craton that forms the geological core of North America?

Laurentia: ice-age glaciers scraped its exposed core, the Canadian Shield, down to bare rock and carried the soil south, leaving countless lakes behind.

In 1901 schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to survive going over which waterfall in a barrel?

Niagara Falls was her retirement plan: Taylor made the drop on her 63rd birthday in an oak barrel padded with a mattress, hoping the stunt would make her fortune.

Which salad was first tossed in 1924 at an Italian immigrant's restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico?

Caesar salad is named after restaurateur Caesar Cardini, whose Tijuana kitchen is said to have improvised it when a Fourth of July rush left it short of ingredients.

Which sport did Canadian-born teacher James Naismith invent in 1891 at a YMCA training school in Massachusetts?

Basketball began with a soccer ball and two peach baskets fixed to a gym gallery. The first games were played nine against nine.

Which butterfly migrates thousands of miles from Canada and the United States to winter in central Mexico's forests?

Monarch butterfly migration is a relay: one autumn generation flies all the way south, and it takes several generations to work back north in spring.

Which island did Dutch colonists acquire in 1626 for trade goods valued at just 60 guilders?

Manhattan's famous price comes from a single letter of 1626 reporting the deal. Peter Minuit is credited with the purchase, and the trading post there was named New Amsterdam.

Which Caribbean island sent a four-man bobsleigh team to the 1988 Winter Olympics?

Jamaica's sledders arrived as underdogs from a tropical nation with no winter, and their story inspired the 1993 Disney film Cool Runnings.

Mexico's national flag shows a golden eagle perched on a cactus and devouring which animal?

Snake and eagle come from the Aztec founding legend: the people were to build their city, Tenochtitlan, where they saw an eagle eating a serpent on a cactus.

The CN Tower, the world's tallest free-standing structure from 1975 to 2007, rises above which Canadian city?

Toronto owes its skyline to a railway: the CN in the tower's name stands for Canadian National, the company that built it as a broadcasting mast.

Which animal, cut from an estimated 60 million to just 541 by 1889, became the US national mammal in 2016?

Bison gave Plains peoples food, hides for clothing and shelter, and bone for tools, which is one reason the herds were destroyed. Today's animals descend from those few hundred survivors.

Which Mexican holiday, marked with marigolds and home altars called ofrendas, joined UNESCO's heritage list in 2008?

Day of the Dead is a welcome rather than a wake: families set out the favourite foods and drinks of the departed and carry them to the graveside as gifts.

Which river cut the Grand Canyon, exposing nearly two billion years of rock on its way through Arizona?

Colorado River water has been at work there for about five to six million years, deepening and widening the canyon as the plateau around it was uplifted.

Which ship carried the English families known as the Pilgrims across the Atlantic to the New World in 1620?

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

Which Mexican spirit, made from the blue agave plant, shares its name with a town in the state of Jalisco?

Tequila country's red volcanic soil suits the blue agave, and the agave fields and old distilleries around the town became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006.

Which trophy, donated in 1892 by Canada's governor general, is the oldest in North American professional sport?

Stanley Cup winners still follow a tradition begun by the 1896 Winnipeg Victorias: drinking champagne from the bowl. Lord Stanley himself never saw a championship game.

Which US city on the Mississippi River is regarded as the birthplace of jazz?

New Orleans jazz grew out of brass band marches, ragtime and blues, with the whole band improvising together rather than taking turns.

Which mountain range stretches some 3,000 miles from the far north of western Canada to New Mexico?

Rockies peaks carry the Continental Divide, the line that decides whether rainwater ends up in the Atlantic or the Pacific.

Which rodent, trapped for the fur trade that shaped early Canada, was declared the national animal in 1975?

Beaver imagery goes back much further: the animal starred on the first pictorial postage stamp issued in the Canadian colonies, the 1851 Three-Penny Beaver.

Which Mexican painter, famous for small self-portraits, spent most of a lifetime at the Blue House in Coyoacán?

Frida Kahlo had been headed for medical school until a bus accident at 18 left her in lifelong pain. Confined to bed for three months, she began to paint.

Which woman escaped slavery and then made some 13 missions to guide about 70 others along the Underground Railroad?

Harriet Tubman began leading escapees farther north, into Canada, after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed.

Which salamander, able to regrow limbs and parts of the brain, is native only to lakes in the Valley of Mexico?

Axolotl habitat has shrunk to the canals of Xochimilco, the remnant of a lake, yet a large captive population lives on in research laboratories.

Which highway, nicknamed the Mother Road, ran 2,448 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, California?

Route 66 owes its nickname to John Steinbeck, whose novel The Grapes of Wrath follows families driving it west to escape the Dust Bowl.

Mount St. Helens lost the top 1,300 feet of its summit in a 1980 eruption in which US state?

Washington's volcano erupted sideways: an earthquake set off a massive debris avalanche, and the blast left a mile-wide, horseshoe-shaped crater where the peak had been.

Which staple crop was domesticated in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from a wild plant called teosinte?

Maize has since overtaken both wheat and rice in total world production, though much of the field crop goes to animal feed and ethanol rather than the table.

Frederick Banting and Charles Best, working at a Canadian university in 1921, isolated which life-saving hormone?

Insulin came from the pancreas of a dog in those experiments, and the breakthrough won a Nobel Prize only two years later, in 1923.

Which teenage woman set out with the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 carrying her baby son on her back?

Sacagawea once gave up her own beaded belt so the captains could trade for a fur robe they wanted to take home to President Thomas Jefferson.

The 13-day siege of the Alamo Mission in 1836 took place in what is now which Texas city?

San Antonio's lost mission became a battle cry: Texian soldiers shouted "Remember the Alamo!" as they routed the Mexican army weeks later.

Which Caribbean island, the most populous in the West Indies, is divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic?

Hispaniola holds the oldest permanent European settlement in the Americas: Santo Domingo, founded in the 1490s by Columbus's brother Bartholomew and still a national capital.

The Klondike Gold Rush drew an estimated 100,000 prospectors in the late 1890s to which part of Canada?

Yukon's goldfields were so hard to reach that only some 30,000 to 40,000 of those who set out ever arrived. Dawson City sprang up where the Klondike joins the main river.

At which Mexican site does a serpent of shadow seem to crawl down the pyramid El Castillo at each equinox?

Chichen Itza's pyramid doubles as a calendar: its four stairways of roughly 91 steps each, plus the top platform, are often counted as 365, one for every day of the year.

During which war did British forces set fire to the White House, gutting the interior of the president's home?

War of 1812 British troops lit the fires in August 1814 in retaliation for acts of destruction by American troops in Canada.

L. M. Montgomery set the novel 'Anne of Green Gables' in which Canadian province, the smallest in the country?

Prince Edward Island's orphan heroine has travelled well: the novel has been translated into at least 36 languages and has sold more than 50 million copies.

Which giant cactus of the Sonoran Desert may take 75 to 100 years to grow its first side arm?

Saguaro arms are an investment in offspring: every extra tip carries more flowers and fruit. Some plants never grow an arm at all.

Which bay between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia has the highest tidal range in the world, about 16 metres?

Bay of Fundy tides are amplified by the funnel shape of the basin, which makes the water resonate. The average tidal range worldwide is only about one metre.

The bee hummingbird, the smallest known bird in the world, is native to which Caribbean island?

Cuba's bee hummingbird is so tiny that, because birds are living dinosaurs, it has also been described as the smallest known dinosaur.

Hyperion, the world's tallest known living tree at about 116 metres, belongs to which California species?

Coast redwood giants crowd a single park: Hyperion's neighbours in Redwood National Park include Helios, Icarus and Daedalus, each more than 360 feet tall.

Which Canadian city hosts a July festival that bills itself as 'The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth'?

Calgary's Stampede is a ten-day rodeo and festival that draws over a million visitors a year, with chuckwagon racing among its signature events.

Christopher Columbus first set foot in the New World in 1492 on an island in which present-day country?

Bahamas is the accepted answer, but the exact island is disputed: its people called it Guanahani, and the traditional candidate was officially renamed San Salvador only in 1925.

Which line of latitude does the Canada–United States border follow from British Columbia east to Manitoba?

49th parallel markers were placed by 19th-century surveyors, whose errors leave the real border wandering hundreds of metres to either side of the true line.

El Yunque, the only tropical rainforest in the US national forest system, grows in which territory?

Puerto Rico's forest was managed long before American rule: it was Spanish Crown land, and Spain sent foresters to survey it in 1853.

Mammoth Cave, the longest known cave system in the world, runs beneath which US state?

Kentucky's cave has more than 400 miles of surveyed passages. It became the Mammoth-Flint Ridge system in 1972, when explorers found a link to the even longer caves under Flint Ridge.

Which Central American country names its currency, the quetzal, after its brilliantly plumed national bird?

Guatemala also puts the quetzal on its flag, and the money has deep roots: the bird's tail feathers were themselves used as currency in ancient times.

Which Mexican volcano burst out of a farmer's cornfield in 1943 and stood 365 metres tall within eight months?

Parícutin's unlucky landowner left a sign on his buried field before he moved away: "This volcano is owned and operated by Dionisio Pulido."

Which city of earthen mounds in present-day Illinois was the largest settlement of the Mississippian culture?

Cahokia's centrepiece, Monks Mound, covers 14 acres and rises 100 feet, and it was once topped by a massive building another 50 feet high.

Which northern Canadian town is nicknamed the 'Polar Bear Capital of the World' for its autumn visitors?

Churchill, in Manitoba, sees the bears move toward the shore from inland every autumn, and tour operators take visitors out to them in tundra buggies.

Which lake, covered with ice from late November to July, is the largest lying entirely within Canada?

Great Bear Lake, in the boreal forest of the far north, is the fourth-largest lake in North America and the eighth-largest in the world.

Which Shawnee chief forged a multi-tribal confederacy and was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813?

Tecumseh was a persuasive orator who travelled widely to promote unity between the tribes. His death caused the confederacy to collapse.

Who became Canada's first prime minister at Confederation in 1867 and went on to serve 19 years in all?

John A. Macdonald had to resign in 1873 over bribes his party took from businessmen seeking the contract for a railway to the Pacific, yet he was back in office by 1878.

Which Catholic priest rang his church bell in 1810 and gave the call to arms that began Mexico's War of Independence?

Miguel Hidalgo's cry is re-enacted every year on the eve of Independence Day, when Mexico's president rings the same bell from the balcony of the National Palace.

Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexico's victory over an invading army in 1862 at a battle named after which city?

Puebla's victory is often mistaken for Mexican Independence Day, which falls on September 16. The invaders later returned in greater numbers and won a second battle there.

Which Norwegian explorer led the first expedition to sail through the Northwest Passage, in the sloop Gjøa?

Roald Amundsen took only six men in a 45-ton fishing vessel and spent two winters at King William Island, where the harbour is now called Gjoa Haven.