49 Fun Facts About The Equator

The Equator divides Earth into which two hemispheres?

Northern and Southern. The seasons flip across the line: Earth's tilt turns one half toward the Sun at a time, so a July summer in the north is a July winter in the south.

What is the latitude of the Equator?

0 degrees. Nature fixes latitude's starting line midway between the poles, but longitude's had to be agreed by vote: an 1884 conference in Washington chose the meridian through Greenwich.

About how long is the Equator?

About 40,000 km. Around 240 BC the Greek scholar Eratosthenes came close to that figure by comparing noon shadows in two Egyptian cities a known distance apart.

The word "equator" comes from a medieval Latin phrase meaning what?

Circle equalizing day and night. The name first belonged to the sky's equator: when the Sun crosses it, twice a year, day and night are the same length.

Leaving the Equator in March, the overhead Sun moves north until June, when it reaches which line?

Tropic of Cancer. It was named some 2,000 years ago, when the June solstice Sun stood among the stars of Cancer; the sky has since drifted, and the Sun no longer does.

Which term do navigators use for a circle, like the Equator, that cuts a globe into two equal halves?

Great circle. The shortest route between two places follows one, which is why long flights between northern cities curve up toward the Arctic instead of tracking a line of latitude.

What are the two days each year when the noon Sun stands directly over the Equator called?

Equinoxes. The March one opens the year in Iran and its neighbours, where Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is timed to the event and marks the first day of spring.

Which effect of the atmosphere lets people at the Equator see the Sun before it has truly risen?

Refraction. Air bends the Sun's light over the horizon at both ends of the day, so daylight at the Equator outlasts night by several minutes all year instead of splitting 12 hours each.

Why are sunrises and sunsets shortest at the Equator?

The Sun's path is nearly vertical there, so it clears the horizon fast and civil twilight, the bright first stage, is over in under half an hour; near the poles it can last for weeks.

What makes Earth bulge about 43 km wider at the Equator than pole to pole?

Its spin. It flings the planet's middle outward, and the faster the spin the bigger the bulge: Saturn, whose day lasts under 11 hours, is about a tenth wider than it is tall.

Why are spaceports such as the one at Kourou, French Guiana, sited near the Equator?

Earth's surface moves fastest there, quicker than the speed of sound, which gives every eastward launch a free running start, so the same climb to orbit burns less fuel.

In 1976 eight countries on the Equator claimed to own which of these, high above their territory?

The geostationary orbit. Satellites there sit directly above the Equator and keep pace with the ground below, so the eight called the slots overhead their own natural resource.

Which American author wrote the 1897 travel book Following the Equator?

Mark Twain. Bankrupted by a failed typesetting machine, he set off around the world on a lecture tour to repay his creditors in full, then turned the trip into the book.

Which is the only country crossed by both the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn?

Brazil. The Equator clips its far north while the Tropic of Capricorn runs through São Paulo state, so most of the country lies inside the tropics.

Which of these Asian cities lies closest to the Equator?

Singapore. Sitting about 137 km from the line, it has no true seasons: the weather stays warm and wet all year, and the days barely change in length.

The Equator's exact position shifts by a few metres each year because what wobbles?

Earth's rotation axis. The Equator is defined as the circle at right angles to it, so when the poles wander a few metres, nudged by shifting water and air, the line moves too.

Most of the Equator's length passes over what?

Open sea. Nearly four-fifths of the line lies over water, the Pacific stretch alone running about two-fifths of the way round the globe, so only 11 countries have any land on it.

Which of these South American countries does the Equator cross?

Colombia. The line crosses its thinly peopled jungle south and misses Peru by a whisker: Peru's northernmost point lies only a few kilometres below it.

Which country straddles the greatest length of the Equator across land and sea?

Indonesia. Its islands string out along the line for about 5,000 km, far enough from east to west that the country keeps three time zones.

Despite its name, which country lies entirely off the Equator?

Equatorial Guinea. Its mainland and main island lie just north of the line and its island of Annobón lies south of it, so the country straddles the Equator without ever touching it.

Which tiny Pacific island nation lies within 100 km of the Equator, just to its south?

Nauru. Phosphate mining tore up the island's interior, leaving a forbidding plateau of jagged limestone pinnacles where most of the land used to be.

Which Pacific nation straddles both the Equator and the 180th meridian, putting it in all four hemispheres?

Kiribati. The International Date Line swings far to the east around its outer islands, a move the country made itself in 1995 so that all of it would share one calendar day.

The Galápagos Islands, which straddle the Equator, belong to which country?

Ecuador. It claimed the islands in 1832, two years after becoming an independent state, under a name that is simply the Spanish word for 'equator'.

Macapá, whose monument marks the Equator, stands at the mouth of which river?

Amazon. Macapá stands on the delta's northern channel, where the river pours out about a fifth of all the world's river water, enough to dilute the sea's salt more than 160 km from shore.

Which provincial capital on the island of Borneo sits directly on the Equator?

Pontianak. Twice a year the noon Sun passes straight overhead there and, for a few moments, its Equator monument and everything around it cast no shadow.

Which great African lake does the Equator cross?

Lake Victoria. Africa's largest lake is the chief reservoir of the Nile, so water that leaves it almost on the Equator can end its journey in the Mediterranean.

The Equator passes just north of the summit of which African country's highest mountain?

Kenya. The country is named after Mount Kenya, not the other way round, and in all of Africa only Kilimanjaro stands higher.

The Equator crosses which island, the largest in the Galápagos?

Isabela. The seahorse-shaped island formed when several volcanoes grew together, and the line cuts across one at its northern end, Wolf, the highest peak in the Galápagos.

Heading east from the Prime Meridian, the Equator first touches land in which country?

São Tomé and Príncipe. The line only clips Ilhéu das Rolas, an islet off the southern tip, while the main island of São Tomé stops just short of it.

Where the Equator meets the Prime Meridian in the Gulf of Guinea, mapping software jokingly places what?

Null Island. There is no land at the spot, where a lone weather buoy was moored for years; the name flags records that software has mapped there because their real location was missing.

The Mitad del Mundo monument, marking the Equator, stands just north of which capital city?

Quito. Although it lies almost on the Equator, the city stays cool all year, because it stands about 2,850 m up in an Andean valley.

The painted Equator line at the Mitad del Mundo monument misses the GPS-measured line by about how far?

About 240 metres. Countless tourists have posed with a foot on each side of the painted line, but satellite positioning puts the real Equator a short walk to the north.

Which cold-climate bird has a species living wild on the Equator, in the Galápagos Islands?

Penguin. The Galápagos penguin survives on the Equator because a cold current sweeping up from the south keeps the sea around the islands cool and full of fish.

The 1730s French Geodesic Mission to the Equator set out to settle a dispute about what?

Earth's shape. Newton argued the planet bulged at its middle, the Cassinis that it stretched toward the poles; a sister expedition to Lapland with Anders Celsius helped settle it for Newton.

La Condamine, a French scientist on the 1730s survey mission to the Equator, introduced Europe to which tree product?

Rubber. He sent samples home to the Paris Academy of Sciences, and the English name came later, when the stuff proved handy for rubbing out pencil marks.

The French Geodesic Mission's measurements in the Andes later helped define which unit?

The metre. France defined it in the 1790s as a set fraction of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator, and the mission's Andean survey went into the calculation.

Which Andean peak's summit is the farthest point on Earth's surface from the planet's centre?

Chimborazo. Everest stands far higher above the sea, but the bulge puts Chimborazo's summit about 2 km farther from the planet's centre, making it the closest point on Earth to the stars.

Cayambe, in South America, is the only place on Earth where the Equator crosses what?

Snow. The line climbs to about 4,690 m on Cayambe's southern flank, just above the snow line, while Kilimanjaro's far more famous snows lie more than 300 km to the south.

What climate do lowlands around the Equator generally have?

Tropical rainforest. With the Sun high all year, warm moist air keeps rising and shedding its water in afternoon storms, so rain falls in every month and there is no dry season.

Which climate pattern begins when the surface of the equatorial Pacific turns unusually warm?

El Niño. South American fishermen who noticed the warm water centuries ago called it El Niño de Navidad, the Christmas boy, because it tends to peak around December.

What do meteorologists call the doldrums, the belt of calms and thunderstorms near the Equator?

Intertropical Convergence Zone. Trade winds from both hemispheres meet there and the heated air rises instead of blowing across the sea, so sailing ships could lie becalmed for weeks.

Which effect, wrongly said to make sinks drain opposite ways on either side of the Equator, sets hurricanes swirling?

Coriolis effect. It turns storms hundreds of kilometres wide, but over a sink it is far too weak: the basin's shape and the water's leftover motion decide which way it drains.

In the US Navy, what are sailors called before they have crossed the Equator?

Pollywogs. The word is an old name for a tadpole, a creature not yet fully grown; only after being dunked and tested in the ceremony does the newcomer become a seasoned 'shellback'.

Which mythological figure presides over sailors' traditional Equator-crossing ceremony?

King Neptune. A crew member plays the sea god and holds a mock court, which has the newcomers brought before it to be dunked.

What is a sailor who has crossed the Equator at the 180th meridian called?

A Golden Shellback. The 180th meridian also carries the International Date Line, whose own crossing admits a sailor to the Domain of the Golden Dragon, so the spot earns both honours at once.

Which naturalist was lathered with pitch and paint, then ducked, on first crossing the Equator in February 1832?

Charles Darwin. He was the first novice called up when HMS Beagle crossed the line and reckoned he escaped easily: most of the others had dirty mixtures put in their mouths and smeared on their faces.

On Cook's Endeavour in 1768, sailors new to the Equator could avoid a ducking by forfeiting what for four days?

Their wine allowance, in Joseph Banks's journal; Cook's own put the price at a bottle of rum. Banks bought off the duckers with brandy for himself, his servants and his dogs.

Which US president described his crossing-the-line ceremony aboard the cruiser USS Indianapolis in a letter to his wife?

Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was sailing to South America on a 'Good Neighbor' cruise in late 1936, and wrote home to Eleanor about the ceremony aboard his 'Happy Ship'.

Which Indian Ocean island nation lies on both sides of the Equator?

Maldives. Its chain of atolls runs more than 800 km from north to south across the line, yet no island sits on it: the Equator slips through open water between two atolls.