Q 01/05

Paricutin stunned the world in 1943 by bursting out of which unlikely spot in western Mexico?

A) A cornfield

B) A town plaza

C) A lake bed

D) A pine forest

Answer · why

A) A cornfield

A cornfield belonging to Dionisio Pulido split open on 20 February 1943, and a day later a smoking mound about 50 metres high stood where he had been ...

Q 02/05

No one was killed by Paricutin's molten rock, but what side effect of the eruption killed three people?

A) Poisonous gas

B) Lightning

C) Mudslides

D) Falling trees

Answer · why

B) Lightning

Lightning sparked inside the eruption's own debris clouds struck three people, the only deaths in nine years of activity.

Q 03/05

Paricutin, the volcano that appeared in Mexico in 1943, takes its name from what?

A) An Aztec fire god

B) The farmer who owned it

C) A village it buried

D) A Spanish missionary

Answer · why

C) A village it buried

A village it buried gave the volcano its name: the settlement of Paricutin, once home to 733 people, was emptied in June 1943 and has vanished complet...

Q 04/05

Paricutin is the only volcano on a famous 1997 list of seven natural wonders, alongside which waterfall?

A) Niagara Falls

B) Yosemite Falls

C) Iguazu Falls

D) Victoria Falls

Answer · why

D) Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls shares the list with Paricutin, the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef, and the volcano is the only one of the seven that people w...

Q 05/05

Which building still pokes above the lava that Paricutin poured over the town of San Juan Parangaricutiro?

A) The church

B) The town hall

C) The schoolhouse

D) The bullring

Answer · why

A) The church

The church kept its tower and altar clear of the hardened flow, and the half-swallowed ruin is still a pilgrimage site where visitors leave candles an...