Q 01/05

Long summer daylight helps farmers in which US state grow giant cabbages weighing more than 100 pounds?

A) Alaska

B) Montana

C) Maine

D) Minnesota

Answer · why

A) Alaska

Alaska's exceptionally long summer days push some vegetables to world-record sizes. Its state fair has run a giant cabbage contest since 1941, when th...

Q 02/05

Which sport is played in Fairbanks every June at the Midnight Sun Game, which has never used artificial lights?

A) Basketball

B) Baseball

C) Soccer

D) Ice hockey

Answer · why

B) Baseball

Baseball's Midnight Sun Game starts at about 10:30 at night and finishes around 1:30 the next morning. The first one was played in 1906.

Q 03/05

For roughly how long does the Sun stay above the horizon without setting at the North Pole each year?

A) Two days

B) Two weeks

C) Two months

D) Six months

Answer · why

D) Six months

Six months of daylight at the North Pole are followed by roughly as long a spell of darkness. Through the bright half of the year, the Sun circles the...

Q 04/05

What name is given to the midnight sun's winter opposite, which lasts from late October to mid-February in Longyearbyen?

A) Solar minimum

B) Blue hour

C) Polar night

D) Black frost

Answer · why

C) Polar night

Polar night ends with a party in the Arctic town of Inuvik, whose Sunrise Festival greets the Sun's return after about thirty days below the horizon.

Q 05/05

Which Russian city marks its bright June evenings with the White Nights Festival and a tall ship with scarlet sails?

A) Nizhny Novgorod

B) Yekaterinburg

C) St Petersburg

D) Vladivostok

Answer · why

C) St Petersburg

St Petersburg lies south of the Arctic Circle, so the Sun does set, but in late June the sky never gets fully dark. The scarlet-sailed ship salutes th...