50 Fun Facts About Unicorn

What is a unicorn's defining feature?

European art has shown it for a thousand years as a white horse- or goat-like beast with cloven hooves and sometimes a goat's beard.

In medieval legend, who was the only person able to capture a unicorn?

The Physiologus turned this into an allegory of the Incarnation, with the maiden standing for the Virgin Mary.

Which real animal's tusk was often sold as a 'unicorn horn' in medieval and Renaissance Europe?

Danish physician Ole Worm worked out the truth in 1638; fake horn powder was still sold in 1741.

What was the medieval name for a unicorn's horn and the substance it was made of?

It was believed to purify poisoned water and cure disease, and cups made of it were gifts for kings.

Which Danish physician determined in 1638 that alleged unicorn horns were really whale tusks?

Sir Thomas Browne then took the belief apart at length in his 1646 Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

Which ancient Greek writer gave the earliest description of the unicorn, in a book about India?

He described wild asses with a horn a cubit and a half long, coloured white, red and black, whose meat was too bitter to eat.

Greek natural historians such as Pliny believed unicorns really lived in which distant land?

Unicorns never appear in Greek mythology, only in supposedly factual natural histories.

Which traveller described 'unicorns' as ugly, mud-wallowing brutes 'scarcely smaller than elephants'?

He complained they were 'not at all such as we describe them' when we say virgins can capture them.

What is the Hebrew Bible word that the King James Version translated as 'unicorn'?

It appears nine times; modern scholars think it meant the aurochs, a wild ox.

Which late-antique bestiary forerunner popularised the unicorn-and-maiden allegory?

As soon as the unicorn sees the maiden it lays its head in her lap and falls asleep.

The unicorn is the national animal of which country?

It has been a Scottish heraldic symbol since the 12th century and was seen as the natural enemy of England's lion.

Since 1707, the royal arms of the United Kingdom have been supported by a unicorn and what other animal?

In the Scottish version the unicorn is on the left and wears a crown.

In heraldry, the unicorn is usually shown wearing a collar with what attached?

The broken chain suggests it cannot truly be tamed; the beast is a horse with cloven hooves, a beard and a lion's tail.

Scottish gold coins of the 15th and 16th centuries bearing the beast were called what?

Carved unicorns on Mercat crosses also marked a settlement as a royal burgh.

The seven late-Gothic tapestries called The Hunt of the Unicorn hang in which museum?

John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought them in 1922 for about a million dollars and gave them to the Met.

Where were The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries rediscovered in the 1850s?

They had been recorded in 1680 in the Paris home of the Rochefoucauld family.

The six 'Lady and the Unicorn' tapestries in Paris depict what?

They hang in the Musée de Cluny; the sixth is captioned 'A mon seul desir'.

Facsimiles of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries were woven for which Scottish royal residence?

They replaced a set recorded there in a 16th-century inventory.

Which Renaissance artist's notebooks say the unicorn 'forgets its ferocity' in a maiden's lap?

Shakespeare's Timon of Athens hints at another method: goad it into charging a tree so its horn sticks fast.

The Arctic whale's famous spiral tusk is actually what?

It grows 1.5 to 3 metres long, mainly in males, and may sense water salinity.

What is the scientific name of the tusked Arctic whale, which nods to its single tooth and horn?

It is the only member of its genus and lives in the Arctic waters of Canada, Greenland and Russia.

Elasmotherium, the extinct 'Siberian unicorn', was what kind of animal?

It weighed up to five tonnes and survived until at least 39,000 years ago; no horn has ever been found.

What did a 2021 study conclude about the huge horn often drawn on Elasmotherium?

The skull dome's outer wall was too thin and had no attachment points for such a horn.

The qilin, sometimes called the Chinese unicorn, is said to appear at the arrival or death of what?

It is a hooved chimerical creature and part of a wider family of one-horned 'lin' beasts.

The karkadann of Persian and Arabic legend was originally based on which real animal?

Like its European cousin it could be subdued by virgins, and the word still means rhinoceros in Persian and Arabic.

A unicorn-like creature is the most common image on which Bronze Age civilisation's seals?

It has a cow-like body and a curved horn, and always faces a mysterious two-tiered object.

In business, a 'unicorn' is a private startup valued at more than how much?

Companies past $10 billion are 'decacorns'; CB Insights counted 1,248 unicorns in May 2024.

Which venture capitalist coined the business term 'unicorn' in 2013?

Her TechCrunch article identified 39 such companies at the time.

Who wrote the 1968 novel The Last Unicorn?

It has sold more than six million copies and been translated into at least 25 languages.

In The Last Unicorn, what malevolent creature herded the other unicorns to the ends of the earth?

The unicorn learns of her fate from two hunters and a butterfly.

Which studio duo directed the 1982 animated film of The Last Unicorn?

Voices included Mia Farrow, Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Angela Lansbury and Christopher Lee, with songs by the band America.

What is the name of the bumbling magician who travels with the unicorn in The Last Unicorn?

He accidentally brings a tree to life while tied to it by Captain Cully's bandits.

In Ridley Scott's 1985 film Legend, what does the Lord of Darkness want from the unicorns?

Tim Curry played Darkness opposite Tom Cruise; the goblin Blix uses innocence as bait.

In Despicable Me 3, Agnes gets a pet she believes is a unicorn. What is it really?

She names him Lucky, and keeps him even after Gru breaks the news.

In the 2005 viral short Charlie the Unicorn, where do the two other unicorns take Charlie?

The trip ends with Charlie waking up minus a kidney.

Who created Charlie the Unicorn, originally as a birthday present for their mother?

It was first uploaded to Newgrounds before spreading on YouTube and spawning four sequels.

Which toy company launched My Little Pony in 1982?

It grew out of the 1981 My Pretty Pony figurine designed by Bonnie Zacherle.

In the Generation Five My Little Pony line, which character is a unicorn?

Sunny and Hitch are earth ponies; Pipp and Zipp are pegasus siblings.

Besides the rainbow flag, the unicorn has become which group's second-best-known symbol?

Rainbows and unicorns have been linked since the Victorian era, and the rainbow flag dates to 1978.

Whose 6th-century unicorn description was based on bronze figures in the palace of Ethiopia's king?

He wrote that when cornered the beast leaps off a precipice and lands on its horn unhurt.

Powdered 'unicorn horn' was still sold in Europe as medicine as late as which year?

It was thought to cure disease and detect poison; the Danish kings even had a unicorn-horn throne.

Which royal family had a throne made from 'unicorn horn'?

The Austrian imperial crown and sceptre and Charles the Bold's sword hilt also used narwhal ivory.

Which animated series is credited with helping the unicorn's big 21st-century comeback in toys and media?

Unicorn Academy is another; unicorn birthday parties and unicorn-horn headbands followed.

In Scotland, carved unicorns on the pillars of Mercat crosses signalled that a settlement was what?

Nobles such as the Earl of Kinnoull were specially permitted to add the unicorn to their arms as an augmentation of honour.

According to Shakespeare scholars, hunters caught unicorns by tricking them into charging into what?

The beast embedded its horn in the trunk; Timon of Athens alludes to the trick with 'make thine own self the conquest of thy fury'.

Which extinct animal do scholars think the Bible's re'em, translated as 'unicorn' in the King James Version, really was?

Mesopotamian art showed the great wild bull in profile with only one horn visible, and the Assyrian cognate rimu meant strength.

Which Scottish family's crest bears a unicorn head?

In the UK royal arms as used in Scotland, the unicorn takes the left-hand position and wears a crown.

Who created the rainbow flag in 1978, the symbol to which the unicorn is second in queer iconography?

Unicorns had been linked with rainbows since the Victorian era, one theory for how they became a queer icon.

Which ancient writer listed the oryx and the so-called 'Indian ass' as one-horned animals, following Ctesias?

Strabo went further, claiming the Caucasus held one-horned horses with stag-like heads.

Besides My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, which animated series is cited for the creature's 21st-century comeback?

Google Ngram data also show a rise in unicorn references in English-language books over the same period.