109 Fun Facts About Trick

In which country did the Panama hat originate?

Ecuador's weavers shipped the hats through the Isthmus of Panama, where gold-rush travellers and canal crews bought them, so the point of sale gave the name. UNESCO listed the Ecuadorian craft in 2012.

How many years did the Hundred Years' War actually last?

116 years is the usual count, from 1337 to 1453, but the fighting was on and off, broken by long truces and by plague.

The name of the Canary Islands is usually traced to the Latin word for which animal?

Dogs: the Latin name Canariae Insulae means 'Islands of the Dogs', and Pliny the Elder wrote of huge dogs on Canaria, though it may instead echo a Berber people, the Canarii. The birds were named after the islands.

An aircraft's flight recorder is normally painted which color?

Bright orange paint and reflective tape help searchers find the recorder in wreckage or under water. US rules also allow bright yellow.

Catgut, used for violin strings and sutures, usually comes from the intestines of which animal?

Sheep supply most of it, and no cat is known to have been used. The name is perhaps a garbling of 'kitgut', kit being an old word for a fiddle.

The kiwifruit is native to which country?

China: a New Zealand school principal carried seeds home from there in 1904, and the fruit sold as the Chinese gooseberry until a New Zealand exporter renamed it kiwifruit in 1959.

The Great Dane breed of dog was developed in which country?

Germany: bred there as a boar-hunting hound, it is still called the Deutsche Dogge, 'German mastiff', at home. 'Great Dane' translates a French label, Grand Danois, and no tie to Denmark is known.

Guinea pigs were originally domesticated on which continent?

South America: Andean peoples bred guinea pigs for meat long before Europeans made pets of them, and they are still raised for the table in the Andes today.

What kind of animal is a koala?

A marsupial, not a bear: before a koala joey leaves the pouch, its mother weans it on pap, a soupy predigested eucalyptus mush that readies its gut for the leaves.

Botanically speaking, what is a peanut?

A legume, kin to peas and beans: after a peanut flower is pollinated, a stalk called a peg grows down into the soil, and the pod ripens underground.

Botanically, a banana is classified as which type of fruit?

A berry: botanically that is a fleshy fruit grown from one flower's single ovary, so bananas, grapes and tomatoes qualify, while strawberries and raspberries do not.

In which month of the modern calendar did Russia's October Revolution take place?

November: Russia still ran on the Julian calendar, by then 13 days behind the Gregorian one used in the West, so its 25 October was 7 November there.

The cor anglais, or English horn, is which kind of instrument?

A double-reed woodwind: the cor anglais is a large oboe pitched a fifth lower, so it is neither English nor a horn, and nobody knows for certain where the 'English' came from.

Strictly speaking, what is Big Ben?

A bell: the name belongs to the 13.7-tonne Great Bell. It cracked two months after first ringing in 1859, so it was turned to give a new hammer a fresh spot, and it has rung with the crack ever since.

Why was the 1918 influenza pandemic nicknamed the Spanish flu?

Spain's uncensored press reported it freely while wartime censors in the fighting nations buried the news, so neutral Spain looked like the origin. Spaniards, meanwhile, called it the 'French flu'.

Measured from base to peak rather than from sea level, which mountain is often called Earth's tallest?

Mauna Kea: the Hawaiian volcano stands only about 4,200 m above the sea, but most of it is hidden underwater, and from its base on the Pacific floor it rises farther than Everest does from sea level.

One pound of goose feathers versus one pound of gold bullion: which weighs more?

The plumage: gold is weighed in troy units, and a troy pound is just 12 troy ounces, about 373 g, while the everyday 16-ounce pound that weighs feathers is about 454 g.

What is the capital city of Australia?

Canberra: the deal that federated Australia put the capital in New South Wales but at least 100 miles from Sydney, so a new city was built, and parliament sat in Melbourne until 1927.

By longitude, which US state is the easternmost?

The Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian, so Alaska is the northernmost, westernmost and, technically, easternmost state.

What does legend wrongly say the Victorian plumber Thomas Crapper did?

Invent the flush toilet: Crapper ran a London plumbing firm and took out nine patents, but Alexander Cumming had patented a flushing toilet back in 1775, decades before he was born.

What actually provokes a bull to charge the matador's red cloth?

The waving motion: bulls are color-blind to red and charge the matador's other cape, the magenta-and-gold capote, just as hard. The muleta's red is tradition, and it helps hide the blood.

Experiments show that a goldfish's memory is best measured in what?

Months: goldfish trained to perform tricks for a food reward still remember them months later, so the famous three-second memory is a myth.

According to NASA, can the Great Wall be seen from low Earth orbit with the naked eye?

Barely, in ideal conditions: the wall is built of local materials that blend into the land around it, and Yang Liwei, the first astronaut from the wall's own country, reported that he could not see it.

Costumes for which composer's 1870s operas helped give Vikings their mythical horned helmets?

Richard Wagner: when his Ring operas were staged in the 1870s, the costumes put horns on the warriors' helmets and the look stuck. No horned helmet from the Viking Age has been dug up.

What is the capital of Turkey?

Ankara: Atatürk made the inland city the headquarters of Turkey's independence struggle, and it replaced the old Ottoman capital, Istanbul, when the republic was declared in 1923.

Which city is Switzerland's de facto capital, officially known as its 'federal city'?

Switzerland has no capital in law; Bern was made the federal city in 1848 and houses the government.

In which country was the Hawaiian pizza invented?

Canada: Sam Panopoulos is credited with creating it at his restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, in 1962, and he named it after the brand of canned pineapple he used.

Where did the fortune cookie first become a fixture of Chinese restaurants?

The United States: California's Chinese restaurants were serving them by World War II, and the recipe most likely came from Japanese immigrant bakers copying a cracker from Kyoto.

The croissant was inspired by the kipferl, a crescent pastry from which country?

Austria: an Austrian officer, August Zang, opened a bakery in Paris around 1838 selling kipferl, and French bakers later remade the roll in flaky laminated dough.

In which country was the Caesar salad invented?

Mexico: the salad is named after Caesar Cardini, an Italian restaurateur who opened a restaurant in Tijuana to get around Prohibition, and his restaurant there first served it in the 1920s.

The killer whale is the largest member of which family of animals?

Oceanic dolphins: orcas are toothed whales and the largest of the dolphin family, which also includes the pilot whales despite their name.

Bombay duck, a delicacy of Mumbai, is what kind of food?

A fish: Bombay duck is dried bummalo, and because it is sun-dried on beaches rather than in factories, an EU hygiene rule kept it off European menus until a rule change in 2000.

What is the main ingredient of Welsh rarebit?

Cheese: it is a hot cheese sauce on toast. 'Welsh rabbit' is the older name, recorded by the 1720s and often said to have begun as a joke, while 'rarebit' is a later alteration.

Sweetbreads on a restaurant menu are which part of an animal?

Thymus or pancreas: sweetbreads are glands, and they usually come from a calf or lamb because the thymus shrinks as an animal matures.

What is the core of a so-called lead pencil made of?

Graphite and clay: there is no lead in a pencil at all, and the clay is there to set the hardness, so a hard H pencil has more of it than a soft B.

The Jerusalem artichoke is actually a species of which plant?

It is a North American native, and 'Jerusalem' is probably a corruption of girasole, the Italian word for sunflower.

The positional number system behind the digits we call Arabic numerals originated in which region?

India: Europe learned the system from Arabic works such as al-Khwarizmi's, which is why the digits carry the Arabic name.

Cleopatra, the last active pharaoh of Egypt, was descended from which people?

Macedonian Greeks: her dynasty was founded by Ptolemy I, a general of Alexander the Great, and Plutarch wrote that she alone of her family bothered to learn Egyptian.

How did the young Albert Einstein perform in mathematics at school?

He excelled from an early age: shown a news clipping claiming he had failed maths, Einstein dismissed it and said he had mastered calculus before he was 15.

What do ostriches do when they sense danger?

Run away or lie flat: an ostrich that cannot run flops down with its pale head and neck flat on the ground, which from a distance can look like a buried head.

Who made the 1958 nature film that faked lemmings leaping to their deaths?

Disney: for White Wilderness, filmmakers pushed a few dozen lemmings off a riverside cliff in landlocked Alberta, and the footage convinced generations that the rodents kill themselves.

What color is a polar bear's skin?

Black: the fur only looks white because its hollow, transparent hairs scatter light, while the black skin beneath soaks up the sun's warmth.

How much water does a 'ten-gallon' cowboy hat actually hold?

About 3 liters: Stetson itself puts it at three quarts, and the name is not thought to be about capacity, with one theory tracing it to galón, Spanish for a braided hatband.

How long is a century egg typically cured?

Weeks to months: despite the name, no century is needed, because a coating of ash, lime and salt does the work and turns the white to dark jelly.

What kind of insect is a firefly?

A beetle: fireflies are soft-bodied beetles, and many species flash in a rhythm of their own so that males and females can find each other in the dark.

According to Buddhist tradition, in which present-day country was the Buddha born?

Nepal: tradition places his birth in the gardens of Lumbini, near the country's southern border, where the Indian emperor Ashoka later set up a pillar to mark the spot.

Why did the 20th century strictly begin in 1901, not 1900?

No year zero: the calendar runs straight from 1 BC to AD 1, so the first century ended with the year 100 and each one since has begun in a year ending in 01.

The turkey is native to which part of the world?

The Americas: the name first belonged to guineafowl that reached Europe through Turkey, and English speakers later passed it to the New World bird.

How many stars are on the flag of the European Union?

12: the number has nothing to do with membership and has been fixed since the Council of Europe chose the design in 1955, with twelve standing for perfection and completeness.

Which of these famous lines does Sherlock Holmes actually say in Conan Doyle's stories?

The game is afoot: Holmes says it as he tugs Watson awake in The Adventure of the Abbey Grange, whereas his supposed catchphrase about things being elementary appears in none of the stories.

Which of these lines does Ilsa actually say in Casablanca?

Play it, Sam: Ilsa first asks him to 'play it once, Sam, for old times' sake', and Rick later growls 'Play it!', but nobody in the film ever says 'Play it again, Sam'.

In Mary Shelley's novel, who is Frankenstein?

A young scientist: Victor Frankenstein is the student who brings the creature to life, and his surname has been popularly attached to his monster ever since.

Which country has the most pyramids?

Sudan: more than 200 pyramids stand there, outnumbering Egypt's, and the Kushites of ancient Nubia raised them not only for kings and queens but for wealthy nobles too.

Mount Kilimanjaro stands in which country?

Tanzania: the massif rises near the Kenyan border, and after a missionary saw its snowcap in 1848, geographers refused for over a decade to believe snow could lie so close to the Equator.

Which country's cartoonists created the lasting image of Napoleon as a tiny man?

Britain: James Gillray's cartoons of a tiny, tantrum-throwing 'Little Boney' stuck, though at roughly 5 ft 6 in Napoleon was about average for a Frenchman of his day.

What is the official language of Brazil?

It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the New World and has the largest Lusophone population in the world.

The Samuel German who gave German chocolate cake its name was what?

An English-American chocolatier: Samuel German devised 'German's Sweet Chocolate' for Baker's in the 1850s, and a Dallas-area newspaper recipe using it made the cake famous about a century later.

In Denmark itself, what is a 'Danish pastry' called?

Wienerbrød: the name means 'Viennese bread', and the story goes that foreign bakers hired during an 1850 strike by Danish bakery workers brought Vienna's layered dough with them.

The debunked 'tongue map' in old school textbooks claimed the back of the tongue senses which taste?

Bitter: the map put sweet at the tip and bitter at the back, but it grew from misread graphs in a 1901 paper, and every taste can in fact be sensed all over the tongue.

Olympic champions' medals, last made of solid gold in 1912, have since consisted mostly of which metal?

Silver makes up at least 92.5% of each Olympic gold medal, which needs only 6 grams of actual gold as plating.

Camels' humps, which droop and go limp when used up, are reserves of what?

Fat fills a camel's hump as a calorie reserve; the huge drinks a camel takes are held in its bloodstream, not in the hump.

A bat and a ball cost $1.10 together, and the bat costs $1 more than the ball; what does the ball cost?

5 cents is right, since a bat at $1.05 brings the total to $1.10; most people blurt out 10 cents, which would make the pair cost $1.20.

Counting its overseas territories, which country spans more time zones than any other in the world?

France tops the list thanks to scattered territories such as French Polynesia and Réunion, which put it ahead of the vastly larger Russia.

How were nineteen of the people convicted in the Salem witch trials of 1692 put to death?

By hanging is how all nineteen died, fourteen women and five men; nobody was burned at the stake, though Giles Corey was crushed under stones for refusing to plead.

Earth makes its closest approach to the Sun, called perihelion, during which month of the year?

January is when Earth swings nearest the Sun, about two weeks after the December solstice, so the planet is closest during the northern winter.

Which president became the first to live in the White House, moving in during 1800?

John Adams moved into the still-unfinished house in 1800; George Washington had died the year before and never lived there.

Munich's Oktoberfest beer festival, which runs for about two weeks, opens at which point in the calendar?

Mid-September is when Oktoberfest opens; the start was moved earlier to catch warmer evenings, so only the final days now fall in October.

When Shakespeare's Juliet asks 'Wherefore art thou Romeo?', what does the word 'wherefore' mean?

Why is the meaning: Juliet is not searching for Romeo but lamenting that he is a Montague, a member of the family feuding with hers.

The 'funny bone' that tingles when you bang your elbow is actually what kind of body tissue?

A nerve is to blame: the ulnar nerve runs past the elbow as the largest nerve in the body unprotected by muscle or bone.

Seen from space, without Earth's atmosphere scattering the light, the Sun is which colour?

White is the Sun's real colour when viewed from orbit; atmospheric scattering tints it yellow or deeper shades only when it hangs low in the sky.

Which US state reaches farther south than any other?

Hawaii wins comfortably: Ka Lae, on the Big Island, sits near 19 degrees north, hundreds of miles farther south than the tip of Florida.

The 'horny toad' of North American deserts, which can squirt blood from its eyes, is actually what?

A lizard is what the horny toad really is; its genus name, Phrynosoma, means 'toad-bodied', and some species can fire blood about 1.5 metres.

Rocky Mountain oysters, a ranch dish also sold as prairie oysters, are which part of a bull?

Testicles are the main ingredient, skinned, coated in seasoned flour and sometimes pounded thin before they are cooked.

The Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's final defeat in 1815, was fought in which present-day country?

Belgium did not exist as a country in 1815, when Waterloo lay in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands; the battlefield sits about 15 km south of Brussels.

A classic food 'tin can' carries only a thin coating of tin over which main metal?

Steel does the real work in a tin can; the whisper-thin tin layer was added only to stop the contents from rusting it.

Which gas, not oxygen, makes up about 78 percent of the air you breathe?

Nitrogen dominates the atmosphere, while oxygen makes up only about 21 percent and argon almost 1 percent.

In an ancient Roman amphitheatre such as the one at Pompeii, what was a vomitorium?

An exit passage is all it was; the name comes from the Latin for 'to spew forth', describing crowds pouring out after a show.

In the Monty Hall problem, after the host reveals a goat, which move wins the car two times in three?

Switching doors wins because the first pick is right only a third of the time; when Marilyn vos Savant said so in print, about 10,000 readers wrote in, most to say she was wrong.

In The Empire Strikes Back, which word does Darth Vader actually say just before 'I am your father'?

No is the missing word: the line is 'No, I am your father', and actor David Prowse was fed a fake line on set and learned the real one only from the finished film.

Averaged over time, which planet sits closest to Earth, and to every other planet too?

Mercury wins on average because it never strays far from the Sun, while Venus and Mars spend long stretches on the opposite side of their orbits from us.

Which star in the constellation Canis Major, not the North Star, is the brightest in the night sky?

Sirius outshines every other star at night, and it is really two stars: a brilliant primary and a faint dwarf companion called Sirius B.

The lion is called 'king of the jungle', yet wild lions mostly live in which habitat?

Open grassland, savannah and shrubland are where wild lions actually live, hunting in the open instead of under a forest canopy.

The electric eel, a river predator that stuns prey with 860-volt shocks, is really what?

A knifefish is what an electric eel really is, unrelated to true eels; it is also an air-breather that must keep surfacing to gulp oxygen.

The egg cream, a classic New York soda-fountain drink, actually contains which of these ingredients?

Milk goes into an egg cream along with carbonated water and flavoured syrup; despite the name, the drink has neither of the two things it is named for.

The 'refried' in refried beans mistranslates 'refritos' in the dish's original name, which really means what?

Well fried is the real sense: the prefix adds emphasis, so the beans are cooked and mashed thoroughly, not sent back to the pan a second time.

Which of these Founding Fathers never served as president of the United States?

Benjamin Franklin never held the presidency; he and Alexander Hamilton, on the $10, stand out as the non-presidents among the faces on US bills.

The 'Mandela effect' is named after a false memory that Nelson Mandela died where during the 1980s?

In prison is where many people wrongly recalled him dying; Mandela was in fact released, served as president of South Africa and lived until 2013.

Despite its name, the Dead Sea between Jordan and Israel is what kind of body of water?

A salt lake is the right label: the Dead Sea is landlocked, and its shores are the lowest land on Earth, more than 400 metres below sea level.

If 5 machines take 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how many minutes do 100 machines need for 100 widgets?

5 minutes is all it takes, because each machine makes one widget in that time; the tempting answer of 100 comes from simply continuing the pattern.

A rhinoceros horn contains no bone at all and is made of which substance?

Keratin, the protein in hair and nails, makes up the whole horn, which is why there is no good evidence that rhino horn has any health benefit.

An elephant's tusks, which keep growing throughout its life, are overgrown versions of which teeth?

Incisors are what an elephant's tusks are, unlike the tusks of walruses and pigs, which are canines; elephants use theirs as weapons and digging tools.

What colour is the natural sunscreen that a hippopotamus secretes from its skin?

Red is the colour of the secretion, nicknamed 'blood sweat' although it is neither; its pigments absorb ultraviolet light and slow the growth of bacteria.

Grape-Nuts breakfast cereal, despite its name, is actually made from which two grains?

Wheat and barley flours are what go into Grape-Nuts; in one account of the name, its inventor believed baking created 'grape sugar', meaning glucose.

Moleskin, the soft, hard-wearing fabric used for trousers and jackets, is woven from what?

Cotton is the only fibre involved: the cloth is woven and then shorn to leave a short, soft pile that merely feels like a mole's coat.

Artists' 'camel-hair' paintbrushes are usually made with soft hair from which animals?

Squirrels usually supply the soft bristles, because actual camel hair is not a suitable material for a fine paintbrush.

Which part of a chili pepper, not the seeds, holds the highest concentration of fiery capsaicin?

The pith, the pale inner wall the seeds cling to, is the hottest part; the seeds themselves produce no capsaicin at all.

The North American jackrabbit, born fully furred with its eyes open, is really which animal?

A hare is what a jackrabbit is; hares nest above ground instead of in burrows, and jackrabbits can sprint at about 65 km/h.

The 'mountain chicken' of the Caribbean islands Dominica and Montserrat is what kind of animal?

A frog, one of the largest in the world, is what the mountain chicken is; it is critically endangered and known on Dominica as the crapaud.

A 2005 Nobel Prize honoured the discovery that many stomach ulcers, long blamed on stress, are caused by what?

A bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, is the usual culprit; to prove it could inflame the stomach, Barry Marshall drank a beaker of the culture himself.

A fair coin has just landed heads five times running; what is the chance the next flip is heads?

50% is the chance on every flip, because a coin has no memory; believing tails is 'due' is the gambler's fallacy, also named for a 1913 roulette streak at Monte Carlo.

A lily-pad patch doubles in size daily and covers a whole pond on day 48; when was half the pond covered?

Day 47 is correct, because one more doubling takes the patch from half to full; most people halve the number and answer 24.

How many people must be in a room for a better-than-even chance that two share a birthday?

23 people are enough, because they form 253 different pairs, each with its own chance of a match; the result is known as the birthday paradox.

How is the surname in the title of the children's books about a family of bears actually spelled?

Berenstain is correct, after authors Stan and Jan Berenstain; so many readers recall an 'e' in the last syllable that the books became a famous case of shared false memory.

Which comedian do many people falsely remember playing a genie in a 1990s film called 'Shazaam'?

Sinbad never made such a film; the memory may blend the real 1996 genie movie Kazaam, with Shaquille O'Neal, and a 1994 TV marathon where the comedian wore a genie-like costume.

The Moon looks huge near the horizon, although photographs show no change in size, because of what?

An optical illusion in the brain is responsible; the Moon is actually about 1.5% farther away at the horizon than when it is overhead.

The Roman army punishment that gave us the word 'decimate' killed what share of a disgraced unit?

One in ten soldiers died, picked by drawing lots and executed by members of their own cohort; the word's root is the Latin for a tenth.

'Let them eat cake' appears in whose Confessions, written when Marie Antoinette was only nine years old?

Rousseau credited the remark to an unnamed 'great princess' in his Confessions of 1765, far too early for Marie Antoinette to have been the speaker.

Because Earth bulges at the equator, which mountain's summit, not Everest's, lies farthest from the planet's centre?

Chimborazo, an Andean volcano almost on the Equator, has a summit farther from Earth's centre than Everest's, though it stands more than 2,500 metres lower above sea level.

Which city, not Auckland, has served as New Zealand's capital since 1865?

Wellington took over from Auckland, the capital since 1841, and its status rests on convention alone, never having been written into law.