49 Fun Facts About Trinidad and Tobago

What is the capital of Trinidad and Tobago?

Port of Spain, on the Gulf of Paria in north-west Trinidad, has been the seat of government since 1757, when the Spanish moved it from San José de Oruña.

Trinidad lies about 11 km off the coast of which South American country?

Venezuela. Trinidad sits on South America's continental shelf and was once joined to the mainland, so its wildlife, from howler monkeys to anacondas, is closer to the continent's than to the rest of the Caribbean's.

Which island's 1961 vote to leave the West Indies Federation prompted Trinidad and Tobago's exit?

Jamaica. Its voters chose to leave in September 1961, Trinidad's premier judged that 'one from ten leaves nought' and pulled out too, and both islands became independent in August 1962.

Which instrument, invented in Trinidad in the 1930s and 40s, is its national instrument?

The steelpan evolved from Carnival's tamboo-bamboo bands as players hammered discarded oil drums into tuned instruments; in 2023 the UN General Assembly declared 11 August World Steelpan Day.

Which party dance began as a ritual performed at wakes in Trinidad and Tobago?

The limbo was danced at wakes long before it was a party game. Julia Edwards, the 'First Lady of Limbo', made it a stage act, and her troupe carried it abroad in the 1957 film 'Fire Down Below'.

Which explorer sighted Trinidad in 1498 and named it for the Holy Trinity?

Christopher Columbus reached the island on 31 July 1498, on his third voyage. He is said to have vowed to name the next land he found for the Trinity, and his lookout then reported three hills.

What is the capital of Tobago?

Scarborough has not always had its English name: after France captured Tobago in 1781, the capital was renamed Port Louis for the years of French rule.

Trinidad and Tobago's Carnival comes to its climax in the two days before which Christian observance?

Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. The two days open before dawn with J'ouvert, when revellers dance through the streets covered in paint, mud and oil.

Courland, the Baltic duchy behind a 17th-century colony on Tobago, lay in which present-day country?

Latvia. Duke Jacob's settlers left the name Great Courland Bay on Tobago's coast, but the Dutch took the colony over while the Swedes held the duke captive from 1658 to 1660.

Britain merged Tobago with Trinidad in 1889 after the collapse of which Tobago industry?

Sugar. Cheaper cane and subsidised beet from elsewhere had ruined Tobago's planters, and after the London firm that financed them failed in 1884, Britain passed the cost of running the island to Trinidad.

From 1845, Trinidad's planters brought indentured labourers from India to replace workers lost to what?

Emancipation. Once slavery ended in 1838, planters could not get the cheap, steady labour they wanted and looked to India: the Fatel Razack landed the first workers on 30 May 1845, now marked as Indian Arrival Day.

Which group narrowly outnumbered Afro-Trinidadians as Trinidad and Tobago's largest ethnic group in the 2011 census?

Indo-Trinidadians were 35.4% of the population in the 2011 census against 34.2% for Afro-Trinidadians, and party politics has long run along the same line, each main party drawing most of its votes from one group.

Who led Trinidad and Tobago to independence and served as prime minister until his death in 1981?

Eric Williams was an Oxford-trained historian before he was a politician: his 1944 book 'Capitalism and Slavery' argued that slavery's profits helped finance Britain's Industrial Revolution.

Which group stormed Trinidad and Tobago's Parliament in 1990 and held the government hostage for six days?

Jamaat al Muslimeen, led by Yasin Abu Bakr, seized the Red House and the state television station on 27 July 1990 and gave up on 1 August; the government it had held captive was voted out the next year.

Who became Trinidad and Tobago's first female prime minister in 2010?

Kamla Persad-Bissessar led the People's Partnership coalition to victory in May 2010, lost office in 2015, and after ten years in opposition won the 2025 election to become prime minister again.

Unlike most Caribbean nations, Trinidad and Tobago's economy is based mainly on what?

Oil and gas. Trinidad's first oil well was drilled in 1857, though commercial production waited until 1908; energy has since made the country one of the most prosperous in the Caribbean.

Pitch Lake at La Brea in south-west Trinidad is the world's largest natural deposit of what?

Asphalt, about 10 million tons of it, fills Pitch Lake to a depth of some 75 metres. Mined for road surfacing since the 1850s, the lake refills itself as fresh pitch wells up from below.

Which sea turtle comes ashore to nest on Trinidad's Matura and Grande Riviere beaches, among its most important nesting sites?

Leatherback, the largest turtle in the world. Villagers on these coasts once took the nesting females for food, but since 1990 the Matura group Nature Seekers has patrolled the beach to protect them and guides visitors.

Which noisy bird, nicknamed the Tobago pheasant, shares national-bird status with Trinidad's scarlet ibis?

The cocrico, a chachalaca whose flocks call loudly at dawn and dusk, stands for Tobago on the coat of arms, yet it is not found naturally on Trinidad at all.

Which wetland on Trinidad's west coast is famous for its evening roost of scarlet ibis?

Caroni Swamp. Flocks of scarlet ibis fly in at dusk to roost in its mangroves; the birds hatch dull brown and turn red from the pigments in the crustaceans they eat there.

Trinidad and Tobago's flag is red with a diagonal band of which colour, edged in white?

Black. Artist Carlisle Chang is credited with the design, chosen by the independence committee in 1962; the black stands for the people's strength and unity of purpose, the red for the sun's energy and the white for the sea.

Doubles, a street-food staple of Trinidad and Tobago, serves curried chickpeas in what?

Two fried flatbreads called bara sandwich the curried chickpeas. For all the spice, doubles are mainly a breakfast food, bought from street vendors and dressed to order with pepper sauce, tamarind and kuchela.

Angostura bitters, made in Trinidad, are famous for what feature of their bottle?

An oversized label is the bottle's signature, and the name misleads too: the bitters contain no angostura bark but are named for the town on the Orinoco where a German army surgeon first made them in 1824.

Which Trinidadian batsman made a Test score of 400 not out against England in 2004?

Brian Lara made 400 not out for West Indies against England at St John's, Antigua, in 2004, reclaiming the Test record he had first set with 375 on the same ground ten years earlier.

Hasely Crawford won Trinidad and Tobago's first Olympic gold at the 1976 Montreal Games in which event?

Hasely Crawford won the men's 100 metres from the inside lane, two hundredths of a second ahead of Don Quarrie, and came home a national hero: the national stadium now carries his name.

Trinidad and Tobago's football team, which played its first World Cup in 2006, is nicknamed after which music style?

Soca. The Soca Warriors, the smallest nation by population to have reached a World Cup until Iceland in 2018, held Sweden to a 0-0 draw in their first match despite playing most of the second half with ten men.

Tobago-born Dwight Yorke won the 1999 Treble with which English club?

Manchester United signed Dwight Yorke from Aston Villa in August 1998, and his partnership with Andy Cole fired the club to the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League in his first season.

Which Trinidad-born author of 'A House for Mr Biswas' won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001?

V. S. Naipaul left Trinidad for Oxford on a scholarship in 1950 and settled in England; he drew Mr Biswas, forever struggling for a house of his own, from the life of his father Seepersad.

Which rapper was born in Trinidad's Saint James district in 1982?

Nicki Minaj was born Onika Maraj and lived with her grandmother in Saint James until her mother, who had gone ahead to New York, brought her to Queens at about five.

Janelle Commissiong of Trinidad and Tobago made history in 1977 as the first Black winner of which pageant?

Miss Universe. Commissiong was crowned in Santo Domingo on 16 July 1977, and her win was no one-off for the islands: Wendy Fitzwilliam took the same title for Trinidad and Tobago in 1998.

Trinidad Carnival designer Peter Minshall is credited with dreaming up which inflatable for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?

The dancing tube man. Minshall wanted figures that swayed like the dancers back home in Trinidad, and his 'tall boys' opened the Games; copies were soon waving at motorists outside shops and car lots.

Tobago has long claimed to be the real island behind which classic novel?

Robinson Crusoe. Defoe placed his castaway's island near the mouth of the Orinoco, close to Trinidad, which suits Tobago, although the real castaway thought to have inspired him, Alexander Selkirk, was marooned in the Pacific.

Which English adventurer attacked San José in 1595 and interrogated the Spanish governor while hunting El Dorado?

Walter Raleigh captured San José de Oruña in 1595, carried off its governor Antonio de Berrío, who had hunted the golden city for years, and questioned him before heading up the Orinoco himself.

Trinidad's 1783 Cédula de Población offered free land to loyal settlers of which faith?

Roman Catholic settlers from nations friendly to Spain were offered free land under the 1783 Cédula; French planters from Martinique, Grenada and Saint-Domingue poured in and the population multiplied within a decade.

Which chili pepper from Trinidad was rated the world's hottest in 2012?

Moruga Scorpion, named for a village in southern Trinidad. Researchers in New Mexico measured it at more than 1.2 million Scoville units on average; the next year Guinness named the Carolina Reaper the world's hottest.

During World War II, which country operated large military bases at Chaguaramas and Cumuto in Trinidad?

The United States got the sites on 99-year leases in the 1940 destroyers-for-bases deal with Britain; two decades later, the campaign to win Chaguaramas back became a rallying cry on the road to independence.

Hurricane Flora in 1963 turned Tobago from farming to which industry?

Tourism. Flora struck on 30 September 1963, felling half the island's coconut trees and wrecking or damaging most of its houses; the plantations never fully came back, and visitors became Tobago's living.

Trinidad and Tobago was a founding member in 1973 of which regional bloc?

CARICOM was born in Trinidad itself: four Caribbean states signed its founding treaty at Chaguaramas on 4 July 1973, replacing the CARIFTA free-trade area.

Which faith is Trinidad and Tobago's second-largest after Christianity?

Hinduism, brought by indentured labourers from India, was professed by 18.2% of the population in the 2011 census, ahead of Islam at 5%; Diwali is a national public holiday.

Which calypsonian, nicknamed 'the Grandmaster', recorded the 1978 hit 'Sugar Bum Bum'?

Lord Kitchener, born Aldwyn Roberts in Arima, was a star long before 'Sugar Bum Bum': in 1948 he stepped off the Empire Windrush at Tilbury and sang 'London Is the Place for Me' for the newsreel cameras.

As of 2025, Trinidad and Tobago's final court appeals still went to which London body?

Privy Council. A republic since 1976, the country kept this last court link to London, even though the Caribbean Court of Justice, created to take over such appeals, sits in Trinidad's own capital.

Which Trinidad and Tobago sprinter won the 1997 world 200 metres title and four Olympic medals, none of them gold?

Ato Boldon beat Frankie Fredericks to that title in Athens and took two Olympic bronzes in 1996 and a silver and a bronze in 2000; he went on to become the lead track analyst on American network television.

Trinidad and Tobago is the birthplace of which genre blending Indian folk melodies with Caribbean rhythms?

Chutney grew out of the folk songs Indian indentured labourers brought to Trinidad, sung to dholak and harmonium; its turning point came in 1969, when Sundar Popo recorded 'Nana and Nani' with a full orchestra.

Tobago's Main Ridge, protected by law since 1776, is one of the world's oldest reserves of which kind?

Rainforest. Tobago is only about 6% of the country's land, but a 1776 ordinance set the ridge aside 'for the purpose of attracting frequent showers of rain', an early conservation law.

Why should beachgoers in Trinidad and Tobago never shelter under a manchineel tree?

Its sap blisters the skin, so even rainwater dripping from the leaves can burn bathers; the manchineel's small apple-like fruit is poisonous too, and the tree is common on Caribbean shores.

Which multi-sport event did Trinidad and Tobago host from 4 to 11 August 2023?

The Commonwealth Youth Games, postponed from 2021 by the pandemic, ran in Trinidad and Tobago from 4 to 11 August 2023; the country had earlier co-hosted the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

In Trinidad's 1970 army mutiny, rebel soldiers leaving their Chaguaramas base were turned back by gunfire from which force?

The Coast Guard stayed loyal, fired on the road out of Teteron Barracks and stopped the convoy heading for the capital; the mutiny's leaders, two young lieutenants, later surrendered and were court-martialled.

Which 1960s American civil rights leader was born in Trinidad?

Stokely Carmichael was raised in Trinidad by his grandmother and aunts until he joined his parents in Harlem; in 1966 he gave the movement the slogan 'Black Power', and he later settled in Guinea as Kwame Ture.

Which Trinidadian one-pot dish of rice, pigeon peas and meat is browned with burnt sugar?

Pelau gets its dark brown colour from the first step: sugar is caramelised in hot oil and the meat seared in it before rice, pigeon peas and coconut milk go into the same pot.