Q 01/05

What do surfers rub onto the deck of a surfboard to stop their feet slipping?

A) Wax

B) Resin

C) Rosin

D) Chalk

Answer · why

A) Wax

Wax is credited to Al Gallant, a California teenager who in 1935 noticed his feet sticking to his mother's freshly waxed floor and took her bottle of ...

Q 02/05

Fishermen in which country still ride waves ashore on reed boats called caballitos de totora?

A) Peru

B) Chile

C) Mexico

D) Colombia

Answer · why

A) Peru

Peru's north-coast fishermen sit astride the bundled reeds like riders, hence the name 'little reed horses'; Moche and Chimú pottery shows the same bo...

Q 03/05

The first written descriptions of Hawaiian surfing come from the 1779 journals of which explorer's final voyage?

A) James Cook

B) George Vancouver

C) Comte de La Pérouse

D) William Bligh

Answer · why

A) James Cook

James Cook's officers wrote them at Kealakekua Bay within weeks of his death there: ship's surgeon David Samwell and Lieutenant James King both descri...

Q 04/05

Which author tried surfing at Waikiki and wrote about it in the 1907 essay 'A Royal Sport'?

A) Mark Twain

B) Robert Louis Stevenson

C) Herman Melville

D) Jack London

Answer · why

D) Jack London

Jack London stayed out four hours on his second day and burned the backs of his legs so badly that he could not walk; he wrote the essay in bed.

Q 05/05

In which sport did Duke Kahanamoku win his Olympic gold medals?

A) Water polo

B) Diving

C) Swimming

D) Rowing

Answer · why

C) Swimming

Swimming made his name in 1911, when he beat the 100-yard world record by 4.6 seconds in Honolulu Harbor; disbelieving officials refused to recognise ...