50 Fun Facts About Trivia for 12 Year Olds

Which planet, the hottest in the solar system, has a day that lasts longer than its year?

Venus is the hottest planet because its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere traps heat, holding the surface near 464 °C. One spin takes 243 Earth days, but one orbit of the Sun takes about 225.

Which Japanese video game company began in 1889 as a maker of handmade playing cards?

Nintendo was founded in Kyoto by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi to sell hanafuda, or flower cards. Its arcade hit Donkey Kong did not arrive until 1981.

Which reading system of raised dots was developed in 1824 by a blind French fifteen-year-old?

Braille grew out of a twelve-dot code by Charles Barbier, which Louis Braille cut down to six dots. He had been blinded as a small child by an accident with a tool in his father's harness workshop.

Which Himalayan country flies the only national flag in the world that is not rectangular?

Nepal's crimson flag joins two pennants, one showing a crescent moon and the other a sun. It is also the only national flag that is taller than it is wide.

Which egg-laying Australian mammal has a duck-like bill and a venomous spur on the male's hind foot?

The platypus looked so strange that the first scientists to examine one in 1799 judged it a fake sewn together from several animals. It finds prey underwater by sensing electric signals.

Which city became Australia's capital as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne?

Canberra was planned from scratch on a site that had to be at least 100 miles from Sydney. Melbourne served as the temporary seat of government while it was built.

Which number, named by a mathematician's nine-year-old nephew, is a 1 followed by 100 zeros?

A googol was named by young Milton Sirotta, whose uncle was the American mathematician Edward Kasner. The search engine Google takes its name from a misspelling of it.

Which gas, used to keep packaged food fresh, makes up about 78 percent of Earth's air?

Nitrogen is nearly four times as plentiful in dry air as oxygen, which makes up only about 21 percent. Argon comes a distant third at just under 1 percent.

Which puzzle was invented in 1974 by a Hungarian professor who then needed a month to solve it?

The Rubik's Cube first went on sale in Budapest toy shops as the Magic Cube, and was renamed after inventor Ernő Rubik in 1980.

Which U.S. state, the largest by area, has a longer coastline than all the other states combined?

Alaska covers more ground than Texas, California and Montana put together. The United States bought it in 1867 for $7.2 million.

Which chemical element, the lightest of all, makes up most of the Sun and other stars?

Hydrogen accounts for about 75 percent of all normal matter in the universe. Every second, the Sun's core fuses about 600 billion kilograms of it into helium.

Which scientist set out three laws of motion in 1687 and often told a story about a falling apple?

Isaac Newton published the laws in his book Principia, together with his theory of universal gravitation. He said the idea came to him while watching fruit drop from a tree.

Which scientist, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, named polonium after her homeland?

Marie Curie is still the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, physics and chemistry. Born in Warsaw, she chose the name polonium to honour Poland.

Which naturalist spent five years aboard HMS Beagle before publishing On the Origin of Species?

Charles Darwin brought back Galápagos birds that an expert found were twelve separate species of finch. Clues like that fed his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Which unit of distance, often used to say how far away stars are, equals about 9.46 trillion kilometres?

A light-year is the distance light covers in one year, so despite the name it measures length. Professional astronomers more often use the parsec, which is about 3.26 of them.

Which molecule, coiled into a double helix, carries the genetic instructions of all living things?

DNA had its shape worked out in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick, who drew on X-ray images such as Photo 51, taken in Rosalind Franklin's lab.

Which metal has the chemical symbol Au, taken from its Latin name aurum?

Gold is the most malleable metal of all: a single gram can be beaten into a sheet covering one square metre.

Which organ, the heaviest inside the human body, can grow back after part of it is removed?

The liver is the only human internal organ that can naturally rebuild lost tissue, even from as little as a quarter of itself. It also makes bile, a fluid that helps break up fat in food.

Which chemist's 1869 periodic table predicted three elements that nobody had yet discovered?

Dmitri Mendeleev used his table to describe gallium, scandium and germanium before anyone had found them. He is said to have seen the arrangement in a dream.

Which unit of electrical power is named after the Scottish engineer who improved the steam engine?

The watt honours James Watt, whose 1776 steam engine became fundamental to the Industrial Revolution. One watt equals one joule of energy per second.

Which African river flows north through Sudan and Egypt before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea?

The Nile is fed by two great branches, the White and the Blue, which meet at Khartoum. The Blue branch supplies over twice as much water as the White.

Which country, the smallest in the world, lies entirely inside the capital of Italy?

Vatican City covers only 44 hectares, and its gardens take up about half of that. It is the administrative centre of the Catholic Church.

Which salt lake on Jordan's western border has shores that are the lowest land on Earth?

The Dead Sea is nearly ten times as salty as the ocean, which makes its water so dense that swimming there feels like floating.

Which island, the largest in the world, is a self-governing territory of Denmark?

Greenland lies under an ice sheet that covers about 81 percent of its surface. The coldest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, −69.6 °C, was measured near the top of that ice.

Which city, once called Constantinople, is split between Europe and Asia by the Bosporus strait?

Istanbul has about two-thirds of its people living on the European side. Under its older name it was the capital of the Byzantine and later the Ottoman empires.

Which Pacific Ocean trench holds Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of the seabed?

The Mariana Trench plunges so far that its deepest point lies more than 2 km farther from sea level than the peak of Mount Everest.

Which reptile, found only on a few Indonesian islands, is the largest living species of lizard?

The Komodo dragon can grow 3 metres long and weigh up to 150 kg. Its slashing bite also delivers a dose of venom.

Which Mexican salamander keeps its external gills as an adult and can regrow lost limbs?

The axolotl can regrow not only limbs but gills and even parts of its eyes and brain, which is why it is used so widely in scientific research.

Which South American animal, a close relative of the guinea pig, is the largest living rodent?

The capybara is semiaquatic, with slightly webbed feet for a life spent in and around rivers and swamps. Adults typically weigh between 35 and 66 kg.

Which eight-legged micro-animal, nicknamed the water bear, has survived exposure to outer space?

The tardigrade can dry out into a dormant state that endures cold as deep as −272 °C. Its nickname comes from the way it walks, which reminded early observers of a lumbering bear.

Which Roman dictator was stabbed to death by a group of senators on the Ides of March?

Julius Caesar was stabbed at least twenty-three times by conspirators led by Brutus and Cassius, who feared he might make himself king.

Which Egyptian pharaoh's nearly intact tomb was found by Howard Carter's team in 1922?

Tutankhamun died at about the age of 19, yet his tomb held more than 5,000 objects, which took Howard Carter ten years to catalogue.

Which inventor's printing press with movable type produced a famous Bible in the 1450s?

Johannes Gutenberg completed his 42-line Bible in 1455. Movable type was already used in East Asia, but his press made printing much faster and spread books across Europe.

Which Founding Father drafted the Declaration of Independence and later became the third president?

Thomas Jefferson wrote the draft largely alone, and Congress then cut roughly a quarter of it during debate. He died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of its adoption.

Which activist's 1955 refusal to give up a bus seat sparked a boycott in Montgomery, Alabama?

Rosa Parks had been elected secretary of her local NAACP chapter back in 1943. The protest was planned for a single day but ran for 381 days, until bus segregation was ruled unconstitutional.

Which guarded concrete barrier divided a German city from 1961 until it was opened in 1989?

The Berlin Wall was built by East Germany mainly to stop its own citizens fleeing to the West, though officials called it the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart.

Which pilot became the first human in space by orbiting Earth once in April 1961?

Yuri Gagarin circled the planet aboard Vostok 1 in a flight that lasted 108 minutes. His radio call sign was Kedr, a Russian word for a Siberian pine or cedar.

Which empire built the mountain citadel of Machu Picchu in Peru around 1450?

The Inca are believed to have built it as an estate for the emperor Pachacuti. It drew little notice abroad until the American historian Hiram Bingham publicised it in 1911.

Which Jewish teenager kept a diary while hiding in a secret annex in Amsterdam during World War II?

Anne Frank and her family hid behind a bookcase in the building where her father worked. Her diary has since been translated into more than 70 languages.

Which document did King John of England seal in 1215 to make peace with rebel barons?

Magna Carta, Latin for Great Charter, promised protection from illegal imprisonment and access to swift justice. Neither side kept its word, and the pope annulled it.

In Rick Riordan's novels, which Greek god is revealed to be the father of Percy Jackson?

Poseidon claims the boy as his son at Camp Half-Blood in The Lightning Thief, the 2005 novel that opens the series. The birth broke an oath the eldest gods had sworn not to have children.

Which character in The Hunger Games volunteers to compete in place of her little sister Prim?

Katniss Everdeen comes from District 12, the poorest region of Panem, where she learned to hunt in the surrounding woods to help support her family.

In which Italian city do the feuding Montagues and Capulets live in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet?

Verona's two rival families make peace only after the deaths of their children. Juliet, the heroine of the play, is just 13 years old.

Which term describes a word such as madam or racecar that reads the same backwards as forwards?

A palindrome can also be a number, a date or a whole sentence. The longest single-word one in the Oxford English Dictionary is the 12-letter tattarrattat, coined by James Joyce for a knock on a door.

Which chess piece, usually shaped like a horse's head, can jump over other pieces?

The knight moves two squares in one direction and then one square to the side. Knights and pawns are the only pieces that can move at the very start of a game.

Which painter created The Starry Night from the view out of his asylum window in France?

Vincent van Gogh painted it in June 1889 after admitting himself to the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The village beneath the swirling sky was his own addition, since none could be seen from his window.

Which computer scientist invented the World Wide Web after proposing it at CERN in 1989?

Tim Berners-Lee also created HTML and the first web browser. He appeared in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, working at a vintage computer.

Which Norse explorer is thought to have reached North America about 500 years before Columbus?

Leif Erikson was the son of the explorer Erik the Red. The sagas of Icelanders say he founded a Norse settlement called Vinland, usually taken to be coastal North America.

Which supercontinent joined almost all of Earth's land before it began splitting apart in the age of dinosaurs?

Pangaea was pieced together on paper by Alfred Wegener, who argued in 1912 that the continents had once been joined before drifting to where they sit now.

Which ancient Greek thinker gives his name to the theorem about the three sides of a right triangle?

Pythagoras was born around 570 BC, yet the rule named for him was already in wide use in ancient Babylon more than a thousand years earlier.