80 Fun Facts About Trivia Facts

Which food, properly stored, essentially never spoils, with samples from ancient tombs still edible?

Its high sugar concentration and acidity stop most microbes growing, which is why archaeologists have found jars of it still edible after millennia.

On which planet does a single day (one rotation) last longer than its year?

It takes 243 Earth days to spin once but only about 225 to circle the Sun, and it spins the wrong way too.

Which everyday fruit is radioactive enough to serve as an informal unit of radiation dose?

The 'banana equivalent dose' comes from naturally occurring potassium-40, and eating one is worth roughly 0.1 microsieverts.

The air around a lightning bolt heats to roughly what temperature?

That is about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun, and the sudden expansion of that air is what we hear as thunder.

On a hot day, the top of the Eiffel Tower can lean away from the sun by up to how much?

The metal on the sunny side expands more than the shaded side, so the whole tower bends slightly away from the heat.

Which microscopic animals have survived direct exposure to the vacuum of outer space?

Also called water bears, they curl into a dried-out 'tun' state and shrug off vacuum, radiation and temperatures near absolute zero.

Which planet is the only one in the Solar System less dense than water?

Its average density is about 0.69 grams per cubic centimetre, so in a big enough bathtub it would, in theory, float.

Which planet's position was worked out mathematically before anyone had knowingly seen it?

Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams each predicted where it must be from wobbles in Uranus's orbit, and Galle found it within a degree of Le Verrier's spot in 1846.

Pluto, discovered in 1930, will complete its first full orbit since its discovery in which year?

One Plutonian year lasts almost 248 Earth years, so nobody alive has seen it go all the way round.

If all the gold ever mined were melted into a single cube, roughly how long would each side be?

Around 200,000 tonnes in total, which is less than most people guess and would fit comfortably inside a stadium.

Up to how long can a sloth hold its breath underwater?

They slow an already sluggish heart rate to less than a third of normal, and are surprisingly good swimmers.

What gives flamingos their pink colour?

Chicks hatch grey and only turn pink from the carotenoids in the plankton and shrimp they eat, which is why zoo birds fade without supplements.

To stop themselves drifting out to sea while resting, sea otters wrap themselves in what?

Mothers also wrap their pups in it while they dive for food, so the youngster stays put and cries loudly if it wakes up alone.

Which bird's wing structure allows helicopter-like flight in any direction, including backwards and hovering?

Its wings beat up to 99 times a second in the smallest species, and that beating is what makes the hum.

Which Mexican salamander can regrow lost limbs, gills and even parts of its brain?

Its genome, published in 2018, was the largest animal genome sequenced at the time, at 32 billion base pairs.

The peacock mantis shrimp strikes with an acceleration of roughly how many g?

The clubs go from a standing start to about 83 km/h so fast they boil the water in front of them, and have cracked aquarium glass.

In which animal does the male carry the developing eggs and give birth?

The female deposits her eggs in a brood pouch on the front of his tail, and he releases fully formed young weeks later.

Which animal has the longest known lifespan of any vertebrate, estimated at 272 years or more?

Radiocarbon dating of the eye lens put the oldest individual at around 392 years, give or take a century.

Which birds have been shown to recognise and remember individual human faces?

They also make tools and warn each other about specific people they consider a threat, so it pays to be polite.

What colour is a polar bear's skin under its fur?

The fur itself is not white either: the guard hairs are transparent and only look white because they scatter light.

Which birds cannot move their eyes at all and must turn their whole head instead?

Their eyes are fixed in bony tubes, which is why they evolved the ability to swivel the head as much as 270 degrees.

Where are a butterfly's taste receptors located?

A female uses them to test whether a leaf will feed her caterpillars before she lays eggs on it.

Teaching at which university is documented as far back as 1096, making it older than the Aztec Empire?

It is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second oldest anywhere in continuous operation.

The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed most of the city, yet how many deaths were recorded?

Some historians think the true toll was higher because the poor and middle class were not recorded, but the traditional count is in single figures.

According to legend, which Roman emperor planned to make his horse Incitatus a consul?

Suetonius says the horse had a marble stable, an ivory manger and purple blankets, though ancient sources agree the consulship never actually happened.

As a young man, Julius Caesar was kidnapped and held for ransom by whom?

Plutarch says he joked with his captors that he would come back and crucify them, then did exactly that after the ransom was paid.

In 1698, Tsar Peter I of Russia introduced a tax on what?

Men who paid received a copper token to prove it, part of Peter's push to make Russia look more Western European.

The last woolly mammoths survived until about 4,000 years ago where?

That is after the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, so mammoths and Egyptian pharaohs overlapped in time.

In 1859, San Francisco resident Joshua Norton proclaimed himself what?

The city largely played along for two decades: restaurants accepted his own currency and thousands turned out for his funeral.

How many human casualties did the 1859 US–British 'Pig War' over the San Juan Islands have?

The only casualty was the pig, shot by an American farmer after it rooted through his potatoes on land both nations claimed.

Vespasian's tax on what gave rise to the saying 'money does not stink'?

Urine collected from public toilets was valuable to tanners and launderers, and when his son objected, Vespasian held a coin to his nose.

In October 1814, a vat burst at a London brewery and flooded the streets of St Giles with what?

Somewhere between 128,000 and 323,000 imperial gallons escaped, and eight people were killed in the wave.

How many time zones does Russia span?

They run from UTC+2 in Kaliningrad to UTC+12 in Kamchatka, so New Year arrives eleven separate times.

Which US state is, by longitude, both the westernmost and the easternmost?

Its Aleutian Islands stretch across the 180th meridian into the Eastern Hemisphere, so it is also the northernmost state.

Which European country was essentially free of mosquitoes until 2025?

Its climate of repeated freezes and thaws made it hard for the insects to complete a life cycle, until the first ones were confirmed in October 2025.

The summit of which mountain is the farthest point on Earth's surface from the planet's centre?

Earth bulges at the equator, so this Ecuadorian volcano at 6,263 metres beats Everest by more than two kilometres measured from the core.

At Point Nemo, the most remote spot in the ocean, the nearest humans are sometimes who?

It is about 2,700 km from the nearest land, so a passing orbiting crew at 400 km up is often closer than anyone on Earth.

Which is the smallest sovereign state by both area and population, with under 1,000 people?

It covers just 44 hectares, small enough to walk around its outer wall in well under an hour.

Which continent is mainly classed as a desert despite being covered in ice?

Its interior gets far less than 200 mm of precipitation a year, and it is about 40% larger than Europe.

Botanically, the peanut is not a nut at all. What is it?

It grows in the same family as peas and beans, and its pods develop underground, which is why Linnaeus named it hypogaea, 'under the earth'.

The cashew nut grows attached to the bottom of what?

The reddish-yellow accessory fruit is juicy and edible in its own right and is fermented into liquor in Brazil and Goa.

What is missing from white chocolate that other chocolate contains?

It is made from cocoa butter, sugar and milk, which is why some regulators once refused to let it be called chocolate at all.

Immigrants from which country most likely originated the fortune cookie?

The Japanese version was eaten with tea and had no lucky numbers; the cookies were popularised in California in the early 20th century.

When Coca-Cola launched in the 1880s, its two key stimulant ingredients were caffeine and what?

One estimate puts it at nine milligrams per glass; the coca leaf and kola nut are where the name comes from.

Which common kitchen spice contains myristicin, a compound that is toxic and psychoactive in large doses?

A pinch is harmless, but a whole nut or more can cause hours of nausea and hallucinations, which is why it has a folk reputation as a drug.

Between 1912 and 1948, the Olympic Games awarded medals in which unexpected category?

Architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture each had events, nicknamed the 'Pentathlon of the Muses'.

Michael Phelps holds the record for most Olympic medals by any athlete. How many did he win?

He collected them across four Games, and 23 of them were gold, more than most countries have won in their entire history.

The Tour de France leader's jersey is yellow most probably because of what?

L'Auto, which ran the race, was printed on yellow newsprint, and its editor handed out the first one in 1919.

Which astronaut hit two golf balls on the Moon during Apollo 14?

He smuggled up a six-iron head that attached to a sample-scoop handle and had to swing one-handed in the stiff suit.

The odd extra 385 yards on the marathon distance dates from the 1908 London Olympics. Why?

The course ran 26 miles from Windsor Castle to the stadium and then a partial lap to the royal seats; that distance was standardised in 1921.

What did James Naismith nail up as the first ever basketball hoops in 1891?

He left the bottoms in at first, so someone had to fetch the ball out after every score; metal hoops with backboards did not arrive until 1906.

Which sport was part of the Summer Olympics from 1900 to 1920 but has not been included since?

Teams of eight pulled for the title, and Great Britain's police clubs won most of the medals.

In 1947, Grace Hopper's team found the 'first actual case of bug' in a Harvard computer. What was it?

The insect was stuck in a relay of the Mark II, and they taped it into the logbook, where it can still be seen.

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to make what?

Fusajiro Yamauchi's Kyoto workshop produced handmade hanafuda cards, and the company still sells them today.

Nokia, the Finnish phone giant, was originally established in 1865 as what?

It spent a century in paper, rubber boots and cables before phones, and at its 2000 peak it was 4% of Finland's entire GDP.

Bluetooth technology is named after whom?

Harald Bluetooth united Denmark and Norway, and the logo combines his initials in runes.

The world's first webcam, set up at Cambridge University in 1991, was pointed at what?

Researchers wanted to know whether the pot in the Trojan Room was empty before walking over; it went online for the world in 1993.

When Jeff Bezos founded his online bookstore in 1994, what was it originally called?

He changed it after a lawyer misheard 'Cadabra' as 'cadaver', and picked a name that would come first alphabetically.

On Sesame Street, what colour was Oscar the Grouch during the show's first season?

He was switched to green from season two, and the change is explained on the show as a holiday at Swamp Mushy Muddy.

What did Psycho (1960) show for the first time in a mainstream American film?

Marion flushes a torn-up note, and toilets were almost never seen in American cinema at the time.

The 'Wilhelm scream', a stock sound effect used in hundreds of films, comes from which 1951 movie?

It was later named after a character who screams it in a 1953 western and became a running in-joke among sound editors.

Wayne Allwine, Disney's Mickey voice for over 30 years, was married to the voice of whom?

He met Russi Taylor at a recording session in 1988 and they married in 1991, staying together until his death in 2009.

What is Barbie's full name, according to the 1960s Random House novels?

Her parents are George and Margaret Roberts of Willows, Wisconsin, and Ken is Kenneth Sean Carson.

What was the working title of 'Yesterday' while Paul McCartney was writing it in 1965?

He woke up with the tune in his head and used placeholder words about breakfast until the real lyric arrived.

Warner Chappell repaid $14 million in 2016 after losing its copyright claim to which song?

The song is now firmly in the public domain in the US and EU, which is why restaurants no longer need to sing their own versions.

Which band failed a 1962 audition for Decca Records, which signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead?

Their manager was reportedly told that guitar groups were on the way out; a few months later they signed with EMI's Parlophone.

Recording 'Bohemian Rhapsody' across eight generations of 24-track tape needed nearly how many tracks for overdubs?

The six-minute suite has no repeating chorus, and the tapes were reportedly so worn they became almost transparent.

Dr. Seuss wrote 'Green Eggs and Ham' to win a $50 bet that he could not use only how many different words?

His editor Bennett Cerf made the wager, and the finished book uses exactly that many.

Which novelist has sold more than two billion books, making her the best-selling novelist of all time?

Guinness World Records lists her as the best-selling fiction writer ever; only the Bible and Shakespeare are said to outsell her.

How often does Holmes say 'Elementary, my dear Watson' in Conan Doyle's sixty stories?

He does say 'elementary' and 'my dear Watson' separately; the full line came from stage and film adaptations.

How old was Mary Shelley when she began writing 'Frankenstein'?

The idea came from a ghost-story contest during a rainy summer at Lake Geneva, and the novel was published anonymously when she was 20.

A 2014 study estimated the human nose can distinguish roughly how many different odours?

The old textbook figure of 10,000 came from impressionistic 1920s research and turned out to be a huge underestimate.

Compared with toenails, fingernails grow how fast?

Fingernails add roughly 3.5 mm a month, and the index finger's grows faster than the little finger's.

A human baby is born with roughly how many bones?

Many fuse as the child grows, so an adult ends up with about 206.

Christopher Cockerell worked out the hovercraft principle using a hairdryer and two tin cans that had held what?

The ring of fast air between the nested cans acted as a barrier that trapped the cushion, the key to a practical craft; the SR.N1 crossed the Channel in 1959.

The word 'bus' owes its existence partly to an 1820s shop sign belonging to a French tradesman of what kind?

Stanislas Baudry's horse-drawn service in Nantes stopped outside a hatter named Omnés, whose punning sign read 'Omnes Omnibus', and the nickname stuck.

In 1840s Vienna, an ancestor of the Spirograph drawing toy was built to help prevent what?

Peter Hubert Desvignes's machine produced near-endless roulette patterns that were extremely hard to reverse engineer; the toy version arrived in 1965.

The name of the block-stacking game Jenga means 'to build' in which language?

Creator Leslie Scott grew up speaking it in Tanganyika, and her family's first blocks came from a sawmill in Takoradi, Ghana.

A 2015 study put the number of trees on Earth at roughly how many?

That was eight times earlier estimates, yet humans still fell about 15 billion a year against only 5 billion planted.

Tortoises cannot swim, yet they have been known to survive ocean crossings of more than how far?

They can drift for months without food or fresh water, which is how giant tortoises ended up dominating so many islands.