Q 01/05

Unlike the South Pole, the geographic North Pole sits on what?

A) Shifting sea ice over deep ocean

B) A permanently frozen island

C) The edge of the Greenland ice sheet

D) A submerged mountain ridge

Answer · why

A) 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...

Q 02/05

What did Russia's Mir submersibles leave on the seabed 4,261 metres beneath the North Pole?

A) A bronze plaque

B) A sonar beacon

C) A titanium flag

D) A granite marker

Answer · why

C) 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 03/05

The sun rises just once a year at the North Pole, around which event?

A) The December solstice

B) The March equinox

C) The June solstice

D) The September equinox

Answer · why

B) 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 04/05

Which Gothic novel of 1818 is framed by an explorer's voyage toward the North Pole?

A) Dracula

B) Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

C) Frankenstein

D) The Picture of Dorian Gray

Answer · why

C) 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...

Q 05/05

Which American sponsored the 1926 airship flight that first verifiably reached the North Pole?

A) Lincoln Ellsworth

B) William Randolph Hearst

C) Vincent Astor

D) John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Answer · why

A) Lincoln Ellsworth

Ellsworth flew aboard the Norge with Amundsen and Umberto Nobile on 12 May 1926; the same trio's Italian designer would crash the airship Italia two y...