157 Fun Facts About Trivia for Teens

Which metal has the chemical symbol Au?

Au comes from aurum, the Latin word for gold, which is why the symbol looks nothing like the English name.

Which planet is the largest in our solar system?

Jupiter spins so fast, once in about 10 hours, that it bulges at the equator and flattens at the poles.

What is the hardest naturally occurring material known?

Diamond is pure carbon with every atom tightly bonded to four others, which makes it hard enough to use in industrial cutting and polishing tools.

Which part of a cell earned the nickname 'powerhouse of the cell' for generating its energy?

The mitochondrion has its own DNA, inherited almost only from your mother, so scientists use it to trace ancestry back along the maternal line.

After the Sun, which star is closest to Earth?

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf too faint to see with the naked eye, even though it sits beside the much brighter pair Alpha Centauri A and B.

What does DNA stand for?

Deoxyribonucleic acid always pairs A with T and C with G, so either of its two strands can act as a template to copy the other.

About how long does sunlight take to reach Earth?

Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth, so if the Sun suddenly went dark, we would not notice until its last light arrived.

Which planet is even hotter than Mercury, despite being farther from the Sun?

Venus is hotter because its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere traps heat in a runaway greenhouse effect, keeping its surface above 460 °C.

Mars has two moons: Phobos and which other?

Deimos and its sibling moon Phobos are named after the sons of Ares, the Greek counterpart of Mars, the Roman god of war.

Which blood type is the 'universal donor' for red blood cell transfusions?

O negative red cells lack the A, B and Rh D markers that can trigger a reaction in a recipient.

How many bones does an adult human body typically have?

An adult skeleton typically has 206 bones; babies are born with around 270, and many fuse together during growth.

What is the largest organ of the human body?

Skin is the body's largest organ, and when sunlight hits it, it makes vitamin D, which the body needs to build and maintain bones.

Which heart parts pump blood to the lungs and body?

The ventricles are the heart's two lower chambers, and the left one is the strongest chamber because it has to push blood all the way around the body.

Which is the largest and deepest ocean on Earth?

Ferdinand Magellan named the Pacific 'peaceful' in 1520, when his ships reached calm water after battling stormy seas at the tip of South America.

Which purpose-built city became Australia's capital as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne?

Canberra sits where it does because the Constitution required the capital to be in New South Wales at least 100 miles from Sydney, with Parliament meeting in Melbourne meanwhile.

Which country has the largest population in the world?

India overtook China in 2023 only by UN estimates: its census, due in 2021, had been postponed, so there was no official count.

Which country is the largest in the world by area?

Russia is the biggest country today, yet it once held even more land: in 1867 it sold Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million.

Mount Everest sits on the border between China and which other country?

Mount Everest, on Nepal's border, is named after surveyor George Everest, who objected to the honour because locals could neither write nor pronounce the name.

Which is the largest hot desert on Earth?

The Sahara has not always been sand: within the last 10,000 years, grasses, trees and lakes spread across much of what is now desert.

Which continent has the most countries?

Africa reached 54 countries in 2011, when South Sudan broke away from Sudan and became independent.

Which city did Queen Victoria pick as Canada's capital, passing over Toronto and Montreal?

Ottawa won because it sat on the border between the two halves of the old Province of Canada and lay safely distant from the United States.

Counting overseas territories, which country has the most time zones?

France spans the most time zones because overseas regions and territories, from French Guiana to French Polynesia, are still part of France.

Which is the smallest sovereign state in the world?

Vatican City only became an independent country in 1929, when Italy signed the Lateran Treaty to settle its long dispute with the popes over the lost Papal States.

About 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest lies in which country?

Brazil holds most of the Amazon, whose river is said to be named after women warriors who fought explorer Francisco de Orellana, like the Amazons of Greek myth.

Which continent is the largest by area?

Asia is the largest continent, yet no clear physical line separates it from Europe: the two share one landmass, Eurasia, divided only by custom.

The Great Barrier Reef lies off the coast of which Australian state?

Queensland's Great Barrier Reef nearly ended Captain Cook's voyage in 1770, when his ship Endeavour ran aground on it and needed weeks of repairs.

Wild emperor penguins breed on which continent?

Antarctica's emperor penguins breed through the winter, and each male incubates the egg for about two months while eating nothing.

Which astronaut followed Neil Armstrong onto the Moon during Apollo 11?

Buzz Aldrin followed Armstrong down the ladder and summed up the lunar surface in two words: 'magnificent desolation'.

Where was the Titanic headed when it sank?

New York was the destination, but the Titanic carried 20 lifeboats with room for about 1,178 people, far fewer than were aboard, and about 1,500 died.

Which US president told Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall'?

Ronald Reagan delivered the line in 1987 even though some of his own officials had fought to cut it from the speech.

Whose portrait is on the US $100 bill?

Benjamin Franklin is why $100 bills are nicknamed 'Benjamins', even though he was never president.

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is still largely standing?

The Great Pyramid of Giza is so old that Cleopatra lived closer in time to the first Moon landing than to the pyramid's building.

Which English king sealed Magna Carta in 1215?

King John sealed Magna Carta in June 1215 under pressure from rebel barons, but within weeks he persuaded Pope Innocent III to annul it.

In which city did Rosa Parks refuse to give up her bus seat in 1955?

Rosa Parks's arrest in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked a bus boycott of more than a year that ended when the US Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional.

Machu Picchu was built by which civilization?

Machu Picchu was built by the Inca around 1450, probably as a royal estate for the emperor Pachacuti, high above Peru's Urubamba valley.

The US Declaration of Independence was adopted in which city?

Philadelphia's Pennsylvania State House, now Independence Hall, is where Congress adopted it on July 4, 1776, though most delegates signed it on August 2.

Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of which month?

Caesar is said to have mocked a seer who warned him about the Ides of March, saying the day had come; the seer replied it had not yet gone.

Which film was the first to gross more than $2 billion worldwide?

Avatar was outlined by James Cameron before Titanic, but he waited years to make it because the filmmaking technology he needed didn't exist yet.

Who played Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Robert Downey Jr. was a risky pick after years of drug arrests, and director Jon Favreau had to fight Marvel executives to cast him in Iron Man.

What is the name of Harry Potter's owl?

Hedwig is killed early in the final book, and J.K. Rowling said her death represented a loss of innocence and security for Harry.

Stranger Things is set in the town of Hawkins, in which US state?

The Duffer Brothers first set the show on Long Island under the working title Montauk, before moving the story to fictional Hawkins, Indiana.

In Frozen, Elsa and Anna are princesses of which kingdom?

Arendelle was modelled on Norway: Disney artists travelled there to study its mountains, fjords and architecture for the film's look.

Who directed the 2023 Barbie movie?

Greta Gerwig's Barbie opened the same weekend as Oppenheimer, and instead of splitting audiences, the 'Barbenheimer' craze made them the weekend's top two films.

Who voices the ogre Shrek in DreamWorks' animated Shrek films?

Mike Myers took over the role after Chris Farley, who had been voicing Shrek, died in 1997.

In which underwater city does SpongeBob SquarePants live?

SpongeBob and many of his Bikini Bottom neighbors grew out of The Intertidal Zone, a tide-pool comic Stephen Hillenburg drew while teaching marine biology.

Which 1995 film was the first entirely computer-animated feature film?

Toy Story nearly fell apart in 1993, when early story reels made Woody a sarcastic, unlikable jerk and Pixar had to rework the film to save it.

Black Panther is the king of which fictional nation?

Wakanda hides its vibranium-powered technology from the outside world, and director Ryan Coogler based parts of it on the real kingdom of Lesotho.

Which new emotion takes control of Riley's mind in Inside Out 2?

Anxiety grabs control as Riley heads to hockey camp, and her frantic scheming ends with Riley having what looks like a panic attack.

Who plays Wednesday Addams in the Netflix series Wednesday?

Jenna Ortega choreographed Wednesday's famous school-dance routine herself, drawing on 1980s goth club footage and Siouxsie Sioux.

Which Avengers film ends with Thanos erasing half of all life?

In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos wants to wipe out half of all life because he believes that is the only way to save an overcrowded universe.

Which Taylor Swift concert series became the first ever to gross more than $1 billion?

Pollstar estimated the Eras Tour passed $1 billion in 2023, and a Federal Reserve report tied one US city's best hotel month since the pandemic largely to its shows.

BTS's Korean name, Bangtan Sonyeondan, literally translates to what?

Bangtan Sonyeondan means 'Bulletproof Boy Scouts', and in 2017 the group gave BTS a second English meaning: 'Beyond the Scene'.

Billie Eilish writes and produces her music with which family member?

Her brother Finneas O'Connell produced her debut album in his small bedroom studio, and it went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.

The Beatles formed in which English city?

The Beatles were playing Liverpool's cellar club the Cavern when local record-store manager Brian Epstein first saw them, and he went on to manage them.

How many keys does a standard modern piano have?

A piano has 88 keys, and its full name, pianoforte, comes from the Italian for 'soft-loud', because how hard you strike a key sets how loud it plays.

What was Olivia Rodrigo's debut single?

drivers license was Olivia Rodrigo's debut single, and she first shared an early version on Instagram in 2020, months before its January 2021 release.

Beyoncé first found fame in which girl group?

Destiny's Child was managed by Beyonce's father, Mathew Knowles, who quit his job selling medical scanners to run the group.

Which Michael Jackson album is the best-selling album of all time?

Thriller, the best-selling album ever, got its famous title video only after a making-of documentary was sold to MTV and Showtime to help pay for it.

Which of these singers is a member of Blackpink?

Lisa, who grew up in Thailand, was the only one of 4,000 applicants picked at YG Entertainment's audition there, then trained five years before Blackpink debuted.

Which city hosted the 2024 Summer Olympics?

Paris broke with tradition by holding the first Olympic opening ceremony outside a stadium, sending the show along the River Seine instead.

In a standard match, how many players does each soccer team have on the pitch?

Each soccer team fields 11 players, one of them a goalkeeper, and a match can't go on if either side drops below seven players.

Who is the NBA's all-time leading points scorer?

LeBron James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 38,387 points in February 2023, and Abdul-Jabbar, there in the arena, handed him the game ball.

The Super Bowl is the championship game of which league?

The NFL's big game got its name from Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, who said the name was probably in his head because his kids played with a Super Ball.

Who is the most decorated gymnast in history?

Simone Biles pulled out of most of her events at the Tokyo Olympics with 'the twisties', then came back to win four more medals at the 2024 Games.

Which country won the 2022 FIFA World Cup?

Argentina lost the lead twice in the 2022 final before winning the shootout 4-2, their first World Cup title since 1986.

How many points is a touchdown worth in American football?

A touchdown is worth 6 points today, yet under early football rules it counted for less than a kicked field goal.

Which swimmer won 28 Olympic medals between 2004 and 2016?

Michael Phelps retired after the 2012 Olympics, but the break didn't last: he returned to race, and win again, at the 2016 Games.

How long is a marathon?

A marathon is 26.2 miles because the 1908 London Olympic race was laid out to start at Windsor Castle and finish in front of the royal box.

What kind of fruit basket was nailed up as a goal for the very first basketball game?

Peach baskets served as Naismith's first goals, and because their bottoms were left in, the ball had to be fetched back out after every score.

Which Swedish company developed Minecraft?

Mojang made Minecraft, and when Microsoft bought the Stockholm studio for $2.5 billion in 2014, creator Markus 'Notch' Persson left.

Which company makes the PlayStation consoles?

Sony first designed the PlayStation as a CD add-on for the Super Nintendo, then built its own console after Nintendo dropped the deal.

Which studio created Fortnite?

Epic Games first made Fortnite as the co-op game Save the World, then spun off the free Battle Royale mode after that genre took off in 2017.

YouTube's three founders had all previously worked at which company?

PayPal is where YouTube's founders met, and their site first tried video dating, which drew too little interest, before opening to any kind of video.

Which company created the short-video app TikTok?

ByteDance bought the lip-sync app Musical.ly in 2017, then merged it into TikTok in 2018, moving all of its users' accounts onto the new app.

Which studio developed Among Us?

Innersloth released Among Us in 2018 to little notice, and it only took off in 2020 when Twitch streamers played it.

In Nintendo's games, how is Luigi related to Mario?

Mario got his twin brother in 1983's Mario Bros., when Luigi was made as a green recolour of Mario so a second player could join in.

What does HTML stand for?

HyperText Markup Language came from Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, who built the web so scientists around the world could share information more easily.

Which Pokémon does Pikachu evolve into?

Raichu is Pikachu's evolved form, yet in the anime Ash's Pikachu knocked away a Thunder Stone and beat Lt. Surge's Raichu with speed instead.

Which company bought Instagram for about $1 billion in 2012?

Facebook bought a company whose app began as Burbn, a location check-in service, before its founders refocused it on photos and renamed it Instagram.

In The Legend of Zelda games, what is the name of the hero you play as?

Link barely speaks in the games on purpose, because Nintendo's makers want players to choose for him and feel that they are the hero themselves.

The Rubik's Cube was invented in which country?

Hungary's Ernő Rubik built the cube while teaching design in Budapest, and even he needed weeks to solve his own puzzle.

Lego bricks come from a company based in which country?

Denmark's Lego started out making wooden toys, and it only went all in on plastic bricks after a fire destroyed its stock of wooden toys.

The word 'emoji' comes from which language?

'Emoji' is Japanese, combining 'e' (picture) and 'moji' (character); its resemblance to 'emotion' is a coincidence.

What is the fastest land animal?

The cheetah is the fastest land animal, but it can hold its top speed for only seconds, so it creeps close to its prey before sprinting.

What is the largest animal known to have ever existed?

The blue whale, the largest animal known, lives almost entirely on tiny krill, which it strains from seawater through its baleen plates.

What is a group of lions called?

A pride is a lion group built around related females, who do most of the hunting while the males mainly defend the pride.

Which animal has three hearts?

An octopus has three hearts: one systemic heart pumps blood around the body and two branchial hearts pump it through the gills.

What is the tallest living land animal?

The giraffe is the tallest living land animal, yet its height makes drinking risky, since it must splay its legs and stoop, leaving it open to predators.

Koalas feed almost entirely on the leaves of which tree?

Koalas eat almost only eucalyptus leaves, which give them so little energy that they sleep up to 20 hours a day to save it.

Which bird is the fastest animal on Earth when diving?

The peregrine falcon is the fastest diver, yet DDT thinned its eggshells until it became endangered, and it bounced back only once the pesticide was banned.

Which is the only mammal capable of true, sustained flight?

A bat's wings are really hands, with a thin membrane stretched between long finger bones, and movable joints let bats turn fast enough to catch insects in midair.

In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen comes from which part of Panem?

District 12 is where Katniss volunteered for the Games to take the place of her 12-year-old sister, whose name had been drawn.

Which Greek god is Percy Jackson's father?

Poseidon's son Percy is sent to find Zeus's stolen lightning bolt before the theft sparks a war between Zeus and Poseidon.

Who wrote the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series?

Jeff Kinney first posted Diary of a Wimpy Kid on the kids' site Funbrain, then landed a book deal at a comics convention.

Who wrote The Fault in Our Stars?

John Green took the title from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, where Cassius tells Brutus the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves.

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is set in which Italian city?

Verona's prince exiles Romeo for killing Tybalt, so Romeo is away when his servant brings false word that Juliet has died.

What is the value of pi to two decimal places?

Pi is 3.14 to two decimal places, and even NASA's space navigation code uses only about 15 decimals, since more digits would barely change the results.

The theorem a² + b² = c² is named after whom?

Pythagoras got his name on the theorem, yet Babylonian tablets show the rule in use more than a thousand years before he was born.

On a flat surface, the interior angles of a triangle add up to how many degrees?

180 degrees holds only on flat paper; draw a triangle on a globe, and its three corners add up to more than that.

Guacamole is made mainly from which fruit?

Avocado is right there in guacamole's name, which is traced to the Aztec Nahuatl word for 'avocado sauce'.

Nutella is a sweet cocoa spread made with which nut?

Hazelnut paste was Ferrero's answer to a cocoa shortage after World War II, stretching scarce cocoa into the spread that became Nutella.

Which country star joined Lil Nas X on the hit remix of 'Old Town Road'?

Billy Ray Cyrus joined the remix after Billboard pulled 'Old Town Road' from its country chart, saying it wasn't country enough.

The first season of the cartoon Total Drama parodies which reality show?

Survivor's vote-off is copied: at the end of most episodes, the losing campers gather at a campfire and vote one of their own off the island.

Which 1980s film inspired the Star Wars series Skeleton Crew?

The Goonies was the model: director Jon Watts pitched Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy a Star Wars story with the feel of that 1985 treasure hunt.

The Toronto Raptors' G League team, Raptors 905, is named after what?

A local telephone area code, 905, names the team: locals call Toronto's suburbs 'the 905', and the club plays in suburban Mississauga.

Which animal does Optimus Primal turn into in Beast Wars?

A gorilla is Optimus Primal's beast mode, one of the animal forms the Maximals took because raw energon on the planet was poisonous to their robot bodies.

Rapper Travis Scott built his stage name from his favourite uncle's name and whose first name?

Scott comes from Kid Cudi, born Scott Mescudi, one of his biggest inspirations; Travis was a favourite uncle's name, and the rapper himself was born Jacques Webster II.

Which teenager kept a diary while hiding from the Nazis for two years in a secret annex in Amsterdam?

Anne Frank was given the diary for her thirteenth birthday, weeks before her family slipped into rooms concealed behind a bookcase. It has since been translated into over 70 languages.

Which planet in our solar system has such a low average density that it would float in water?

Saturn is about 30% less dense than water, the only planet lighter than the liquid. Even so, it is more than 95 times as massive as Earth.

Which author began writing Frankenstein at 18 after Lord Byron challenged his guests to write a ghost story?

Mary Shelley came up with the tale during an 1816 summer near Geneva, and the novel was published anonymously when she was 20.

Which tiny birds can hover in place at a flower and are also able to fly backward and upside-down?

Hummingbirds beat their wings from about 12 times a second in the largest species to 99 in small ones, which produces the humming sound they are named for.

Which teenager, later declared a saint, joined the army sent to relieve the English siege of Orléans?

Joan of Arc was about seventeen when she set out with the relief army, and the siege was lifted within days of her arrival. She was burned at the stake two years later.

Which is the world's largest island, with about four-fifths of its land buried under an ice sheet?

Greenland's ice sheet covers about 81% of the island, yet its far north stays bare because the air there is too dry to produce snow.

YouTube's first video, uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim in 2005, shows him standing in which kind of place?

A zoo in San Diego is the setting: Karim stands in front of two elephants and remarks on the length of their trunks. The clip lasts just 19 seconds.

Which spice, among the world's most expensive by weight, is hand-picked from the stigmas of a crocus flower?

Saffron takes roughly 150,000 flowers to make a single kilogram, and about forty hours of labour just to pick them.

Which human organ makes up about 2% of body weight but uses up to 20% of the body's energy?

The brain gets about 15% of the blood the heart pumps and a quarter of the body's glucose, though an adult's weighs only about 1.2 to 1.4 kilograms.

Which puzzle game by Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov was bundled with Nintendo's Game Boy in North America?

Tetris was picked as the pack-in over Super Mario Land on the argument that Mario appealed mainly to young boys, while a puzzle game would appeal to everyone.

Which Egyptian pharaoh, who died at about 19, lay in the tomb Howard Carter's team found in 1922?

Tutankhamun's tomb held more than 5,000 artifacts. Robbers broke in twice soon after the burial, yet his mummy and most of the goods stayed intact.

Which Roman city was buried under volcanic ash and pumice when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD?

Pompeii's victims left hollows in the hardened ash, and an excavator devised a way of injecting plaster into them to recreate their forms.

Which Soviet cosmonaut became the first person in space when Vostok 1 circled Earth in April 1961?

Yuri Gagarin made a single orbit, and the whole flight took just 108 minutes. In his youth he had worked as a foundryman at a steel plant.

Which German goldsmith's movable-type printing press produced a famous 42-line Bible in the 1450s?

Johannes Gutenberg was not the first to use movable type, which already existed in the Far East, but his press made printing much faster and set off an information revolution in Europe.

Which American aviator became the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic in 1932?

Amelia Earhart disappeared five years later while trying to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. The 1932 crossing had earned her the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Which US president issued the Emancipation Proclamation on the first day of 1863, during the Civil War?

Abraham Lincoln's order changed the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved people to free, though it applied only in the ten states that were in rebellion.

Which emperor escaped exile on the island of Elba, only to be defeated at Waterloo in 1815?

Napoleon slipped away from Elba after ten months with around a thousand men and retook power, before a coalition of his opponents beat him at Waterloo.

Which pharaoh, whose first language was Greek, had relationships with both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony?

Cleopatra is the only ruler of her dynasty known to have learned the Egyptian language. The earlier Ptolemies governed Egypt as Greek monarchs without troubling to learn it.

Which activist for girls' education survived a Taliban gunman's attack and won the Nobel Peace Prize at 17?

Malala Yousafzai was shot on a bus in Pakistan's Swat region in 2012, after taking an exam. Two years later she became the youngest Nobel laureate up to that time.

Which empire's island capital, Tenochtitlan, stood on the site of modern Mexico City's historic centre?

Aztec rulers governed from a city built on an island in Lake Texcoco. It remained their capital until it was captured by the Tlaxcaltec and the Spanish in 1521.

Which element, the lightest of all, makes up about 75% of the normal matter in the universe?

Hydrogen is even more dominant when atoms are counted instead of weighed: more than 90% of all atoms in the universe are this one element.

Marie Curie won Nobel Prizes in two different fields: physics and which other?

Chemistry brought her second prize in 1911, for discovering radium and polonium. She named polonium after her native Poland.

Which naturalist's five-year voyage on HMS Beagle led to his theory of evolution by natural selection?

Charles Darwin worked out the theory in 1838, two years after the ship came home, but did not publish On the Origin of Species until 1859.

Table salt is a compound of chlorine and which soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal?

Sodium has been leached out of Earth's minerals by water over eons, which is why it and chlorine are the two most common dissolved elements by weight in the oceans.

Which pigment in the cells of plants and algae absorbs energy from light to power photosynthesis?

Chlorophyll takes its name from the Greek words for 'pale green' and 'leaf'. It sits inside structures called chloroplasts.

Which stirrup-shaped bone in the middle ear is the smallest and lightest in the human body?

The stapes is the last of three tiny bones that pass sound vibrations on to the inner ear. Its name is simply Medieval Latin for 'stirrup'.

Which dwarf planet, discovered in 1930, was named at the suggestion of an eleven-year-old Oxford schoolgirl?

Pluto was the idea of Venetia Burney, who was interested in classical mythology. Astronomers redefined the word planet in 2006 in a way that left it out.

Which lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere holds about 80% of its mass and nearly all its weather?

The troposphere also contains 99% of the atmosphere's water vapour and aerosols. Its name comes from the Greek for 'turning' or 'change'.

Which Scottish scientist discovered penicillin in 1928 on culture plates he had left out during a holiday?

Alexander Fleming later shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. The drug came from a mould, Penicillium rubens.

Which egg-laying mammal baffled European naturalists and has males with venomous spurs on their hind feet?

The platypus also hunts with its eyes, ears and nostrils closed, using a sense of electrolocation to detect prey in the water.

Which country, home to the ancient Kushite kingdoms of Nubia, has more pyramids than Egypt?

Sudan has more than two hundred pyramids, tall and narrow, built over a few hundred years as tombs for the kings, queens and wealthy citizens of Napata and Meroë.

Which city became Turkey's capital when the republic was founded in 1923, replacing the old Ottoman capital?

Ankara is only the country's second-largest city by population, behind Istanbul, the Ottoman capital it replaced.

Angel Falls, a 979-metre waterfall named after a US aviator, drops from a tabletop mountain in which country?

Venezuela's great falls came to the world's attention after Jimmie Angel flew over them in 1933 while searching for a valuable ore bed.

Which computer scientist invented the World Wide Web and published the first website from CERN in 1990?

Tim Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. He was knighted for the work in 2004.

Which programming language, created by Guido van Rossum, takes its name from a British television comedy series?

Python is named for Monty Python's Flying Circus. Van Rossum began working on it in the late 1980s as a successor to a language called ABC.

Wimbledon, the world's oldest tennis tournament, is the only major played on which traditional surface?

Grass courts have hosted Wimbledon since 1877. It is also the only major with a night-time curfew, so play stops at 11pm even under floodlights.

Which Jamaican sprinter ran the 100 metres in 9.58 seconds in 2009 to set a world record?

Usain Bolt cut his own mark of 9.69 by more than a tenth of a second, the biggest improvement since electronic timing began.

Which Shakespeare tragedy do superstitious actors call 'the Scottish Play' rather than say its name aloud?

Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. It follows a brave general who hears from a trio of witches that he will one day be king.

Which Greek philosopher, a student at Plato's Academy, was hired to tutor the young Alexander the Great?

Aristotle took the job at the request of Alexander's father, Philip II of Macedon, a few years after Plato died. He had spent about twenty years at the Academy.

In Norse mythology, what is the name of the hammer wielded by the thunder god Thor?

Mjölnir was both a devastating weapon and a tool for giving blessings, and small versions were commonly worn as pendants during the Viking Age.

Which English singer named her debut album 19 after her age and followed it with 21, 25 and 30?

Adele wrote her first song, Hometown Glory, at 16. While promoting 25 she said she planned to stop naming albums after her age, then called the next one 30.

Which English singer titled his first three albums with the mathematical symbols for plus, multiply and divide?

Ed Sheeran's Divide was the best-selling album worldwide of 2017 and put ten singles into the UK top 10.

Which pop star began on Broadway as a teenager, then played Cat Valentine on Nickelodeon's Victorious?

Ariana Grande was cast as a cheerleader in the Broadway musical 13 in 2008, and later carried her Nickelodeon character into the spin-off Sam & Cat.

Which singer was discovered when manager Scooter Braun clicked on one of his YouTube videos by accident?

Justin Bieber's mother had posted his performances for family and friends to see. Braun was searching for videos of a different singer when he found one.

Which pop star, born Stefani Germanotta, took a stage name derived from the title of a 1984 Queen song?

Lady Gaga's name comes from Radio Ga Ga. By one account it was born when a phone's spell checker changed 'Radio' to 'Lady' in a text message.

Which small instrument was developed in 1880s Hawaii from guitar-like instruments brought by Portuguese immigrants?

The ukulele is based on the machete, the cavaquinho and the rajão, carried to the islands by settlers from Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde.

Which composer kept writing music despite growing deafness, premiering his Ninth Symphony in Vienna in 1824?

Beethoven never went totally deaf, contrary to common belief. In his final years he could make out low tones and sudden loud sounds.

Which South Korean artist's Gangnam Style became the first YouTube video to reach a billion views in 2012?

Psy's video drew about 500,000 views on its first day in July and passed the billion mark that December, roughly five months later.

Which Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda tells an American Founding Father's life story largely through hip hop?

Hamilton is based on a 2004 biography by Ron Chernow. At the Tony Awards it received 16 nominations and won 11, including Best Musical.

Which rapper from Compton won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music, a first for an artist outside classical and jazz?

Kendrick Lamar won for his album Damn. He had begun releasing music while in high school, under the stage name K.Dot.