North Pole Trivia
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This North Pole trivia quiz has 41 free questions with answers and covers the real place and the legend. The real one is a spot in the middle of the Arctic Ocean with no land, four kilometres of water below the ice, one sunrise and one sunset a year, no time zone and no permanent residents. The quiz follows the race to reach it: Nansen freezing his ship into the pack, Andrée's doomed balloon, Peary and Cook's rival claims, Amundsen's airship, the first snowmobiles, submarines, icebreakers and women to arrive, and the titanium Russian flag on the seabed. The legend gets its due too: how Santa came to live there, the Canadian postcode H0H 0H0, the Alaskan town of North Pole with its candy-cane streetlights, Finland's rival claim at Rovaniemi, NORAD's Santa tracker and the films that put Buddy the Elf and the Polar Express on the ice. Wildlife rounds it out: polar bears, reindeer and why there are no penguins. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 41 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Unlike the South Pole, the geographic North Pole sits on what?
Shifting sea ice over deep ocean
Shifting sea ice over deep ocean, which is why the North Pole is much warmer than the South Pole: the ocean stores heat, while Antarctica is high, icy land.
Q 02What did Russia's Mir submersibles leave on the seabed 4,261 metres beneath the North Pole?
A titanium flag
A titanium flag, in August 2007; Canada's foreign minister scoffed, 'This isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and just plant flags.'
Q 03The sun rises just once a year at the North Pole, around which event?
The March equinox
The March equinox brings the Pole's one sunrise and the September equinox its one sunset, so each 'day' and 'night' there lasts about six months.
Q 04Which Gothic novel of 1818 is framed by an explorer's voyage toward the North Pole?
Frankenstein
Frankenstein: Victor tells his tale to the explorer Robert Walton, and the book ends with the creature leaping onto an ice raft and vanishing into the dark.
Q 05Which American explorer's claim to have reached the North Pole on 6 April 1909 remains disputed?
Robert Peary
Robert Peary took no one trained in navigation on his final dash, while rival Frederick Cook claimed to have got there a year earlier.
Q 06Which African-American explorer made seven Arctic expeditions, including the disputed 1909 push for the North Pole?
Matthew Henson
Matthew Henson's recognition came decades late: Congress gave him a medal in 1944, and in 1988 he was reburied at Arlington.
Q 07The first surface expedition confirmed to reach the North Pole, in April 1968, travelled by what?
Snowmobile
Snowmobile: insurance salesman Ralph Plaisted's party rode Ski-Doos, and a US Air Force weather plane confirmed their position at the Pole.
Q 08Which vessel first reached the North Pole, passing beneath it on 3 August 1958?
USS Nautilus
USS Nautilus slipped beneath the Pole on 3 August 1958, and within days President Eisenhower was handing out awards to its commander and crew.
Q 09Which star appears almost motionless overhead for anyone standing at 90 degrees north?
Polaris
Polaris lines up almost exactly with Earth's axis, so it barely moves while the other stars wheel around it, which made it a fixed point for navigators.
Q 10What did Fridtjof Nansen plan to do with his ship Fram to reach the North Pole?
Let the ice carry it
Let the ice carry it: Fram froze into the pack in 1893 and drifted for three years, and when it fell short Nansen set off for the Pole with dog sledges.
Q 11Which polar pioneer vanished in 1928 while flying to search for the airship Italia's crew?
Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen took off from Tromsø on 18 June 1928 in a Latham 47 flying boat to search for Nobile's crew; the plane disappeared over the Barents Sea, and only a float and a fuel tank were ever recovered.
Q 12Why do many airliners between North America and Asia fly over the North Pole?
It shortens the trip
It shortens the trip: the shortest path between the continents curves toward the Pole, though airlines could use it only once Russia opened its airspace after the Cold War.
Q 13What time zone is used at the North Pole?
Whatever suits the expedition
Q 21The idea that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole is often credited to which 19th-century illustrator?
Thomas Nast
Thomas Nast: his drawings for Harper's Weekly became the basis for the modern image of Santa that most people picture today.
Q 22What postal code has Canada Post assigned to Santa Claus at the North Pole?
H0H 0H0
H0H 0H0 spells Santa's 'Ho ho ho', and the replies began decades ago, when postal employees started answering children's letters themselves.
Q 23About how far is the town of North Pole, Alaska, from the actual North Pole?
About 1,700 miles
About 1,700 miles: the town near Fairbanks even sits about 125 miles south of the Arctic Circle, despite its street names and Santa Claus House.
Whatever suits the expedition: all lines of longitude meet at the Pole, so no time zone applies and teams keep whichever time is convenient.
Q 14Which explorer first located the north magnetic pole in 1831?
James Clark Ross
James Clark Ross located the north magnetic pole in northern Canada in 1831, but the pole has since drifted far from that spot.
Q 15The Arctic Ocean, which surrounds the North Pole, ranks how among the world's five oceans by size?
Smallest
Smallest: and so many rivers pour into it that its surface water is relatively fresh for an ocean.
Q 16What makes the Arctic Circle creep north by about 15 metres a year?
Changes in Earth's axial tilt
Changes in Earth's axial tilt: the tilt is slowly shrinking, but in about 10,000 years it will start growing again and push the circle back south.
Q 17The Arctic Circle runs across the small island of Grímsey, which belongs to which country?
Iceland
Iceland: the circle is edging off the island, so the eight-tonne stone sphere that marks it was designed to be moved to follow the line.
Q 18What colour is a polar bear's skin beneath its fur?
Black
Black: the skin soaks up heat, while the hollow guard hairs are actually colourless and only look white because they scatter light.
Q 19Which North Atlantic seabird was the first to be called 'penguin'?
Great auk
Great auk: explorers later passed the name to southern birds that looked like it, and the great auk itself was hunted to extinction in the 1840s.
Q 20Reindeer, Santa's supposed sleigh-pullers, are unique among deer in what way?
Females may grow antlers
Females may grow antlers, and many cows keep theirs long after the big bulls shed, so the antlered reindeer still around in late winter are mostly cows and young bulls.
Q 24Which actor plays Buddy, the human raised by elves at the North Pole, in the 2003 film Elf?
Will Ferrell
Will Ferrell: the film used forced-perspective camera tricks to make him look giant beside the elves who raised him.
Q 25Finland's Santa Claus Village sits on the Arctic Circle near which city?
Rovaniemi
Rovaniemi: the first building on that stretch of the Arctic Circle was a cottage put up for Eleanor Roosevelt's visit in 1950, and Santa's village grew around the spot.
Q 26Which retailer's 1955 Santa hotline ad is credited with starting NORAD's annual Santa tracking?
Sears
Sears: children dialling the ad's number reportedly reached Colonel Harry Shoup's air-defence hotline instead, and he played along.
Q 27Who plays Santa in the 2003 film Elf?
Ed Asner
Ed Asner played Santa, and director Jon Favreau styled Buddy's North Pole as a homage to the Rankin/Bass stop-motion Christmas specials.
Q 28Which actor played multiple roles, including the conductor, in The Polar Express (2004)?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks: motion capture let him also play the boy, the boy's father, the hobo and Santa.
Q 29Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 as a promotional booklet for which department store chain?
Montgomery Ward
Robert L. May wrote the booklet for Montgomery Ward, which handed out more than 2 million copies in the first year, and his brother-in-law Johnny Marks later turned it into a hit song.
Q 30Who accompanied Frederick Cook on his disputed April 1908 journey to the North Pole?
Two Inuit men, Ahwelah and Etukishook
Cook travelled with two Inuit men, Ahwelah and Etukishook, who later said they had never lost sight of land; his claim to have climbed Denali in 1906 was also debunked.