68 Fun Facts About Summer Trivia for Kids

Which three months make up summer in the Northern Hemisphere, according to weather forecasters?

June, July and August are summer to forecasters because whole calendar months make each year's weather records easier to compare; astronomers start summer about three weeks later.

When it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, what season is it in the Southern Hemisphere?

Winter: seasons are reversed south of the equator, so in New Zealand Christmas falls in summer and is often celebrated outdoors with barbecues, picnics and trips to the beach.

What do we call the day in June with the most daylight in the Northern Hemisphere?

The summer solstice falls on June 20 or 21; 'solstice' comes from the Latin for 'sun' and 'to stand still', because the Sun's midday height stops climbing before it turns back.

Why do we have seasons?

Earth's axis is tilted about 23.4 degrees, so each half of the planet gets more direct sunlight for part of the year; distance is not the cause, as Earth is nearest the Sun in January.

About how long does sunlight take to travel from the Sun to Earth?

8 minutes is how old sunlight is when it arrives after crossing about 150 million kilometres, so if the Sun went dark, we would not notice for about 8 minutes.

What is the Sun mostly made of?

Hydrogen and helium make up nearly all of the Sun; every second its core fuses hundreds of millions of tonnes of hydrogen into helium, releasing the energy that warms Earth.

What is a sunburn caused by?

Ultraviolet rays from the Sun damage the skin's outer layers, and the redness is the body's inflamed reaction; much of that UV slips through cloud, so you can burn on an overcast day.

What do the letters SPF on a bottle of sunscreen stand for?

Sun protection factor compares how much sunlight it takes to redden skin with the sunscreen on and without it; the number only holds if you put plenty on and reapply every two hours.

Which frozen treat did an 11-year-old reputedly invent in 1905 by leaving a stirred drink outside overnight?

The Popsicle began, Frank Epperson said, when he left a powdered drink and its stirring stick out on a freezing night in 1905; he patented his 'Epsicle' in 1924 and soon renamed it.

Which ice cream treat is said to have won fame at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair?

The cone took off at the 1904 fair, where, the story goes, a waffle seller rolled his pastry for an ice cream vendor who had run out of dishes or cups; Italo Marchiony had patented a mould for edible cups in New York the year before.

Which fairground treat was co-invented in 1897 by a dentist, William Morrison?

Cotton candy: Morrison teamed up with confectioner John C. Wharton to build an electric machine that spun melted sugar into threads, and their 'Fairy Floss' sold 68,655 boxes at the 1904 World's Fair.

A s'more is a toasted marshmallow and chocolate squeezed between what?

Graham crackers: the Girl Scouts printed a recipe for 'Some Mores' in their 1927 guide Tramping and Trailing; the name, as in wanting some more, was later squashed into s'more.

Which ingredient gives modern marshmallows their springy, chewy texture?

Gelatin, whipped with hot sugar syrup, traps air bubbles and sets into the springy foam of a modern marshmallow; the original sweet was made from the sticky root sap of the marsh mallow plant.

Botanically, a watermelon is what kind of fruit?

A berry: botanists call a watermelon's hard-rinded, many-seeded fruit a pepo, a kind of berry, which makes its cousins the cucumber and the pumpkin berries too.

Which country grows more watermelons than the rest of the world put together?

China grows about 60 million tonnes of watermelons a year, roughly six in every ten on Earth, even though the fruit is native to Africa.

Which drink did Paris street sellers pour from tanks strapped to their backs from 1676?

Lemonade: in 1676 the Compagnie de Limonadiers won a monopoly on selling it in Paris, and its vendors handed out cups of honey-sweetened lemon water from the tanks on their backs.

The tiny 'seeds' on the outside of a strawberry are actually what?

Little fruits called achenes dot the strawberry, each holding a single seed; the juicy red part swells from the base of the flower, so it is not the plant's true fruit.

A peach with smooth, fuzz-free skin is called what?

A nectarine is a peach variety whose skin lacks fuzz, the result of a single recessive gene; nectarines and peaches are the same species, Prunus persica, and grow on the same kind of tree.

Which fruit is the national fruit of India?

Mango is India's national fruit, and the Mughal emperor Akbar is said to have planted an orchard of 100,000 mango trees; in Bangladesh the mango is the national tree.

Which fruit did Columbus first come across on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe in 1493?

Pineapple: Columbus and his crew first saw the fruit on Guadeloupe in 1493; 'pineapple' was already the English word for a pine cone, and the fruit took the name because it looked like one.

Fireflies are not true flies, so what kind of insect are they?

Fireflies are beetles of the family Lampyridae, with more than 2,000 species; their glow is thought to have begun in the larvae as a warning to predators that they taste bad.

How long do North America's periodical cicadas spend underground before emerging together?

13 or 17 years: the nymphs sip sap from tree roots underground, then surface together in such numbers that birds and other predators cannot eat them all.

Which way do fully grown sunflowers face?

East: a fully grown sunflower stops tracking the Sun and settles facing east, where its head warms up faster each morning and so draws more pollinators.

Where does a grasshopper have its ears?

On its abdomen: a grasshopper hears through a pair of thin membranes on the first segment of its abdomen, while crickets carry their ears on their front legs.

Which mosquitoes bite people?

Only the females bite: both sexes sip flower nectar for food, but only a female has the mouthparts to pierce skin, and in many species she needs a meal of blood before she can lay eggs.

Which butterfly makes a famous long migration each autumn from the northern United States to Mexico?

The monarch butterfly flies up to 4,800 km to overwinter in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico; its caterpillars eat only milkweed, which makes the adults taste awful to birds.

Which stage of a butterfly's life comes between caterpillar and winged adult?

Chrysalis: inside this hard case most of the caterpillar's body is broken down and rebuilt into a winged adult, the third of a butterfly's four life stages after egg and caterpillar.

What do worker bees feed to larvae chosen to become queens?

Royal jelly, a protein-rich secretion from glands in young workers' heads, is fed to every larva for its first days, but only future queens keep receiving it until they pupate.

What are most seashells found on the beach made by?

Mollusks like snails and clams build their shells from calcium carbonate, adding new material at the edge as they grow; the hard shell far outlasts the soft animal that made it.

How many arms do most starfish have?

Most starfish have five arms, matching the five-fold symmetry shared by echinoderms, though sunflower stars grow 16 to 24; most species can regrow a lost arm.

How do dolphins sleep without drowning?

One half of the brain sleeps at a time while the other half stays alert, keeping one eye open for danger and telling the dolphin when to surface for air.

What decides whether a sea turtle hatches male or female?

Sand temperature decides: warmer nests hatch more females and cooler nests more males, so a hotter beach produces more daughters.

Which of these beach animals has existed for more than 500 million years?

Jellyfish: fossils of these soft-bodied drifters date back more than 500 million years; they swim by pulsing their bell, and some species are eaten as a delicacy in parts of Asia.

What causes the ocean's tides to rise and fall about twice a day?

The pull of the Moon and Sun raises two bulges of water that Earth turns through each day; the Moon does about twice the Sun's share, and high tide arrives about 50 minutes later each day.

A rainbow always appears in which part of the sky?

A rainbow is always centred on the point directly opposite the Sun, so the Sun must be behind you; sunlight bends and reflects inside raindrops, putting red on the outer edge of the arc.

What kind of cloud makes a thunderstorm?

Cumulonimbus, the thunderstorm cloud, is a dense tower shaped like a mountain with a flat anvil top; ice and hail tossed about in its strong updraughts make the lightning, and at worst it spawns tornadoes.

Which US holiday celebrates the 1776 adoption of the Declaration that made America its own country?

Independence Day: Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, and adopted the Declaration of Independence two days later, which is the date the holiday took.

Which country celebrates its national day on July 1, the date it was formed in 1867?

Canada was formed on July 1, 1867, when Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick joined as one dominion; the holiday was called Dominion Day until it was renamed Canada Day in 1982.

France's national holiday on July 14 remembers the storming of which prison in 1789?

The Bastille, a royal fortress-prison holding just seven inmates, fell to a Paris crowd on July 14, 1789; France marks the day with a military parade down the Champs-Élysées.

What makes fireworks burn red, green or blue?

Metal salts colour the fire, because each metal glows its own colour when heated: strontium burns red, barium green, copper blue and sodium yellow.

In 1752, who flew a kite in a storm to show that lightning is electricity?

Benjamin Franklin flew his kite in Philadelphia in June 1752, drawing charge from a storm cloud down the wet string to a key; the same idea is behind his lightning rod, which carries a strike safely to the ground.

The first modern Summer Olympics were held in 1896 in which city?

Athens staged the first modern Games in April 1896 in the ancient Panathenaic Stadium, refurbished for the occasion with a last-minute gift from the businessman Georgios Averof.

How often are the Summer Olympics normally held?

The Summer Olympics are held every four years, a span the ancient Greeks called an Olympiad; only the World Wars cancelled Games (1916, 1940, 1944), and the 2020 Games were held a year late in 2021.

Which sport, an Olympic event since 1996, most likely began at Waikiki in 1915?

Beach volleyball most likely began on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii in 1915, though Santa Monica in California also claims it and later gave the sport its two-a-side game.

Which sport made its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, at Tsurigasaki Beach?

Surfing made its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, held in 2021, in the open ocean rather than a wave pool; a passing tropical storm whipped up bigger waves just in time for the finals.

How many innings are there in a regular Major League Baseball game?

Nine innings became the rule in 1857; under the older Knickerbocker rules the first team to score 21 'aces' won, and a game tied after nine still goes to extra innings.

Which water toy did NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson invent?

The Super Soaker began when a nozzle Lonnie Johnson was testing in his bathroom shot out a powerful jet of water; at NASA he worked on the Galileo mission to Jupiter.

Which powdered drink did Edwin Perkins create in Nebraska in 1927 by drying out his bottled Fruit Smack?

Kool-Aid was born when Edwin Perkins dried his liquid Fruit Smack into a powder to cut the cost of shipping it; he first sold it in envelopes as Kool-Ade in Hastings, Nebraska.

Which Disney Channel cartoon has two stepbrothers on summer vacation while their platypus fights Dr. Doofenshmirtz?

Phineas and Ferb, on Disney Channel from 2007, follows two stepbrothers building wild summer projects while their pet platypus Perry battles Dr. Doofenshmirtz; sister Candace never manages to bust them.

In Finding Nemo, what kind of fish is Nemo?

A clownfish like Nemo lives among a sea anemone's stinging tentacles, protected, researchers think, by the mucus coating its skin; his forgetful friend Dory is a regal blue tang.

Which summer film's song 'Summer Nights' was sung by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in 1978?

Grease: in the 1978 film musical, Danny and Sandy retell their beach romance to their friends in 'Summer Nights'; the single spent seven weeks at number one in Britain.

Which Disney film is set on Kauai, Hawaii?

Lilo & Stitch: Lilo names her new 'dog' Stitch without knowing he is a dangerous genetic experiment on the run, and her faith in ohana, the Hawaiian idea of family, is what wins him over.

The 'dog days' of summer are named after which star, the brightest in the night sky?

Sirius, the Dog Star of the constellation Canis Major, rises and sets with the Sun in high summer, so ancient Greeks and Romans blamed it for the season's heat, drought and lethargy.

Which American summer tradition is traced to a schoolmaster's 1861 outing with his pupils?

Summer camp is usually traced to the Gunnery Camp: as the Civil War began, Frederick Gunn marched his Connecticut schoolboys off to pitch camp, fish and live outdoors like soldiers.

The word 'hammock' comes from the language of which Caribbean people?

The Taíno of the Caribbean slept in hanging nets they called hamaka; Spanish borrowed the word, and the hammock went on to become the sailor's bed aboard ships.

Modern American flip-flops are thought to be based on the zōri, a traditional sandal from which country?

Japan: US soldiers returning from the Second World War brought home zōri, flat Japanese sandals with a thong between the toes; rubber copies became everyday American summer footwear in the 1960s.

What makes a popcorn kernel pop?

Water inside the kernel turns to steam: at about 180 °C the pressure inside the sealed hull reaches roughly nine atmospheres, the hull bursts and the starch puffs to 20 to 50 times its size.

Which ice cream chain made '31 flavours, one for every day of the month' its big idea?

Baskin-Robbins: Irv Robbins opened an ice cream shop in 1945 and his brother-in-law Burt Baskin opened his own the next year, before the two joined forces under both their names.

Ice cream sundaes were reportedly invented to get around laws that banned selling what on Sundays?

Sodas: the story goes that 'blue laws' in towns such as Evanston, Illinois forbade selling soda water on Sundays, so fountains served ice cream with syrup instead; Buffalo, Two Rivers and Ithaca also claim the sundae.

What do ladybugs ooze from their leg joints to put off predators?

Bitter fluid: a threatened ladybug 'reflex bleeds', squeezing drops of its foul-tasting blood from its knee joints, and its bright colours warn birds that it tastes terrible.

What is a ladybug's favourite food?

Aphids: a mother ladybug lays her eggs beside an aphid colony so the larvae hatch next to lunch, and one ladybug can eat thousands of insects in its lifetime, which is why farmers love them.

The world's smallest bird, found in Cuba, is named after which insect?

A bee is the namesake of Cuba's bee hummingbird: the world's smallest bird is about 6 cm long and weighs around 2 grams, which makes it comparable in size to a large bee.

How do crickets make their chirping sound on summer nights?

Crickets rub their wings together: a ridged 'file' on one forewing scrapes a hard edge on the other, and only the males sing; they chirp faster as the night gets warmer.

Sunflower seeds are packed in spirals that follow which famous pattern in mathematics?

The Fibonacci sequence: a sunflower head packs its seeds in two sets of spirals, typically 34 one way and 55 the other, neighbouring Fibonacci numbers that pack the most seeds into the disc.

Which toy is the ancient Chinese thinker Mozi said to have invented about 2,500 years ago?

A kite: Mozi is credited with a wooden bird flown on a line in the 5th century BC, and later Chinese kites were flown in war to measure distances.

What do we call the shimmering 'puddle' that appears on a hot road ahead and vanishes as you get closer?

A mirage: the Sun heats the road, the air just above it turns much hotter than the air higher up, and that hot layer bends light from the sky up to your eyes, so a patch of sky looks like water.

Which city opened a 60-metre-deep diving pool in 2021, then the deepest in the world?

Dubai's Deep Dive pool hides a sunken 'city' for divers to explore, and at 60 metres it took the world depth record from a 45-metre pool near Warsaw in Poland.

What word was written all over the world's largest beach ball, made in London in 2017?

Baywatch: Paramount inflated the 19.97-metre ball in London in May 2017 to promote the Baywatch film, and Guinness World Records handed the certificate to the film's cast.