60 Fun Facts About Bahamas

Nassau, the capital and largest city of the Bahamas, sits on which island?

Nassau sits on New Providence, an island of only about 80 square miles whose sheltered harbour made it the colony's centre from the late 1600s onward.

Roughly how many islands make up the Bahamas?

The Bahamas counts roughly 700 islands plus some 2,400 smaller cays, scattered over about 100,000 square miles of ocean between Florida and Cuba.

Roughly how many of the Bahamas' islands are actually inhabited?

Only about 30 of the Bahamas' islands are inhabited; the chain spans some 500 miles of ocean yet has just 3,860 square miles of land, less than Connecticut.

In which year did the Bahamas become an independent nation?

The Bahamas became independent from Britain in 1973 as a Commonwealth realm, keeping the British monarch as head of state, represented locally by a governor-general.

On what date does the Bahamas celebrate Independence Day?

Independence Day is July 10: at midnight on that date the Union Jack was lowered at Clifford Park in Nassau and the Bahamian flag raised for the first time.

What did the Lucayans call the island Columbus named San Salvador in 1492?

The Lucayans called it Guanahaní; which modern island that was is debated, and Watlings Island was renamed San Salvador in 1925 on the strength of the traditional identification.

Which rodent is the Bahamas' only native land mammal?

The hutia, a cat-sized rodent, is the Bahamas' only native land mammal; Geocapromys ingrahami survived only on East Plana Cay before being moved to other cays.

Tourist guides often trace the name 'Bahamas' to Spanish words meaning what?

'Shallow sea' is the usual gloss: guides derive 'Bahamas' from the Spanish 'baja mar', though scholars dispute the claim and some prefer a Lucayan origin for the name.

The Eleutheran Adventurers, the Bahamas' first permanent English settlers, arrived from where?

The Eleutheran Adventurers sailed from Bermuda in 1648, Puritans led by William Sayle who wanted to worship as they chose; the colony's first Africans came with them from Bermuda.

The Puritan settlers named their new island Eleuthera, which comes from the Greek word for what?

Eleuthera comes from the Greek eleutheria, 'Free', chosen by Puritan settlers who had left their old colony in 1648 to escape religious control.

Which former privateer arrived at Nassau in 1718 as governor and ended the pirates' republic?

Woodes Rogers reached Nassau in July 1718 carrying a royal pardon for pirates who submitted; his first term ruined him financially, yet he was sent back for a second term in 1728 and died in office.

Which marooned sailor, the model for Robinson Crusoe, did the Bahamas' future governor rescue in 1709?

Alexander Selkirk was taken off Juan Fernández Island in February 1709 by a privateering expedition that went on to circle the globe and double its investors' money; its commander later governed the Bahamas.

Which pirate took the 1718 pardon at Nassau and was then commissioned to hunt his former comrades?

Benjamin Hornigold took the 1718 pardon and was sent out by the new governor to hunt his old comrades; most of the pirates he brought back were hanged in Nassau on 12 December 1718, though Charles Vane eluded him.

Nassau was renamed in 1695 to honour King William III. What had the settlement been called before that?

The original town, named for Charles II, had been burned to the ground by the Spanish in 1684; Governor Nicholas Trott rebuilt it and picked a name from William's House of Nassau.

What was the official motto of the colonial Bahamas until independence?

'Piracy expelled, commerce restored' translates the Latin 'Expulsis piratis restituta commercia', adopted after the 1718 clean-up of Nassau; the national coat of arms replaced it with 'Forward, Upward, Onward, Together'.

Who were the 7,300 people Britain resettled in the Bahamas after the American Revolution?

They were Loyalists and their slaves, evacuated mainly from New York, Florida and the Carolinas; about 2,000 came from New York alone, and the newcomers set up cotton plantations and quickly became a political force in Nassau.

During the American Civil War the Bahamas briefly boomed. What was the source of the money?

Nassau was a natural depot: fast ships slipped cotton out of Southern ports and ran guns and luxuries back in past the Union blockade.

Which former British king was appointed Governor of the Bahamas in August 1940?

Edward VIII, by then the Duke of Windsor, governed from 1940 to 1945; he disliked the post and called the islands 'a third-class British colony', though he was praised locally for anti-poverty efforts.

Who served as the first prime minister of an independent Bahamas, holding office from 1973 to 1992?

Lynden Pindling, the 'Father of the Nation', led the Bahamas to majority rule in 1967 and then to independence; Nassau's international airport was renamed for him in 2006.

Who was appointed the first governor-general of the Bahamas shortly after independence?

Sir Milo Butler, a veteran campaigner against the white merchant establishment, became the first Bahamian-born governor-general weeks after independence and served as the monarch's representative until his death in 1979.

What was the nickname of the white merchant elite behind the United Bahamian Party?

'The Bay Street Boys' took their name from Nassau's main commercial street; the white merchant clique ran the colony until the Progressive Liberal Party's 1967 election win brought majority rule.

The Bahamian currency is held at a fixed one-to-one exchange rate with which foreign currency?

The US dollar circulates alongside the Bahamian dollar, which is pegged to it at par; shops accept either, and change often comes back as a mix of the two.

Which of these taxes does the Bahamian government NOT levy?

The treasury lives on tariffs, VAT, licence fees and property and stamp duties instead, which is a big part of why the country became an offshore finance hub.

What colour is the triangle at the hoist of the Bahamian flag?

The hoist triangle is Black, standing for the vigour and force of a united people; the gold stripe represents the sun and the land's resources, the aquamarine stripes the surrounding sea.

Which two animals support the shield on the Bahamian coat of arms?

'A marlin and a flamingo' support the shield: the blue marlin is the Bahamas' national fish and the flamingo its national bird, standing for the sea and the land of the islands.

Which ship is depicted on the shield of the Bahamian coat of arms?

The Santa María, Columbus's flagship, sails across the shield on wavy blue-and-silver waves beneath a rising golden sun, recalling his 1492 landfall in the islands.

What is the national flower of the Bahamas?

Yellow elder (Tecoma stans), a shrub with trumpet-shaped yellow flowers that bloom most of the year, was chosen partly because no other country had already claimed it as a national flower.

Which extremely dense hardwood, once prized for ship bearings, is the national tree of the Bahamas?

Lignum vitae is so dense it sinks in water, and its self-lubricating wood was turned into bearings for ship propeller shafts; the Bahamas adopted it as its national tree.

What is the highest point in the Bahamas, rising only 64 metres on Cat Island?

Mount Alvernia, also called Como Hill, is topped by a small stone hermitage built by hand by the architect-monk Father Jerome, born John Hawes; most Bahamian ridges rise no more than 45 metres.

Which Bahamian island has more land area than all the country's other islands combined?

Andros, really three main islands and hundreds of cays, covers about 2,300 square miles, more than half the country's land area, and holds the world's densest concentration of blue holes.

What is the deep-water channel west of Nassau used by the US and UK for submarine research called?

The Tongue of the Ocean plunges to around 2,000 metres right beside banks that are barely knee-deep, which is why the US Navy's AUTEC range tests submarines and sonar there.

Uninhabited Big Major Cay is famous for a beach populated by a colony of feral, swimming what?

Nobody is sure how they got there; sailors, shipwrecks and a planned barbecue have all been blamed, and the pigs now paddle out to greet tour boats for food.

Dean's Blue Hole, a 202-metre-deep sinkhole, lies off which Bahamian island?

Dean's Blue Hole sits in a sheltered bay west of Clarence Town on Long Island and has hosted freediving world championships because divers can drop straight down from a sandy beach.

The final scene of The Silence of the Lambs was filmed on which Bahamian island, the closest to the US?

Bimini, about 50 miles off Florida, hosted the film's closing phone-call scene; it was also Ernest Hemingway's big-game fishing base in the 1930s and was linked by Ponce de León's chroniclers to the Fountain of Youth.

Freeport, the second-largest city in the Bahamas, is a free-trade zone on which island?

It exists because of the 1955 Hawksbill Creek Agreement, under which financier Wallace Groves got 50,000 acres of pine and swamp and a promise of no taxes, now extended to 2054.

What were Hurricane Dorian's peak sustained winds over the Bahamas in 2019?

Dorian's 185 mph sustained winds matched the 1935 Labor Day hurricane as the strongest Atlantic landfall recorded up to then; it struck the Abacos on 1 September 2019 and caused about $3.4 billion in damage.

Which South African hotelier reopened the Paradise Island resort as Atlantis in 1998?

Sol Kerzner's Sun International bought the Paradise Island resort in 1994 and relaunched it as Atlantis, opening the Royal Towers in 1998; the property had earlier passed from Donald Trump's Resorts International to Merv Griffin.

Nassau's $4 billion Baha Mar resort, opened in 2017, was financed mainly by a bank from which country?

The Export-Import Bank of China lent about $2.45 billion for Baha Mar, and state-owned China Construction America built it; after years of delays it opened in April 2017 with only one hotel, the Grand Hyatt.

On which Bahamian island was the disastrous 2017 Fyre Festival supposed to take place?

The site was on Great Exuma; guests promised luxury villas found disaster-relief tents and cheese sandwiches, and organiser Billy McFarland was later sentenced to six years for wire fraud.

Which 1965 James Bond film sends 007 to Nassau to track down SPECTRE's Emilio Largo?

Thunderball's underwater battle scenes were shot in Bahamian waters off Nassau, and actor Earl Cameron plays Bond's local contact Pinder; Largo's yacht, the Disco Volante, was a converted hydrofoil.

For which film did Sidney Poitier become the first Black Best Actor Oscar winner in 1964?

Lilies of the Field, in which he plays a handyman building a chapel for German nuns, won Poitier the 1964 Oscar, the first for a Bahamian; from 1997 to 2007 he was the Bahamas' ambassador to Japan.

In which US city was Sidney Poitier born to visiting Bahamian parents?

Poitier was born in Miami in February 1927 while his parents were there selling tomatoes; he arrived two months premature, the youngest of seven children, and the family soon returned to their farm on Cat Island.

Junkanoo, the Bahamas' costumed street parade, is traditionally held on New Year's Day and which other date?

Boxing Day, 26 December, brings the first of the two great Junkanoo parades; the 'rush' through Nassau moves to the beat of goatskin drums, cowbells and whistles, with the second parade on New Year's Day.

Which Bahamian folk music is played on a carpenter's saw, a goatskin drum and an accordion?

Rake-and-scrape is the Bahamas' home-grown folk music: a carpenter's saw bent and scraped with a screwdriver keeps the rhythm beside a goombay drum and an accordion, and Cat Island hosts an annual festival for it.

Which Bahamian sprinter won the women's 400 metres at both the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Olympics?

Shaunae Miller-Uibo's Rio win came with a desperate dive across the line to beat Allyson Felix; in Tokyo she won by nearly a second in 48.36 seconds.

Which Bahamian won the 400 metres at the 2019 Worlds and then Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020?

Steven Gardiner ran a 43.48-second national record in Doha to beat Colombia's Anthony Zambrano and American Fred Kerley, then took the Tokyo title in 43.85 seconds.

Durward Knowles won Olympic gold for the Bahamas at Tokyo 1964. In which sport?

He took the Star class with Cecil Cooke, having sailed for Britain in 1948; in 2016 he became the oldest living Olympic champion.

The Bahamas has won more Olympic medals than any other country whose population is below what figure?

'One million' is the threshold: with about 400,000 people the Bahamas has more Olympic medals than any other country under that population; it first competed in 1952 and has missed only the boycotted 1980 Games since.

The Bahamas Bowl, played in Nassau since 2014, is a postseason game in which sport?

College football's Bahamas Bowl has been an NCAA Division I bowl game at Nassau's Thomas Robinson Stadium since 2014; the inaugural game saw Western Kentucky beat Central Michigan 49-48.

The Bahamas bans fishing for the Nassau grouper during which spawning months?

The closed season runs December to February, when the fish gathers in huge winter spawning aggregations that made it easy to wipe out; the US bans taking Nassau grouper altogether, and the Cayman Islands protect its spawning sites.

In Bahamian cooking, what is 'switcha'?

A lime-based lemonade, switcha is made with native limes, sugar and water and is the everyday soft drink to go with conch fritters; Kalik is the local beer for grown-ups.

What is Bahamian souse called when the chicken is swapped for the day's catch?

Boiled fish, or 'boil fish', is the seafood version of souse, the catch simmered with lime, onion and potato; it is a classic breakfast dish, typically served with johnnycake or grits.

The Lucayans, the original inhabitants of the Bahamas, called themselves Lukku-Cairi. What did it mean?

They had moved up from Hispaniola and Cuba between AD 500 and 800; 'Lucayan' is simply the English version of the Spanish rendering of their own name.

Spanish slave raids had completely emptied the Bahamas of its Lucayan population by roughly which year?

When the Spanish went back in 1520 to ship the last of them to Hispaniola they could find only eleven people, and the islands stayed essentially deserted until 1648.

Which company has run Great Inagua's saltworks in the Bahamas since the 1950s?

Morton Salt took over the Inagua saltworks in 1954; its solar evaporation pans cover thousands of acres on an island otherwise given over largely to the Inagua National Park.

Which US brig was sailed to Nassau after an 1841 shipboard slave revolt?

The Creole, carrying 135 enslaved people from Virginia to New Orleans, was seized by Madison Washington's rebels in November 1841; British officials at Nassau freed them, while the Comet, Encomium and Hermosa were earlier slave ships wrecked off Abaco.

Escaped African Seminoles from Florida founded which village on Andros Island in the 1820s?

Red Bays, on the island's northwest coast, was settled by Seminoles of African descent who fled Florida by canoe in the 1820s; their descendants keep Seminole traditions of basket making and grave marking.

Who unseated Lynden Pindling to become prime minister in 1992?

Hubert Ingraham's FNM party ended 25 years of PLP rule in August 1992; he won again in 1997, lost to Perry Christie's PLP in 2002 and returned for a third term in 2007.

What is the elected lower house of the Bahamian parliament called?

The House of Assembly is the elected lower chamber of the Bahamas' bicameral parliament, first summoned in 1729; it sits in Nassau's Parliament Square beside an appointed Senate, and the prime minister must command its majority.

Which regional bloc is the Bahamas a full member of, while staying out of its single market?

The Bahamas joined CARICOM in 1983 as a full member but never signed up to the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, keeping its own immigration and labour rules.