50 Fun Facts About Trivia for Kids

Which is the fastest land animal?

The cheetah can hit about 100 km/h in short bursts, but only for a few hundred metres before it must stop and cool down.

Which is the largest animal known to have ever lived?

Some blue whales reach around 30 metres long, and even the biggest dinosaurs were lighter than a full-grown one.

Which is the tallest land animal on Earth?

A giraffe's neck alone can be about 2 metres long, yet it has only seven neck bones, the same number as a human.

Which is the largest planet in the Solar System?

Jupiter is so big that more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside it, and its Great Red Spot is a storm wider than our whole planet.

Which planet is closest to the Sun?

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, circling it once every 88 Earth days, and it has almost no atmosphere to hold on to heat.

Which planet is nicknamed the Red Planet?

Mars looks red because its dusty surface is coated in iron oxide, the same rust that forms on an old bike.

Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?

Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon on 20 July 1969, and his footprints are probably still there because the Moon has no wind or rain to wipe them away.

Which is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level?

Mount Everest, 8,849 metres high, sits on the border of Nepal and China and keeps growing a few millimetres a year as the plates push together.

Which is the largest and deepest ocean on Earth?

The Pacific covers about a third of the planet's surface, more than all the land on Earth put together, and holds the deepest spot, the Mariana Trench.

Which is the largest hot desert in the world?

The Sahara stretches across northern Africa and is almost as big as the whole United States; only the icy deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic are larger.

Which continent is, on average, the coldest, driest and windiest?

Antarctica recorded the coldest air temperature ever measured, about minus 89 degrees Celsius at Vostok Station in 1983, and nobody lives there permanently apart from visiting scientists.

What is a baby kangaroo called?

A baby kangaroo is called a joey; a newborn is only about the size of a jelly bean when it climbs into its mother's pouch to finish growing.

How many hearts does an octopus have?

An octopus has three hearts: one pumps blood around the body while the other two push it through the gills, and its blood is blue rather than red.

Roughly how many bones does an adult human have?

An adult has 206 bones; babies are born with around 270, but many of them fuse together as a child grows.

How many keys does a modern piano have?

A modern piano has 88 keys, 52 white and 36 black, and a full-size piano has more than 200 strings inside it.

How many squares are on a chessboard?

A chessboard has 64 squares, 8 rows by 8 columns, and each player starts with 16 pieces lined up on the two rows nearest them.

In basketball, how high off the floor is the top of the rim?

The rim is 10 feet (about 3 metres) high, unchanged since James Naismith nailed peach baskets to a gym balcony in 1891.

How many interlocking rings are on the Olympic flag?

The five rings are blue, yellow, black, green and red, and they stand for the inhabited continents of the world joined together.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from the people of which country?

France gave the statue, dedicated in 1886; its inner metal frame was built by Gustave Eiffel, whose company later built the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Which Italian city is home to a famous bell tower with a nearly four-degree lean?

The Leaning Tower of Pisa started tilting while it was being built in the 1100s, because the soft ground beneath could not hold it straight.

Which are the only mammals capable of true, sustained flight?

Bats flap their wings and truly fly, while flying squirrels and sugar gliders can only glide; many bats find their way in the dark using echoes.

Which is the largest living land animal?

The African elephant is the biggest land animal; a full-grown male can stand over 3 metres at the shoulder and eat more than 100 kilograms of plants in a day.

A caterpillar turns into a butterfly inside what?

Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar's body almost completely breaks down and rebuilds itself into a butterfly with wings.

Which planet has a bright, wide system of rings made mostly of ice?

Saturn's rings look solid from Earth but are made of countless chunks of ice and rock, some as small as dust and some as big as houses.

Which is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun?

Neptune is so far out that it takes about 165 Earth years to orbit the Sun, and in 2011 it completed only its first full orbit since its discovery in 1846.

What is the name of the process plants use to turn sunlight into food?

Photosynthesis uses sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to make sugar, and as a bonus it releases the oxygen that people and animals breathe.

Kitty Hawk, site of the Wright brothers' 1903 flight, is in which US state?

Kitty Hawk is on North Carolina's Outer Banks; the first flight on 17 December 1903 lasted just 12 seconds and covered about 37 metres, shorter than a jumbo jet's wingspan.

The ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in which year?

Titanic went down in the early hours of 15 April 1912, sailing from Southampton in England to New York, after striking an iceberg late at night.

Who painted the Mona Lisa?

Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa in the early 1500s; it hangs in the Louvre in Paris and is surprisingly small, about 77 by 53 centimetres.

Who wrote the play Romeo and Juliet?

William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in the 1590s; he also wrote Hamlet and Macbeth, and he coined or popularised hundreds of English words.

What is the name of the school of magic in the Harry Potter books?

Hogwarts sorts students into four houses, and its Latin motto, Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus, warns never to tickle a sleeping dragon.

In the book Charlotte's Web, what kind of animal is Charlotte?

A spider: Charlotte weaves words like 'Some Pig' into her web so the farmer will not eat her friend Wilbur.

Who wrote and illustrated the 1957 children's book The Cat in the Hat?

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) wrote and drew The Cat in the Hat using only 236 different words, because it was meant to help young children learn to read.

In which year was Mickey Mouse created?

Mickey Mouse debuted in 1928; his first big hit, Steamboat Willie, came out in November that year and was one of the first cartoons with synchronised sound.

The Lego company is based in which country?

Lego is based in Billund, Denmark; the name comes from the Danish words 'leg godt', meaning 'play well', and the first Lego toys were made of wood.

What does a giant panda mostly eat?

Bamboo makes up almost all of a giant panda's diet; it spends around 12 hours a day eating and can munch more than 12 kilograms, because bamboo is not very nutritious.

What do a camel's humps mainly store?

Many people think the humps hold water, but they are really stores of fat the camel can live off when food is scarce.

Owls can turn their heads as much as how many degrees?

An owl can rotate its head about 270 degrees because its eyes are fixed in their sockets and cannot swivel, so it must turn its whole head to look around.

A dolphin is which type of animal?

Dolphins are mammals: like people they breathe air, are warm-blooded and feed their babies milk, surfacing to breathe through a blowhole.

At sea level, water boils at what temperature?

Water boils at 100 °C at sea level; high on a mountain, where air pressure is lower, it boils at a lower temperature, which is why cooking takes longer there.

How many primary, or baby, teeth do children usually have?

Children usually have 20 baby teeth, which fall out to make room for up to 32 permanent teeth, including the four wisdom teeth.

How many players does each team have on the pitch in a soccer match, including the goalkeeper?

Each side fields 11, one of them the goalkeeper, the only player allowed to use their hands and arms during normal play.

Chameleons are best known for being able to do what?

Chameleons change colour with mood, light and temperature; they also have eyes that look in two directions at once and a sticky tongue that can be longer than their body.

Which is the largest living bird?

The ostrich cannot fly, but it can run faster than any other bird, about 70 km/h, and lays the biggest eggs of any living land animal.

Which is the hottest planet in the Solar System?

Venus is hottest because its thick blanket of clouds traps heat; the surface reaches about 465 °C, hot enough to melt lead and hotter than Mercury.

Which is the largest country in the world by area?

Russia covers about 17 million square kilometres and spans eleven time zones, so people at one end are eating breakfast while others at the far end are going to bed.

Which is the smallest country in the world by area?

Vatican City, about half a square kilometre, sits entirely inside Rome and is small enough to walk all the way around in under an hour.

What is the capital city of Japan?

Tokyo has been Japan's capital since 1868, when the emperor moved there from Kyoto; its metropolitan area is home to well over 30 million people.

Which famous composer kept writing music even as he lost his hearing?

Beethoven wrote some of his most famous works, including the Ninth Symphony, when he could barely hear at all, and once recorded his despair about it in a letter to his brothers.

Alexander Graham Bell is credited with patenting the first practical version of which invention?

Bell's telephone patent was granted in March 1876; he is said to have kept no telephone in his own study because he found it a distraction.