57 Fun Facts About Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands lies in which region of Oceania?

Melanesia takes in nearly all Solomon Islanders, yet a few outlying islands, among them Tikopia, Rennell and Anuta, are home to Polynesians.

Which Spanish navigator, sailing from Peru, became the first European to reach the Solomon Islands in 1568?

Álvaro de Mendaña left Callao with two ships and spent six months exploring the islands. He came back in 1595 to plant a colony and died there weeks after landing.

The Solomon Islands were named in the hope that they were which biblical land of gold?

Ophir was the land said to have supplied King Solomon's gold, and the Spaniards who arrived in 1568 hoped they had found it. They left other names too: Guadalcanal is named after a village in Spain.

Solomon Islands became independent in 1978, two years before which neighbour that Britain and France had ruled jointly?

Vanuatu was the New Hebrides until 1980. The Solomons' own independence was not unanimous: a breakaway movement in the western islands feared being run from Honiara.

Since independence in 1978, who has been the head of state of Solomon Islands?

A hereditary monarch it is: the British sovereign reigns separately as King or Queen of Solomon Islands. Parliament nominates the governor-general who stands in, always a Solomon Islander.

Which small island, colonial capital of the Solomons before Honiara, did US Marines capture in August 1942?

Tulagi was picked in 1896 by the first resident commissioner, who set up there with a whaleboat and a handful of Fijian police. Japan seized it in May 1942, and the capital never returned.

What was the 19th-century kidnapping of Solomon Islanders for Queensland and Fiji plantations called?

Blackbirding began with kidnapping and trickery, though many later recruits signed on willingly, some more than once. Death rates on the plantations stayed high throughout.

An 1899 treaty gave Britain most of Germany's northern Solomons in return for dropping British claims to which islands?

Samoa was the prize: Germany took its western islands and the United States the east. The line redrawn through the Solomons that year is still the border with Papua New Guinea.

Which island, the largest of the Solomon Islands archipelago, belongs to another country?

Bougainville stayed on the German side when the colonial border was redrawn in 1899, so it ended up in Papua New Guinea instead of with its southern neighbours.

American fighters flying from Guadalcanal ambushed and killed which Japanese admiral in April 1943?

Isoroku Yamamoto's travel plans were read by US codebreakers. Only the long-range P-38 could reach him, so its pilots flew more than 400 miles at wave-top height to meet his plane on schedule.

Which network hid behind Japanese lines in the Solomons to radio warnings of air raids?

The Coastwatchers, planters, missionaries and islanders in hiding, went by the code name Ferdinand, after the storybook bull who would rather smell flowers than fight. It reminded them to watch and report, never to attack.

After PT-109 sank in 1943, John F. Kennedy's rescue message was carved on what and paddled to safety by islanders?

A coconut was scout Biuku Gasa's idea: he showed Kennedy how to scratch '11 alive need small boat' into the green husk. As president, Kennedy kept it on his Oval Office desk.

Which American novelist sailed his yacht Snark to the Solomon Islands in 1908?

Jack London set out to sail round the world, but tropical infections picked up on the cruise ended it in the Solomons. He turned the trip into the book The Cruise of the Snark.

Which 1998 war film follows American soldiers through the battle for Guadalcanal?

The Thin Red Line is based on a novel by James Jones, who fought in the Pacific himself and drew on that service for the book.

What grim nickname did Allied sailors give the waters off Guadalcanal where so many ships sank in 1942-43?

Ironbottom Sound filled with wrecks because so much of the fighting came after dark: Japanese destroyers ran troops and supplies in by night, a shuttle the Allies called the Tokyo Express.

Honiara International Airport was known during World War II by what name?

Henderson Field was begun by Japanese construction troops and seized by US Marines within two days of landing. They named it after Lofton Henderson, a Marine pilot killed at Midway.

A crocodile and which other animal hold up the shield on the Solomon Islands coat of arms?

A shark faces the crocodile across the shield, above the motto 'To Lead Is to Serve'. An earlier colonial badge showed only a turtle and was redrawn because the turtle stood for just one district.

What is the name of the creole that serves as Solomon Islands' everyday lingua franca?

Pijin began as a traders' jargon and took shape on the sugar plantations of Queensland, where islanders from dozens of language groups had to talk to one another. Returning labourers brought it home from the 1870s.

Most of Solomon Islands' local languages belong to which family, spoken from Madagascar to Easter Island?

Austronesian languages arrived with later seafarers and now dominate. A few Papuan tongues, such as Bilua and Savosavo, survive beside them and are thought to go back to the islands' first settlers.

The people of Langa Langa Lagoon are known for making which traditional Solomon Islands currency?

Shell money is made by drilling and polishing shell into small discs and threading them on strings. It is still handed over in customary payments, and visitors can buy it at Honiara's central market.

What is the unit of currency in Solomon Islands?

Dollar notes replaced Australian money one-for-one in 1977, a year before independence. Earlier the islands used pounds, and wartime Japan even issued its own occupation notes there.

Kavachi, named after a sea god by nearby islanders in Solomon Islands, is what kind of natural feature?

An undersea volcano south of Vangunu, Kavachi has built new islands again and again since its first recorded eruption in 1939, only for the waves to wear each one away.

Marovo, in Solomon Islands' Western Province, is the world's largest example of what?

Double-barrier lagoon: two lines of reef shelter Marovo's waters, which curl around the islands of Vangunu and Gatokae. The name began with one small island and spread to the whole lagoon.

A 2012 study traced the naturally blond hair of many Solomon Islanders to what?

A home-grown gene mutation, in a gene called TYRP1, is found nowhere outside Oceania, so the blond hair owes nothing to European visitors. It is recessive: a child is blond only if both parents pass it on.

Which Australian city gave its name to the 2000 peace agreement between Solomon Islands' rival ethnic militias?

Townsville, in north Queensland, hosted the signing in October 2000. Guale commander Harold Keke refused to sign and took his men to the remote Weather Coast, where the fighting went on.

The Australian-led force that restored order in Solomon Islands from 2003 arrived at whose request?

Solomon Islands' own government asked for the help, and Parliament backed the request unanimously. Police and troops from about 15 Pacific countries came, and the mission stayed until 2017.

Three years after switching recognition from Taiwan to Beijing, Solomon Islands signed what kind of deal with it in 2022?

A security pact, signed in April 2022, lets Solomon Islands call in Beijing's police and troops to keep order. A leaked draft set off alarm in Canberra and Washington before the ink was dry.

Who elects the prime minister of Solomon Islands?

Members of Parliament vote one of their own into the job. Parties are loose and no leader commands a clear majority for long, so governments are stitched together from shifting coalitions.

Solomon Islands has no army, so which service crews the patrol boats that guard its waters?

The police force doubles as the country's defence: its maritime wing sails the patrol boats, and officers also fight fires and run disaster relief. There has been no regular military since independence.

Which part of Honiara was largely destroyed in the 2006 riots over claims the new prime minister had bought votes?

Chinatown burned because rioters believed money from Chinese businessmen had bought Snyder Rini the prime ministership. He resigned before a no-confidence motion could be put to the vote.

Solomon Islands' Kurukuru are among Oceania's strongest national teams in which indoor sport?

Futsal took the Kurukuru to their first World Cup in 2008, where Russia beat them 31-2, the heaviest defeat in the tournament's history. Back home they kept on winning Oceania's title.

Solomon Islands' Bilikiki Boys have played at several World Cups in which sport, played on sand?

Beach soccer brought the Bilikiki Boys Oceania's first three regional titles, each one a ticket to the World Cup. By 2010 they ranked 14th in the world, above every other Pacific side.

Solomon Islands finished second in Oceania's final qualifying group for the 2006 World Cup, pushing which team into third?

New Zealand had beaten the Solomons 3-0 in the group, yet still finished behind them. The islanders took the play-off place by holding Australia to a 2-2 draw in Adelaide, with both goals from Commins Menapi.

Which multi-sport event did Solomon Islands host in 2023?

The Pacific Games came to Honiara in late 2023, the first time the country had hosted them. Pandemic delays pushed the event back four months, and the home team answered with its best medal haul ever.

Solomon Islands' Micronesian minority was resettled by the British from the crowded Gilbert Islands, now which country?

Kiribati's atolls were running out of room, so between 1955 and 1971 British officials moved Gilbertese families to Ghizo and Wagina. Their descendants there still speak Gilbertese.

Solomon Islands is one of six countries, with Indonesia and the Philippines, that share which 'Triangle'?

The Coral Triangle is the richest stretch of reef on Earth. Its six governments formed a partnership to protect it because coastal communities across the region depend on those reefs for food.

The tree-climbing 'monkey-tailed' lizard found only in the Solomon Islands holds what distinction?

Largest living skink, it is also one of the few reptiles known to live in a family group. Mothers bear a single live young about a third their own size, and the whole group guards it.

In Solomon Islands, the word 'wantok' describes what?

Kin who share a language are, literally, 'one talk', and they are expected to help one another. Away from the village the circle widens: in town a wantok can be anyone from the same island.

About a third of Solomon Islanders belong to which church, the country's largest?

Anglican missionaries began arriving in the 1850s, and other churches followed. In a country where the great majority of people are Christian, their church is still the biggest, well ahead of the Catholics.

Ensembles of which instrument are a hallmark of traditional music in Solomon Islands?

Panpipes are played here in whole ensembles, alongside slit drums and singing. Bamboo bands add a beat of their own by striking lengths of bamboo pipe with rubber sandals.

What followed the magnitude-8.1 earthquake of April 2007, killing dozens of people in western Solomon Islands?

A tsunami swept away hundreds of homes and left thousands of people homeless. The quake itself heaved Ranongga island up by about three metres, stranding its coral reefs above the waves.

Which explorer, wrecked on Vanikoro in 1788, vanished for nearly forty years until a trader spotted relics of his ships?

La Pérouse lost both his ships, Boussole and Astrolabe, on Vanikoro's reef. Trader Peter Dillon cracked the mystery when people on nearby Tikopia showed him a silver sword guard from the wrecks.

Kwaio warriors killed British Solomon Islands official William Bell in 1927 as he tried to enforce what?

A head tax had been imposed on the island four years earlier. Bell was struck down while collecting it, with 14 of his party, and the punitive expedition that followed killed or jailed many Kwaio.

The Kakamora, little people of Solomon Islands legend, became a pirate crew in which Disney film?

Moana sends them to sea in armour, but the legend keeps them on land: the Kakamora of the old stories roam the bush, live in caves and holes, and know nothing of fire.

On Savo Island, megapode birds bury their eggs and leave what to keep them warm until they hatch?

Volcanic heat does the brooding on Savo: the birds dig into sand warmed from below, lay, and walk away. The island is a volcano that last erupted in the 1840s, and its slopes still steam with hot springs.

Which language is the official language of Solomon Islands, though only 1-2% of the people speak it fluently?

English is the official language of this former British protectorate. Daily life runs instead in dozens of local languages and a shared creole that most people understand.

As of 2022, which product was by far the largest export of Solomon Islands?

Rough timber leaves mostly as unprocessed logs. The forests have been cut far faster than they can regrow, so both the trees and the income from them are running down.

Which French duo built their 1990s hit 'Sweet Lullaby' around a lullaby recorded in Solomon Islands?

Deep Forest sampled a woman named Afunakwa, recorded in 1970 by a visiting musicologist. She went uncredited, and her voice was widely taken for African pygmy singing.

On the flag of Solomon Islands, a thin yellow diagonal separates a green triangle from one of which colour?

Blue stands for the surrounding ocean and green for the land, with the yellow stripe between them for sunshine. Unlike those on its neighbours' flags, the five stars are not the Southern Cross.

When people first settled the Solomons some 30,000 years ago, much of the chain was one long island thanks to what?

An ice age had locked up so much water that the sea stood far lower, fusing the islands from Buka south to the Nggela group. The oldest traces of those first settlers come from Kilu Cave on Buka.

Archaeologists trace the Lapita people, who reached the Solomons some 3,000 years ago, by their distinctive what?

Stamped pottery, patterned with a toothed tool before firing, turns up wherever the Lapita landed. Following the sherds lets archaeologists track them out of the Bismarck Archipelago and across the Pacific.

Which remote atoll in Solomon Islands did the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman name as he sailed past in 1643?

Ontong Java had probably been glimpsed by Spanish sailors in 1568, but it was Tasman's name that stuck. Its people are Polynesians, living far to the west of the rest of Polynesia.

What is the title of the national anthem of Solomon Islands, chosen in a competition before independence?

God Save Our Solomon Islands won a competition held in 1976. Its writers, Panapasa and Matila Balekana, were a husband and wife born in Fiji.

Who became the first prime minister of Solomon Islands at independence in July 1978?

Peter Kenilorea had been a schoolteacher before he went into politics. In 2000 he helped lead the peace talks in the country's ethnic conflict, then served as Speaker of Parliament until 2010.

Who became the first Chief Minister of Solomon Islands in 1974 and later, as prime minister, created its Central Bank?

Solomon Mamaloni first became prime minister in 1981 by bringing down his rival in a no-confidence vote. He came back to the office twice more and dominated politics into the 1990s.

Levers Pacific Plantations, a Lever Brothers subsidiary, built a profitable colonial industry in the Solomons in which product?

Copra is pressed for the oil that goes into soap, which is why Lever Brothers, Britain's biggest soap maker, wanted plantations of its own. It bought up land across the islands to control its supply.

From a base at Gizo, colonial officer Arthur Mahaffy was sent to stamp out which practice in the western Solomons?

Headhunting raids from New Georgia, launched in big war canoes, had terrorised neighbouring islands for decades. The commissioner who sent Mahaffy had himself written a book called A Naturalist Among the Head-Hunters.