49 Fun Facts About Samoa

Samoa lies in the Pacific roughly halfway between New Zealand and where?

Hawaii. Samoa also kept to Hawaii's side of the date line, almost a full day behind New Zealand, until it jumped across at the end of 2011.

Which Hollywood star was given the Samoan title Seiuli by Samoa's head of state in 2004?

Dwayne Johnson. The Rock's mother is Samoan and he descends from chiefs, and the title also thanked him for supporting charities and relief work in the islands.

Which pottery-making seafarers were the first people to settle the Samoan Islands, about 3,000 years ago?

The Lapita. Their stamped pottery marks Samoa's oldest known site, which nobody dug for: it came up in dredge spoil when a ferry berth was enlarged at Mulifanua in 1973.

Which name did the French explorer Bougainville give the Samoan islands in 1768?

The Navigator Islands. The name stayed on maps for more than a century, though France's next visit ended in blood: La Perouse lost several of his crew in a clash on Tutuila in 1787.

A storm on 15 March 1889 ended a stand-off in Apia harbour between which three navies?

Germany, Britain and the United States. The cyclone wrecked or beached all six German and American warships; only Britain's HMS Calliope, engines straining, crept out to sea and survived.

Under the 1899 Tripartite Convention the larger, westerly islands became a colony of which empire?

Germany. Its rule lasted only until 1914, and chiefs who resisted it, led by a chief named Lauaki, were shipped into exile on Saipan in 1909.

Which rugby nation did Samoa stun 16-13 on its World Cup debut in 1991?

Wales. The 1987 semi-finalists were beaten on their own ground in Cardiff and went out in the pool stage, while the newcomers marched on to a quarter-final.

Which traditional drink is shared at Samoa's most solemn ceremonies?

Kava. Samoans call it 'ava; it is made from the root of a pepper plant, and drinkers customarily tip a little onto the ground before and after their cup.

Roughly what fraction of Samoa's population died in the 1918-19 influenza epidemic?

One fifth. The administrator let sick passengers come ashore from a ship without quarantine, and a royal commission later found neglect and poor judgement.

The non-violent independence movement that colonial police fired on in Apia in 1929 was called what?

The Mau. The name means a firmly held opinion; its leader, Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, was shot while trying to calm the crowd, and the day became known as Black Saturday.

Who was head of state when Samoa became independent in 1962?

Two chiefs jointly, for life. One died in 1963 and the other carried on alone until 2007, after which parliament began electing heads of state for five-year terms.

Until 1997 Samoa was officially known as what?

Western Samoa. The name dated from the islands' partition in 1899, and when 'Western' was dropped, American Samoa protested that the change diminished its own Samoan identity.

Why did Samoa switch from driving on the right to the left in 2009?

To import cheaper used cars. Samoa wanted an end to costly left-hand-drive imports from America, so at 6am one September morning sirens sounded and every driver changed sides.

Why did Samoa skip 30 December 2011 and jump west across the date line?

To match trading partners. Samoa's Friday had been Saturday in Australia and New Zealand, leaving only four shared working days a week; the jump made it five, and neighbouring Tokelau skipped the day as well.

Who became Samoa's prime minister in 2021 after a constitutional crisis?

Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, the first woman in the post. Locked out of parliament by her rivals, she took the oath in a tent outside, and two months later the Court of Appeal ruled the ceremony binding.

Who alone may stand for election to Samoa's parliament?

Holders of matai chiefly titles. Every adult has had the vote since a 1990 referendum, but candidates must still be matai, the leaders each extended family chooses for itself.

Which bat-and-ball sport did Samoans remake as a village game with teams of any size?

Cricket. It arrived in the 19th century, and in the Samoan version, kirikiti, whole villages play while spectators sing and the hosts lay on the food.

Samoa's flag is red with a blue canton bearing white stars in the shape of which constellation?

The Southern Cross. The flag flew with only four stars when it was introduced in 1948 and gained its smaller fifth star the following year.

What is Samoa's currency?

The tala. The name is the Samoan form of 'dollar', as its hundredth, the sene, is of 'cent'; it replaced the pound in 1967 at two tala to the pound.

Which author settled at Vailima, was called Tusitala and was buried on Mount Vaea in 1894?

Robert Louis Stevenson. Tusitala means 'teller of tales'; when he died, Samoans cut a path up Mount Vaea overnight and bore his coffin to the summit on their shoulders.

Tusitala's 1892 book on the great powers' scramble for Samoa is titled what?

A Footnote to History. The preface explains the modest title: an affair worth 'a note of a few lines in any general history' had been expanded into a whole volume.

The traditional Samoan male tattoo, worn from the waist to the knees, is called what?

Pe'a. Missionaries tried to stamp tattooing out and succeeded on many Polynesian islands, but Samoans never gave it up and later helped revive the art in Tahiti.

People born male who take on a feminine gender role are known in Samoa as what?

Fa'afafine. They are a recognised third gender, and Samoan scholars call the outsiders' story that families short of daughters raise a son as a girl a myth.

The traditional Samoan way of life, taking in custom, social order and language, is called what?

Fa'a Samoa. It has withstood centuries of European influence: outside the capital, many traditions of village life remain virtually unchanged.

What is the traditional Samoan house, open-sided with no walls, called?

Fale. With no walls to shut, a family simply lets down blinds of plaited palm fronds at night or when the weather turns.

In Samoan legend Nafanua won back her people's land on Savai'i and became the goddess of what?

War. In one telling the fighting stopped when the wind lifted her top: her enemies, seeing they had been beaten by a woman, gave up in shame.

The Samoan legend of 'Sina and the Eel' explains the origin of what?

The first coconut tree. In the legend it grew where the eel's head was buried, and the three marks on a husked coconut are said to be the eel's two eyes and mouth.

What buried villages on Samoa's island of Savai'i between 1905 and 1911?

Lava flows. Mount Matavanu erupted on and off for six years; the lava fields and the ruins in them are now a visitor sight, below Mount Silisili, Samoa's highest point.

Which root crop, once Samoa's biggest export, was all but wiped out by a leaf blight in the 1990s?

Taro. It brought in more than half of Samoa's export earnings in 1993; then leaf blight struck, and the next year's exports all but vanished.

Samoa's national rugby union team is nicknamed what?

Manu Samoa. Though the country has only about 200,000 people, the side reached the World Cup quarter-finals at its first attempt in 1991 and did so again in 1995.

Samoa reached its first Rugby League World Cup final in 2022 by beating which nation in a golden-point semi-final?

England. Four weeks earlier the hosts had thrashed Samoa 60-6 in the tournament's opening match; this time Stephen Crichton's extra-time drop goal won it 27-26.

Which church, grown from the London Missionary Society's mission, was Samoa's largest in the 2021 census?

The Congregational Church. With 27 percent it led Catholics (19) and Latter-day Saints (18); Samoans took to Christianity so fully that in 2017 parliament wrote 'a Christian nation' into the constitution.

Samoa's Malietoa Tanumafili II was the first serving head of state anywhere to embrace which religion?

The Baha'i Faith. He laid the cornerstone of its House of Worship near Apia in 1979 and dedicated it in 1984 as the 'Mother Temple of the Pacific Islands'.

Faleolo, Samoa's main airport, began as a 1942 airfield built by which country's forces?

United States. Navy Seabees finished the runway in July 1942, when a Japanese invasion was feared, and the garrison's roads and airfield gave the islands' economy a wartime lift.

Juice from which fruit, sold abroad as a health tonic, is among Samoa's notable exports?

Noni. Samoans call the fruit nonu; its juice sells abroad as a health tonic, although studies in people have yet to show that it treats anything.

Which American reality show filmed four seasons on Samoa's island of Upolu between 2009 and 2011?

Survivor. One of the four was its tenth-anniversary season, and a judge refused to let the show's first winner, then under home confinement for tax evasion, fly out to take part.

Samoa's best-known swimming hole, a deep sea-fed sinkhole, is called what?

To Sua ocean trench. The name means roughly 'big hole'; it is some 30 metres deep, and the only way down to the water is a long ladder.

Which 2011 film was the first feature shot entirely in Samoa, in Samoan, with a Samoan cast?

The Orator. Its hero is a small man who must find the nerve to speak up for his family, and the film became New Zealand's first-ever entry for the foreign-language Oscar.

What must happen in Samoa if women win under a tenth of the seats in parliament?

Extra members are added. The additional seats go to women, and in 2021 one such seat left the two sides tied at 26 apiece until the courts threw the appointment out.

What has Samoa never had since becoming independent in 1962?

A standing army. Its police normally go unarmed, and a friendship treaty signed with New Zealand in 1962 lets Samoa ask its old administrator for military help.

What is the wraparound cloth that Samoans wear as a skirt called?

Lavalava. Men wear it as readily as women: a plain tailored one goes with a jacket and tie at church or the office, and dancers perform the fa'ataupati in it.

King Kapisi, of Samoan descent, was the first artist in which genre to win New Zealand's Silver Scroll?

Hip hop. The winning song, in 1999, was 'Reverse Resistance'; his first video, filmed underwater, had been directed by his sister, the film-maker Sima Urale.

Samoa's first Olympic medal, a silver upgraded years later when two rivals failed drug retests, came in which sport?

Weightlifting. Ele Opeloge finished fourth at Beijing in 2008; when two lifters above her were disqualified in 2016 she moved up to silver, and the medal reached her by post a year later.

Jacob Roggeveen, the first European to sight Samoa, had weeks earlier in 1722 become the first to reach where?

Easter Island. He had been sent to find an undiscovered continent; what he met instead were islands Europe had never charted, some of the Samoan group among them.

Which London Missionary Society figure began Christian missionary work in Samoa in 1830?

John Williams. He won over Malietoa Vainu'upo, who had just made himself master of all Samoa, and the rest of the islands soon followed their ruler into the church.

Which organisation did Samoa wait until December 1976, fourteen years after independence, to join?

The United Nations. It joined under the plain name Samoa, two decades before it adopted that shorter name at home in 1997.

Which New Zealand prime minister formally apologised to Samoa in 2002 for the 1918 flu and Black Saturday?

Helen Clark. She made the apology in Apia at a lunch marking 40 years of Samoan independence, expressing 'sorrow and regret' for the injustices of New Zealand's early rule.

Which disease killed dozens of young children in Samoa in late 2019?

Measles. Only about a third of infants had been vaccinated, after two babies died in 2018 from a vaccine that nurses had wrongly mixed with a muscle relaxant and parents took fright.

The tooth-billed pigeon, found only in Samoa's forests, is one of the closest living relatives of which extinct bird?

The dodo. Its scientific name, Didunculus, means 'little dodo', and with only a few hundred birds thought to survive, conservationists are racing to spare it its cousin's fate.