70 Fun Facts About Summer Trivia for Kids

Which three months make up summer in the Northern Hemisphere, according to weather forecasters?

South of the equator it is the other way round: summer there is December, January and February.

When it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, what season is it in the Southern Hemisphere?

That is why Australians can have a barbecue on the beach at Christmas.

What do we call the day in June with the most daylight in the Northern Hemisphere?

It falls on June 20 or 21, when the North Pole is tilted as far toward the Sun as it gets.

Why do we have seasons?

The tilt is about 23.4 degrees, which lifts the Sun higher in the sky and makes days longer in summer.

About how long does sunlight take to travel from the Sun to Earth?

The Sun is roughly 150 million kilometres away, a distance astronomers call one astronomical unit.

Which planet-warming star is mostly made of hydrogen and helium?

Every second the Sun's core turns about 600 billion kilograms of hydrogen into helium.

What is a sunburn caused by?

UV light damages the skin, which is why sunscreen with a good SPF rating matters at the pool.

What do the letters SPF on a bottle of sunscreen stand for?

The scale was introduced in 1974 by Franz Greiter, whose first glacier cream from 1946 was only about SPF 2.

Which frozen treat did an 11-year-old reputedly invent in 1905 by leaving a stirred drink outside overnight?

Frank Epperson of Oakland patented his 'Epsicle' in 1923, and the story is still printed on Popsicle boxes.

The ice cream cone became famous at a World's Fair in 1904 in which US city?

Cones existed before, but that fair made them a craze; cotton candy was a hit at the same fair under the name Fairy Floss.

Cotton candy was co-invented in 1897 by John Wharton and William Morrison, who had which surprising job?

It sold 68,655 boxes as Fairy Floss at the 1904 World's Fair.

A s'more is a toasted marshmallow and chocolate squeezed between what?

Girl Scouts were making 'Some Mores' by the mid-1920s, and the short name arrived in the 1930s.

Marshmallows are named after a plant that grows where?

The marsh-mallow plant's root was once used to make a medicinal sweet; today's version is mostly sugar, water and gelatin.

Botanically, a watermelon is what kind of fruit?

Its special berry with a hard rind is called a pepo; the modern watermelon was first grown in Sudan.

Which country grows nearly two thirds of the world's watermelons?

Seedless watermelons were first developed by Japanese scientists back in 1939.

In 1676 a company began selling lemonade from tanks carried on vendors' backs in which city?

Kids in the US and Canada still set up lemonade stands every summer to earn pocket money.

The tiny 'seeds' on the outside of a strawberry are actually what?

Botanically the strawberry is not what most people assume, and it belongs to the rose family.

A peach with smooth, fuzz-free skin is called what?

Peaches were first grown in China; their scientific name persica comes from Persia, where Europeans first met them.

Which fruit is the national fruit of India, Pakistan and the Philippines?

The mango tree is also the national tree of Bangladesh.

Christopher Columbus was the first European to see a pineapple, on which Caribbean island in 1493?

The wild plant comes from the river country between southern Brazil and Paraguay.

Fireflies are not flies at all. What kind of insect are they?

There are more than 2,400 species, and their glow is thought to have started as a warning that the larvae taste bad.

Some North American cicadas spend a very long time underground before coming out all at once. How long?

They are the periodical cicadas of the genus Magicicada, and their song is one of the loudest insect sounds there is.

Which way do fully grown sunflowers face?

Young sunflowers follow the Sun across the sky each day, then swing back east overnight; the tallest on record was 10.9 m.

Where does a grasshopper have its ears?

Its powerful hind legs are for leaping away from danger, and its front legs are for grabbing food.

Which mosquitoes bite people?

All mosquitoes drink flower nectar; females of many species also need blood to make eggs.

Which butterfly makes a famous long migration each autumn from the northern US and Canada to Mexico?

Its caterpillars eat only milkweed, and its orange, black and white wings warn birds that it tastes awful.

How many stages does a butterfly's life have?

Egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, adult: this is called complete metamorphosis.

Of the roughly 20,000 kinds of bee, how many make honey?

More than 90 percent of bee species live alone rather than in hives.

What are most seashells found on the beach made by?

The shells are mostly calcium carbonate, which is why they last so long after the animal is gone.

How many arms do most starfish have?

They are echinoderms, not fish, and most can regrow a lost arm.

How do dolphins sleep without drowning?

Dolphins are mammals, so they must come up for air even while resting.

How many kinds of sea turtle are there in the world?

The leatherback is the biggest, and mother turtles often swim back to the very beach where they hatched to lay their eggs.

Which beach animals have existed at least 500 million years, longer than any other animal with organs?

They swim by squeezing their bell, and some are eaten as a delicacy in parts of Asia.

What causes the ocean's tides to rise and fall about twice a day?

The Moon's gravity does most of the work, which is why high tide moves a little later each day.

A rainbow always appears in which part of the sky?

Sunlight bends and reflects inside raindrops; red is on the outside of the arc and violet on the inside.

What kind of cloud makes a thunderstorm?

These towering clouds can also drop hail and, in the worst cases, spin up tornadoes.

Which US holiday on July 4 celebrates the 1776 adoption of the Declaration that made America its own country?

Congress actually voted for independence on July 2; the Declaration was adopted two days later.

Canada Day on July 1 marks Canada becoming a country in which year?

It was called Dominion Day until 1982, the year Canada brought its constitution home from Britain.

France's national holiday on July 14 remembers the storming of which prison in 1789?

Paris holds Europe's oldest and largest military parade on the Champs-Élysées that morning.

Fireworks were invented in which country?

Long before gunpowder, people in Han dynasty China threw bamboo into fires to make it bang.

In 1752, who flew a kite in a storm to show that lightning is electricity?

Kites themselves go back more than 2,000 years to China, where Mozi and Lu Ban flew wooden ones.

The first modern Summer Olympics were held in 1896 in which city?

The Games return to Los Angeles in 2028, its third time as host.

How often are the Summer Olympics normally held?

Gold, silver and bronze medals have been handed out since 1904.

Beach volleyball, an Olympic sport since 1996, most likely started in 1915 in which famous seaside spot?

The two-player version we know today grew up in Santa Monica, California, in the 1920s.

Surfing became an Olympic sport at which Games?

The first champions were Brazil's Ítalo Ferreira and Hawaii's Carissa Moore.

How many innings are there in a normal baseball game?

Each team has nine players, and if the score is tied after nine, they keep playing extra innings.

Super Soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson worked as an engineer for which space agency?

He got the idea when a jet of water shot across his bathroom during a refrigeration experiment; the toy has sold over $1 billion.

The Frisbee got its name from a company that made what?

Yale students tossed the empty tins of the Frisbie Pie Company; Wham-O borrowed the name in 1957.

The plastic hula hoop craze of 1958 was inspired by children playing with bamboo hoops in which country?

Wham-O named it after the Hawaiian hula dance, then sold it by the million.

Edwin Perkins invented Kool-Aid powder in 1927 by drying out which liquid concentrate?

Removing the liquid made it much cheaper to ship in the mail.

Which Disney Channel cartoon has two stepbrothers on summer vacation while their platypus fights Dr. Doofenshmirtz?

Their sister Candace never manages to bust them, because the evidence always vanishes.

In Finding Nemo, what kind of fish is Nemo?

Dory, his forgetful friend, is a regal blue tang; the 2003 film was the top-grossing animated movie of its day.

Which summer film's song 'Summer Nights' was sung by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in 1978?

It was the fourth single from the soundtrack and a giant hit in the summer of 1978.

Lilo & Stitch is set on which Hawaiian island?

Stitch is really Experiment 626, an alien Lilo adopts as her 'dog', and the film is all about ohana, meaning family.

The 'dog days' of summer are named after Sirius, which is a what?

Ancient Greeks and Romans blamed its rising with the Sun for heat, drought and grumpy dogs.

The first organised summer camp in the US, the Gunnery Camp, opened in 1861 in which state?

For many kids, camp is the first long stretch away from home.

The word 'hammock' comes from the language of which Caribbean people?

Sailors later slung hammocks aboard ships to save space and stay comfortable in rough seas.

Modern American flip-flops are thought to be based on the zōri, a traditional sandal from which country?

Soldiers brought them home after World War II, and they became summer footwear for everyone in the 1960s.

What makes a popcorn kernel pop?

The kernel can swell to 20 to 50 times its size in an instant.

Which ice cream chain made '31 flavours, one for every day of the month' its big idea?

The company claims to have created more than 1,000 flavours since its founding in 1945.

Ice cream sundaes were reportedly invented to get around laws that banned selling what on Sundays?

Buffalo, Two Rivers, Ithaca and Evanston all claim to be the birthplace of the sundae.

What kind of creature is a ladybug, even though it is called a 'bug'?

Scientists prefer 'lady beetle' to avoid confusion, and more than 6,000 kinds exist around the world.

What is a ladybug's favourite food?

Many mothers lay their eggs right next to an aphid colony so the babies hatch beside lunch.

The world's smallest bird, found in Cuba, is named after which insect?

It is about 6 cm long and weighs about as much as a paperclip, around 2 grams.

Which tiny birds lay the smallest eggs of any bird, about the size of a pea?

The mother usually lays two white eggs in a cup nest glued together with spider webs and moss.

How tall was the tallest sunflower ever recorded?

A typical sunflower grows to about 3 metres, roughly the height of a basketball hoop.

Which two Chinese thinkers are said to have invented the kite around 2,500 years ago?

Their wooden kites were called muyuan; later kites used silk and bamboo.

Where was the world's first swimming pool most likely dug, about 5,000 years ago?

The 'Great Bath' dates from the 3rd millennium BC; the first heated pool came much later in ancient Rome.

How deep is Deep Dive Dubai, the world's deepest swimming pool?

Guinness World Records certified it in 2021; the largest pool, in Chile, is filled with seawater.

What word was written all over the world's largest beach ball, made in London in 2017?

The giant ball was 20 metres across and the record certificates went to the film's cast.