147 Fun Facts About Trivia Questions and Answers

Which continent is, on average, the driest and windiest on Earth?

Antarctica, also the coldest continent, is battered by katabatic winds pouring off its high polar plateau, and its interior gets under 50 mm of precipitation a year.

What is the chemical formula of ordinary table salt?

NaCl, sodium chloride, bonds sodium, a metal that reacts violently with water, to chlorine, a poison gas used as a weapon in World War I.

How many squares are there on a standard chessboard?

64 squares, eight by eight: in the wheat-and-chessboard legend, doubling one grain per square adds up to over 18 quintillion grains.

Which fashion doll did Ruth Handler introduce in 1959?

Barbie was named after Ruth Handler's daughter Barbara and modelled on Bild Lilli, a German doll Handler bought on a trip to Europe.

Which spotted cat has black 'tear marks' running from its eyes to its mouth?

Cheetah tear marks may help cut the sun's glare, useful because, unlike most cats, cheetahs hunt mainly by day.

Which city settled Sydney and Melbourne's rivalry by becoming Australia's capital?

Canberra had to be built from scratch, so federal Parliament sat in Melbourne until Canberra's provisional Parliament House opened in 1927.

Who directed the 1975 shark thriller Jaws?

Steven Spielberg directed Jaws (1975); with the mechanical sharks constantly failing, he kept the shark mostly offscreen and leaned on John Williams's two-note theme.

Which Swedish group won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with "Waterloo"?

ABBA won in Brighton, and 'Waterloo' went on to become their first UK number one, launching the band to worldwide fame.

What gas makes up about 78 percent of dry air by volume?

Nitrogen makes up 78 percent of dry air, yet most organisms can't use it directly; it must first be fixed, mostly by bacteria.

Which mineral is a crystalline form of the element carbon?

Graphite is actually the stable form of carbon at room conditions; diamond only survives because it converts to graphite at a negligible rate.

Which sport awards the Stanley Cup?

Ice hockey's Stanley Cup is the rare trophy that each member of the winning team gets to keep for a day, a tradition since the mid-1990s.

What is the largest organ of the human body?

Skin is the body's largest organ, yet its outermost layer, the stratum corneum, is made of dead cells that are continually shed.

In which fictional town do the Simpsons live?

Springfield was picked because it is one of America's most common town names, so, as Matt Groening put it, everyone would think it's their Springfield.

Which comic book hero debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938?

Superman couldn't fly in his debut, only leap tall buildings, and creators Siegel and Shuster got $130 for that first story while signing away the character.

Which mammals are the only ones capable of true, sustained flight?

Bats hang upside down without effort because their own body weight keeps their claws gripping the roost, so they can escape just by dropping.

Which nut-based confection is made mainly from sugar and ground almonds?

Marzipan is often moulded into pigs that Germans give as good-luck gifts, especially on New Year's Eve.

What is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population?

Vatican City exists because of a standoff: after Italy seized Rome in 1870, popes refused to accept the loss until the 1929 Lateran Treaty created their sovereign state.

Which Tom Hanks film of 1994 was directed by Robert Zemeckis?

Forrest Gump was a huge hit, yet Paramount's accounting showed no net profit, so author Winston Groom received none of his 3 percent share.

How many keys does a standard modern piano have?

88 keys, 52 white and 36 black: Bösendorfer's Imperial has nine extra bass keys, first built so Busoni's transcriptions of Bach organ works could be played.

Which strait runs through Istanbul and separates Europe from Asia?

The Bosporus's Greek name was popularly read as 'ox ford', recalling the myth of Io, who crossed it after being turned into a cow.

What is the name of the coffee shop where the six friends hang out in Friends?

Central Perk is the Manhattan coffee house where the six friends meet; the sitcom was developed under the working title Insomnia Cafe and ran on NBC from 1994 to 2004.

Which Beatles album, released in September 1969, was the last one the band recorded?

Abbey Road was the last album the Beatles recorded, even though Let It Be came out later, in May 1970, after being taped mostly before it.

Who won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for 'new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition'?

Bob Dylan received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature and skipped the December ceremony in Stockholm; he had already been given a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 2008.

What did Alexander Fleming discover in 1928 on a contaminated culture plate?

Penicillin sat largely forgotten because Fleming couldn't purify it; Howard Florey and Ernst Chain turned it into a drug around 1940, and all three shared the 1945 Nobel Prize.

Which mammal may be the longest-lived of all, with some individuals passing 200 years?

Bowhead whales have been caught still carrying harpoon tips from long-ago hunts, and newer ageing methods suggest some live over 200 years.

Which national team won the World Cup in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002?

Brazil kept the original Jules Rimet Trophy for good after its third title in 1970, but it was stolen in Rio de Janeiro in 1983 and never recovered.

Which detective created by Agatha Christie is a retired Belgian police officer?

Hercule Poirot's death in Curtain was written during the Second World War and locked in a bank vault, appearing only in 1975.

Inferno and Paradiso are two parts of Dante's Divine Comedy; what is the third?

Purgatorio is the middle cantica: Dante climbs the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory, guided by the Roman poet Virgil until Beatrice takes over at the summit.

As of 2024, which country was the world's largest producer of cocoa beans?

Ivory Coast grows the most cocoa, yet the cacao tree is native to the Amazon, where it was first domesticated over 5,000 years ago.

Which US president told Mikhail Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall' in a Berlin speech?

Ronald Reagan kept the line even though senior aides objected to it, and the Berlin Wall fell two years later, in 1989.

Which lake is the deepest in the world, at 1,642 metres?

Lake Baikal is so deep because it fills a young, active rift valley where the Earth's crust is slowly pulling apart.

Which spice is derived from the dried stigmas of a crocus flower?

Saffron threads are all picked by hand, and it takes at least 150,000 flowers to make a kilogram, which is why it is among the priciest spices.

Which mountain, a dormant volcano, is the highest in Africa?

Kilimanjaro, at 5,895 metres, is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world, rising 4,900 metres above its plateau base.

Under what birth name was Muhammad Ali known before he changed it?

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. and dropped the name in 1964 after joining the Nation of Islam, calling it his slave name.

Which Nirvana album, released in September 1991, was the first to feature drummer Dave Grohl?

Nevermind went on to knock Michael Jackson's Dangerous off the top of the US Billboard 200 in January 1992.

Which planet is the smallest in the Solar System?

Mercury is the smallest planet, yet Venus is hotter despite Mercury being closer to the Sun, because Mercury's thin exosphere can't trap heat.

Which whaling-ship captain hunts the white whale in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick?

Ahab's quest is vengeance on Moby Dick, the whale that bit off his leg on the Pequod's previous voyage; the sailor Ishmael narrates the 1851 novel.

The original Monopoly board's properties were named after streets in and around which US seaside resort?

Atlantic City streets such as Boardwalk and Park Place fill the board, though Monopoly grew from Lizzie Magie's Landlord's Game, made to show the harm of land monopolies.

What is the name of the fictional Indiana town in Stranger Things?

Hawkins nearly didn't make it to TV: network after network rejected Stranger Things, saying a story led by children wouldn't work, before Netflix picked it up.

Which sea route connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean and separates Spain from Morocco?

The Strait of Gibraltar carries two opposite currents: Atlantic water flows in at the surface while denser, saltier Mediterranean water flows out beneath it.

What was Lady Gaga's name at birth?

Lady Gaga was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in New York City in 1986; the stage name came from Queen's song 'Radio Ga Ga'.

Which French pastry does legend tie to a 17th-century victory over the Ottomans?

Croissant legends say its crescent shape copied the Ottoman flags to celebrate the victory, but nothing written at the time supports any of these stories.

What is the term for a group of crows?

A murder of crows may remember you: crows can recognise individual human faces and remember people who once threatened them.

Which sport's World Cup trophy honours a schoolboy said to have run with the ball in his hands?

Rugby union's Webb Ellis Cup honours a story told by Matthew Bloxam, who had left Rugby School before the supposed 1823 incident, and some historians call it a myth.

The Rosetta Stone carries the same text in Greek and in which two Egyptian scripts?

Hieroglyphic and Demotic texts share the stone with Greek; Napoleon's troops found it in 1799, but the British took it in 1801, and it has been on display in the British Museum almost continuously since 1802.

Which physicist and chemist was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes?

Marie Curie took over Pierre's Sorbonne teaching post after he was killed by a horse-drawn wagon in 1906, becoming the first woman to teach there.

Which Emily Bronte novel, her only one, was published in 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell?

Wuthering Heights struck many early reviewers as savage, and Emily Brontë died the next year, aged 30, long before it was hailed as a classic.

What colour jersey has the Tour de France leader worn since 1919?

Yellow was probably chosen because the organising newspaper, L'Auto, was printed on yellow paper; another story says it was the only colour available at short notice.

Kikunae Ikeda's umami discovery led him to create which seasoning?

MSG came from Kikunae Ikeda tracing kombu's savoury taste to glutamate, and it went on sale as Ajinomoto in 1909.

Which sandbox video game was originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson?

Minecraft was created by Markus 'Notch' Persson and first released in 2009; Microsoft later bought developer Mojang, and the game with it, for US$2.5 billion.

Which lighthouse, built under Ptolemy II, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?

The Pharos of Alexandria gave several languages their word for lighthouse, such as French phare and Italian faro, before earthquakes finally wrecked it in the 1300s.

Which company's search engine began at Stanford under the name BackRub?

Google began as BackRub because it ranked pages by their backlinks; the name Google plays on googol, the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Which beaked sea creature has a blue-ringed species deadly to humans?

Blue-ringed octopus venom can stop a victim's breathing, yet people usually recover if kept on artificial respiration until the toxin clears.

Qin Shi Huang linked the earliest walls, but which dynasty built the Great Wall's best-known sections?

The Ming dynasty rebuilt the wall in brick and stone after its 1449 defeat by the Oirat Mongols at Tumu, creating the sections most visitors see.

Which cocktail is a traditional Cuban punch of white rum, sugar, lime, soda water and mint?

The mojito is said to descend from El Draque, a lime, sugar and mint drink named after the English privateer Francis Drake.

Which Russian emperor abdicated in 1917, ending the Romanov monarchy?

Nicholas II abdicated on 15 March 1917 (2 March Old Style) during the February Revolution, having reigned since 1894; he and his family were shot at Yekaterinburg in July 1918.

Which Chinese variety is usually placed first in lists of languages by native speakers, near a billion?

Mandarin is also called Northern Chinese because most of its varieties are spoken north of the Yangtze, though its range reaches far into the southwest.

Farrokh Bulsara, born in Zanzibar in 1946, became famous under which name?

Freddie Mercury's family fled Zanzibar's 1964 revolution for England, and around 1970, as Queen formed, he changed his surname from Bulsara to Mercury.

Which 1937 film was the first full-length cel-animated feature ever released?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered on 21 December 1937 as the first full-length cel-animated feature; Walt Disney received an honorary Oscar for it, one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones.

Which two African countries avoided full colonisation, one by defeating Italy at Adwa in 1896?

Ethiopia and Liberia: Italy still occupied Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941, and Liberia was founded by free Black Americans, declaring independence in 1847.

Which racehorse race, run since 1875, is known as "The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports"?

The Kentucky Derby has been run every year since 1875, even through both World Wars, though the pandemic pushed the 2020 race from May to September.

How many bones does an adult human skeleton typically have?

206 bones: babies are born with far more, and the count falls as bones such as those of the skull fuse together.

Which honey bee behaviour tells nestmates the direction and distance to flowers?

The waggle dance: von Frisch's reading of it met widespread scepticism, and in 2005 harmonic radar showed recruits really fly the course it encodes.

Which so-called nut is actually a legume whose pods grow underground?

Peanut pods grow underground because, after pollination, the flower's stalk lengthens and pushes the developing fruit into the soil.

Gustave Eiffel built the internal iron framework of which famous monument?

The Statue of Liberty, designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, hangs its thin copper shell on Eiffel's iron frame, which lets the shell flex in wind and heat.

Which Chinua Achebe novel of 1958 follows the Igbo leader Okonkwo?

Things Fall Apart takes its title from a line in W. B. Yeats's 1919 poem 'The Second Coming', about a world coming apart.

What was Jay-Z's debut studio album, released in June 1996 on his own Roc-A-Fella label?

Reasonable Doubt: after major labels turned him down, Jay-Z sold his music himself and co-founded Roc-A-Fella to release it.

Which set of Vivaldi violin concertos, each with an accompanying sonnet, was published in 1725?

The Four Seasons' sonnets, possibly written by Vivaldi himself, are acted out in the music: in Spring, the viola imitates a barking dog.

Which Hogwarts house was Luna Lovegood sorted into?

Luna Lovegood is a Ravenclaw; Evanna Lynch, who had written to J. K. Rowling as a fan, won the film role over about 15,000 other girls.

Which footballer became the men's all-time international top scorer in 2021?

Cristiano Ronaldo passed Ali Daei in 2021, but Daei's tally was later cut from 109 to 108, which is why accounts split on whether it happened in June or September.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed five years to the day after which event?

The Sarajevo assassination came on 28 June 1914, and the treaty was signed in the Hall of Mirrors, the very room where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871.

Which London district's observatory was chosen in 1884 as the site of the world's prime meridian?

Greenwich was chosen because most nautical charts already used it; France abstained and kept using its own Paris meridian for years afterwards.

Which 1927 war film won the very first Academy Award for Best Picture?

Wings, a First World War aviation drama starring Clara Bow, won Outstanding Picture at the first Academy Awards in May 1929; Sunrise took a separate award for Unique and Artistic Production that was never given again.

Which US president served the shortest term, dying 31 days after taking office?

William Henry Harrison's death was long blamed on pneumonia caught during his long inaugural speech in the cold, but later researchers suspect contaminated water instead.

Which Maurya emperor, whose Lion Capital is India's state emblem, embraced Buddhism after conquering Kalinga?

Ashoka, grandson of founder Chandragupta Maurya, renounced conquest after the bloody Kalinga war around 260 BC and spread Buddhist teachings through edicts carved on rocks and pillars.

Which candy was banned from import into the United States because it embeds a toy inside chocolate?

Kinder Surprise falls foul of a 1938 US law against sweets with a non-edible object inside, which the FDA backs because children could choke.

Who scored 100 points in a single NBA game on March 2, 1962?

Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks, making 28 of 32 free throws despite being a poor foul shooter.

The second M in M&M's stands for Bruce Murrie, son of the president of which chocolate company?

Hershey's president's son Bruce Murrie backed the venture, and the candy's sugar shell kept chocolate from melting, making M&M's popular with soldiers in World War II.

Which actress won four Best Actress Oscars, the first for 1933's Morning Glory?

Katharine Hepburn won her four Best Actress Oscars across 48 years but never once collected one in person.

The 1997 film Titanic tied which earlier film's record of eleven Academy Awards?

Ben-Hur's 11 Oscars capped a huge gamble that saved MGM from financial disaster; Titanic and later The Return of the King matched its record.

In which city was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony first performed, on 7 May 1824?

Beethoven's Ninth premiered at Vienna's Theater am Kärntnertor on 7 May 1824; the deaf composer had to be turned round to see the applause he could not hear.

At which Swiss waterfall does Sherlock Holmes seemingly die while grappling with Professor Moriarty?

Reichenbach Falls was meant to be Holmes's end in 1893, but readers' outcry led Conan Doyle to bring him back in 1903.

Which penguins are the only ones that breed during the polar winter?

Emperor penguin males incubate the egg on their feet for about two months, eating nothing the whole time.

Which athlete won the 100 m, 200 m, long jump and 4x100 m relay at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?

Jesse Owens later said it was President Roosevelt, not Hitler, who snubbed him: the president never even sent him a telegram.

Absolute zero corresponds to what temperature on the Celsius scale?

-273.15 C is absolute zero, 0 on the Kelvin scale, and the third law of thermodynamics says no real system can ever reach it.

Which city, capital of Amazonas state, sits where the dark Rio Negro meets the Solimões?

Manaus's Meeting of the Waters shows the Rio Negro and Solimões flowing side by side for kilometres, and its rubber-boom wealth built the 1896 Teatro Amazonas.

Which Shakespeare play is set on a remote island ruled by the magician Prospero?

The Tempest's opening storm was probably inspired by accounts of the Sea Venture, an English ship wrecked on Bermuda in 1609.

Which city's pizzaiolo supposedly created the pizza Margherita for a visiting queen in 1889?

Naples's Raffaele Esposito gets the credit, but historians now doubt the story of him inventing the pizza for Queen Margherita.

Which NASA probe, launched before Pluto's demotion, flew past it in 2015?

New Horizons carries about 30 grams of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, put aboard to honour his 1930 discovery of Pluto.

Which carrier was the first iPhone's exclusive US network when it went on sale in 2007?

AT&T launched the iPhone at $599 for the 8 GB model, but Apple cut that price to $399 barely two months later.

Which Californian tree species includes the tallest living trees on Earth, at over 115 metres?

Coast redwoods include Hyperion, the tallest known tree, whose exact location is kept secret to protect its roots from trampling visitors.

Elvis made Memphis his home, but in which town was he born?

Tupelo, Mississippi, is where Elvis was born, and at 10 he made his first public performance, singing 'Old Shep' in a fair's singing contest; he recalled placing fifth.

Which moon of Saturn has geysers of water ice erupting near its south pole?

Enceladus vents water-ice plumes from 'tiger stripe' fractures near its south pole, spotted by Cassini in 2005; they feed Saturn's E ring and hint at a subsurface ocean.

What is the only marsupial found north of Mexico?

Opossums may 'play possum' when threatened, going limp and faking death to put off predators.

Which metal has the chemical symbol Au?

Gold takes its symbol Au from the Latin aurum, and it is so unreactive that it is often found in nature as native nuggets.

What makes up almost the entire diet of the blue whale, the largest animal on Earth?

Krill: a big blue whale can eat several tonnes of these tiny crustaceans a day, straining them from seawater through its baleen plates.

Where was Magna Carta sealed by King John on 15 June 1215?

Runnymede, near Windsor, is where King John sealed Magna Carta; after his death, Henry III's regents reissued it in 1216 with some radical clauses removed.

Which website's first-ever upload was a 19-second clip of a co-founder at the San Diego Zoo?

YouTube's first clip shows Jawed Karim standing in front of two elephants and remarking on the length of their trunks; it went up on April 23, 2005.

Which planet spins so slowly that one rotation, 243 Earth days, outlasts its own 225-day year?

Venus also turns the opposite way to most planets, Earth included, a slow backwards spin shaped by the Sun's pull and its own massive atmosphere.

Which video game giant was founded in Kyoto in 1889 to make handmade hanafuda playing cards?

Nintendo stayed a playing-card maker for decades, branching into toys in the 1960s and releasing its first video games only in the 1970s.

Which short-legged burrowing marsupial of Australia marks its territory with cube-shaped droppings?

Wombat droppings are thought to be cubes so that they stack and do not roll away, and the study of how they form won a 2019 Ig Nobel Prize.

Which fish, or their close ancestors, appear in the fossil record 450 million years ago, before trees existed?

Sharks are known that far back only from a few fossil scales; the oldest group of modern ones, the sixgills, had evolved by 195 million years ago.

Which wireless technology is named after a tenth-century king who united Denmark's tribes into one kingdom?

Bluetooth was King Harald's epithet, picked because the technology unites devices as he united tribes, and its logo merges the runes for his initials.

Which wading bird takes its adult colour from carotenoid pigments in the plankton it eats?

Flamingo chicks hatch greyish, and the adult shade tracks the diet: lesser flamingos take in less of the pigment and stay a paler pink than American ones.

Which frozen treat did 11-year-old Frank Epperson invent by accident, leaving a drink outside overnight?

Popsicle began as the 'Epsicle': Epperson's mix of soda powder and water froze around its stirring stick in 1905, and he patented the idea in 1924.

Which salad was created in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1924 by an Italian immigrant whose kitchen was running short?

Caesar Cardini, by his daughter's account, improvised the dish during a Fourth of July rush that emptied his restaurant's stores, then tossed it at the table for show.

Which tech company's first logo, replaced within a year, showed Isaac Newton sitting under a tree?

Apple co-founder Ron Wayne drew the logo, then sold his share of the company back for $800 just twelve days after it was founded.

Which country has the world's longest coastline, touching the Pacific, the Arctic and one other ocean?

Canada has the longest shore of any country yet only two land borders: a vast one with the United States and a 1.3 km one with Denmark on tiny Hans Island.

Which pharaoh, who reigned for only about nine years, had his tomb discovered by Howard Carter's team in 1922?

Tutankhamun made Carter famous, but a 1934 letter that came to light in 2022 accused the archaeologist of giving a colleague an amulet taken from the tomb.

Whose refusal to give up a bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 sparked a 381-day boycott?

Rosa Parks was not the first to refuse: 15-year-old Claudette Colvin had been arrested on a Montgomery bus for the same act in March of that year.

Which tennis major, held since 1877, is the only one of the four still played on grass courts?

Wimbledon outlasted its rivals on the surface: the US Open gave up grass after 1974 and the Australian Open switched to hard courts in 1988.

Which sport did teacher James Naismith invent in 1891 to occupy a rowdy class kept indoors by winter?

Basketball got its hoops by chance: Naismith asked a janitor for a pair of boxes to use as goals, and the man came back with peach baskets instead.

Which island, the largest in the world, has about 81% of its area buried under a single ice sheet?

Greenland stays bare in its far north, Peary Land, because the air there is too dry to produce the snow an ice sheet needs.

Which cell structures, popularly nicknamed the powerhouse of the cell, carry their own bacteria-like genome?

Mitochondria owe the nickname to a 1957 Scientific American article by Philip Siekevitz, and their DNA sits apart from the main set in the nucleus.

Which pop star spent childhood holiday seasons on a Christmas tree farm before her family moved to Tennessee?

Taylor Swift was 14 when her father transferred his job to Nashville so that she could break into country music.

Which fictional African kingdom in Marvel comics grew rich on a meteorite made of the element vibranium?

Wakanda was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 in July 1966, decades before it reached cinema screens.

Which Danish toy maker took its name in 1934 from a two-word phrase meaning 'play well'?

Lego began in the workshop of carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen, who made wooden toys; its interlocking plastic bricks did not arrive until 1949.

Which teenager from a peasant family was sent with a relief army to break the siege of Orléans in 1429?

Joan of Arc told the future Charles VII that she had come to raise the siege and to lead him to Reims for his coronation, and she saw both happen.

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the oldest, and the only one still largely intact?

The Great Pyramid of Giza was also the tallest human-made structure anywhere for more than 3,700 years, standing about 147 metres when new.

Which noble gas gives off a distinct reddish-orange glow in the tubes of classic advertising signs?

Neon lighting flopped at home: Georges Claude tried to sell his tubes for indoor domestic lighting, but homeowners objected to the colour.

Which Norse explorer is thought to have reached continental America about five centuries before Columbus?

Leif Erikson named the land Vinland, and his camp may match the Norse ruins at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, occupied about 1,000 years ago.

Which Indonesian volcano's 1883 eruption produced the loudest sound in recorded history, heard 4,800 km away?

Krakatoa's blast was heard on Rodrigues, an island near Mauritius, and its pressure wave circled the globe more than three times.

Which film won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, beating Monsters, Inc. to the prize?

Shrek also beat Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius that night, and the American Film Institute made it the first animated film on its yearly top-ten list.

Which spiral galaxy, the nearest major one to the Milky Way, can be seen with the naked eye on moonless nights?

Andromeda is closing on the Milky Way at about 110 kilometres a second, though newer estimates give only an even chance that the two ever collide.

Which Mexican salamander skips metamorphosis, keeping its gills as an adult, and can regenerate whole limbs?

Axolotl limbs, gills and even parts of the eyes and brain can grow back, which is why a large captive population is kept for scientific research.

Which large African mammal has whales, dolphins and porpoises as its closest living relatives?

Hippo ancestors parted from the line leading to whales about 55 million years ago, a kinship first spotted in blood proteins and later backed by DNA.

Which blood type is given in emergencies, before testing is possible, because it is compatible with anyone?

O negative blood suits every patient, so it tends to be overused and, as a consequence, is always in short supply.

Which Hawaiian volcano is sometimes called the world's tallest mountain, counting from its underwater base?

Mauna Kea rises more than 9,000 metres from the ocean floor, more than Everest stands above sea level, and astronomers have ringed its summit with observatories.

Which Italian mathematician's 1202 puzzle about breeding rabbits gave the West the sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8?

Fibonacci used the numbers in his book Liber Abaci to model an idealised rabbit population, but Indian scholars had described them as early as 200 BC.

Which Asian country flies the only national flag that is not a rectangle, formed of two stacked pennants?

Nepal joined the two pennons once flown by rival branches of its ruling dynasty, which also makes the flag the only one taller than it is wide.

Which Apollo 11 astronaut circled the Moon alone in Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the surface?

Michael Collins orbited thirty times and was only the second person to circle the Moon alone, after John Young on Apollo 10.

Which stray from the streets of Moscow became the first animal to orbit Earth, aboard Sputnik 2?

Laika was never expected to survive, because the technology to bring a craft back had not yet been developed; she died of overheating within hours.

Which eight-legged micro-animals, nicknamed water bears, are known to have survived exposure to outer space?

Tardigrades can dry out into a dormant state that resists vacuum, radiation and, for short periods, temperatures as low as −272 °C.

Which sea creature's bright blue, copper-based blood is collected to test medicines for bacterial toxins?

Horseshoe crab blood contains a chemical that detects bacterial endotoxins, and vaccine work during the COVID-19 pandemic put extra strain on the animals.

Which daughter of the poet Lord Byron wrote what is often called the first published computer program?

Ada Lovelace set out how Charles Babbage's proposed analytical engine could calculate Bernoulli numbers; her parents had separated a month after she was born.

Which South American desert is the driest non-polar one on Earth, used to test instruments bound for Mars?

Atacama weather stations have in places never recorded rain, and evidence suggests the desert may have had no significant rainfall from 1570 to 1971.

Which board game did Alfred Butts devise in 1931 after counting how often letters appeared in The New York Times?

Scrabble began as a variation on Lexiko, an earlier word game by Butts, who later traded the manufacturing rights for a royalty on every set sold.

Which soft metal has a melting point just under 30 °C, low enough to turn liquid in a person's hand?

Gallium is one of only four metals that are liquid at or near room temperature, and its melting point is steady enough to serve as a temperature reference.

Which physicist devised a 1935 thought experiment in which a boxed cat is at once both alive and dead?

Erwin Schrödinger meant the cat as a critique of how Bohr and Heisenberg read quantum mechanics, yet it became part of the theory's foundation.

Which Hollywood star co-invented a frequency-hopping guidance system for Allied torpedoes in World War II?

Hedy Lamarr devised it with composer George Antheil to stop the Axis powers jamming the radio signal, and reportedly took up inventing out of boredom.

Which electronic instrument, invented by a Russian physicist in 1920, is played without physical contact?

Theremin players move their hands in the air near the instrument, which grew out of Soviet government-sponsored research into proximity sensors.

Which American composer's 1952 piece tells performers not to play their instruments for all three movements?

John Cage wanted the ambient sounds of the room to become the performance, an idea shaped by his study of Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s.

Which metal, used in light bulb filaments because none melts at a higher temperature, has the symbol W?

Tungsten takes its W from Wolfram, the German name for the element, and it does not melt until 3,422 °C.

Which nerve, the largest in the body unprotected by muscle or bone, tingles when the 'funny bone' is bumped?

Ulnar nerve fibres pass behind the elbow, where a knock sets off an electric shock-like jolt; the nickname is thought to pun on the humerus, the upper arm bone.

On which London street did the Great Fire of 1666 start, in Thomas Farriner's bakery, shortly after midnight?

Pudding Lane lay close to the Thames, yet a strong wind had fanned the bakery blaze into a firestorm before large-scale demolitions were ordered.

Which Martian volcano, about 2.5 times the height of Everest, is the tallest mountain known on any planet?

Olympus Mons grew so high because the crust beneath it stays fixed over a hotspot, so lava kept piling up in one place under weaker gravity.

The stapes, the smallest and lightest bone in the human body, is found in which part of the body?

Middle ear sound travels along a chain of three tiny bones, and the stapes, named for its stirrup shape, is the last link before the inner ear.