98 Fun Facts About Trivia for Adults

Which country was the first in the world to give all women the right to vote in national elections?

New Zealand's 1893 Electoral Act, won by Kate Sheppard's petition campaign, made it the first self-governing country to let all adult women vote; Sheppard now appears on the NZ$10 note.

In which year did the Berlin Wall come down?

The Wall opened on 9 November 1989 after a garbled East German press announcement sent crowds to the crossings and overwhelmed guards simply opened the gates.

Which English king sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?

King John sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede on 15 June 1215; Pope Innocent III annulled it within ten weeks, and only later reissues made it a foundation of English law.

Who made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic, from New York to Paris, in 1927?

Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis for about 33 and a half hours in May 1927; Coolidge presented him the first Distinguished Flying Cross and, in 1928, the Medal of Honor.

Suleiman the Magnificent was the longest-reigning sultan of which empire?

Suleiman ruled the Ottoman Empire for 46 years, from 1520 to 1566, the longest reign of any Ottoman sultan and the peak of its military and economic power.

In which year did the Titanic sink on her maiden voyage?

Titanic struck an iceberg late on 14 April 1912 and sank early on 15 April; her lifeboats left with only about 60 percent of their rated capacity filled.

In which year did the Great Fire gut the medieval City of London?

The Great Fire began in Pudding Lane on Sunday 2 September 1666 and burned until Wednesday, destroying most of the City inside the old Roman wall.

In which year was the Soviet Union formally dissolved?

The Soviet Union formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991, the day after Gorbachev resigned as its president.

Who is the only US president to have resigned from office?

Richard Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974 over Watergate, after the Judiciary Committee approved impeachment articles but before the full House voted on them.

Which amendment to the US Constitution ended nationwide Prohibition of alcohol?

The Twenty-first Amendment, ratified in December 1933, repealed the Eighteenth; it is the only amendment ratified by state conventions rather than legislatures.

Who holds the record for the longest reign of any British monarch?

Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years and 214 days, from February 1952 to September 2022, the longest of any British monarch and of any queen regnant in history.

Which country was the first in the world to legalize same-sex marriage?

The Netherlands' same-sex marriage law took effect on 1 April 2001, the first anywhere in the world; Belgium followed in 2003.

Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?

Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon in July 1969; he and Buzz Aldrin spent about two and a half hours outside the lunar module while Michael Collins orbited overhead.

During which years was the sale of alcohol prohibited nationwide in the United States?

National Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 under the Eighteenth Amendment, an era of speakeasies, bootleggers and gangsters such as Al Capone; repeal came in December 1933.

What is the capital city of Australia?

Canberra was purpose-built as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne; Parliament moved there in 1927 and the city sits inside its own Australian Capital Territory.

Counting overseas territories, which country has the most time zones?

France spans 12 time zones once French Polynesia, Réunion and New Caledonia are counted, one more than Russia's 11.

What is the longest river in Europe?

The Volga runs about 3,530 km entirely within Russia to the Caspian Sea, making it Europe's longest river and the world's longest that never reaches an ocean.

Which is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population?

Vatican City covers about 44 hectares and counted roughly 880 residents in 2024, the smallest sovereign state by both area and population.

Which city spans two continents, with about two-thirds of its people living in Europe?

Istanbul straddles the Bosporus, with about two-thirds of its residents on the European bank and the rest in Asia.

Which is the most populous country in Africa?

Nigeria passed 200 million people around 2019 and is Africa's most populous country, well ahead of Ethiopia and Egypt.

Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in which country?

Kilimanjaro stands in northern Tanzania near the Kenyan border; its summit was renamed Uhuru Peak, Swahili for Freedom, after independence in the 1960s.

Which US state has a longer coastline than all the other states combined?

Alaska's coastline outstrips every other state's put together; the Exxon Valdez spill alone fouled about 1,100 miles of it.

Which country has the world's only non-rectangular national flag?

Nepal's flag is two stacked crimson pennants, the only national flag that is not a rectangle and the only one taller than it is wide.

What is the largest hot desert in the world?

The Sahara covers about 9 million square kilometres of North Africa; only the cold deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic are larger.

Which river carries more water to the sea than any other in the world?

The Amazon discharges about 209,000 cubic metres per second, roughly a fifth of all river water reaching the oceans and more than the next seven largest rivers combined.

Which building, completed in 2010, became the world's tallest at about 828 metres?

Burj Khalifa in Dubai opened in January 2010 at 828 metres, just over half a mile; its spire alone accounts for more than 240 metres of that.

The Swiss franc is legal tender in Switzerland and which other country?

Liechtenstein adopted the Swiss franc in 1924 after the Austrian krone collapsed and has no currency of its own; the two countries also share a customs union.

What is the chemical symbol for gold?

Au comes from aurum, the Latin word for gold; the element's atomic number is 79.

Which planet is the hottest in the solar system?

Venus's surface sits at about 464 °C under an atmosphere 92 times Earth's pressure, hotter than Mercury even though Mercury is closer to the Sun.

How many bones does a typical adult human skeleton have?

An adult has 206 bones; babies start with around 270, and the count drops as bones fuse during growth.

What is the hardest known natural material?

Diamond is the hardest natural material, a 10 on the Mohs scale; its carbon atoms are packed more densely than in any other known substance, making it also the least compressible.

Which gas makes up about 78 percent of dry air?

Nitrogen is about 78 percent of dry air, oxygen about 21 percent, and argon just under 1 percent, far ahead of carbon dioxide at roughly 0.04 percent.

Whose theory of gravity, known as general relativity, was published in 1916?

Albert Einstein's general relativity, published in full in 1916, replaced Newton's picture of gravity as a force with the idea that mass curves space and time.

People with which blood type are often called universal donors for red cell transfusions?

O negative red cells carry neither A, B nor RhD antigens, so they are the ones reached for in emergencies before a patient's blood is typed.

Which element has atomic number 1?

Hydrogen, symbol H, has a single proton; it is the lightest element and the most abundant in the universe.

Which vitamin does the skin produce when exposed to ultraviolet B light from the sun?

Vitamin D is made in the skin when UVB light converts 7-dehydrocholesterol, which is why it is classed as only conditionally essential in the diet.

Which planet rotates on its side, with an axial tilt of more than 80 degrees?

Uranus is tilted about 98 degrees, effectively rolling on its side; that sideways spin twists its magnetotail into a long corkscrew trailing behind the planet.

In 2006 the International Astronomical Union reclassified which body as a dwarf planet?

Pluto was demoted in August 2006 when the IAU first defined 'planet'; it sits in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune and carries minor-planet number 134340.

Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?

Marie Curie shared the 1903 Physics prize with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, then won Chemistry alone in 1911, the only person with Nobels in two different sciences.

What is the longest bone in the human body?

The femur, the thigh bone, is the only bone in the upper leg and typically measures about a quarter of a person's height.

Which 1927 war film won the first Academy Award for Best Picture?

Wings, a First World War flying drama, took the first Best Picture award in May 1929 and is the only entirely silent winner; it was also among the first widely released films to show nudity.

Who directed the 1975 shark thriller Jaws?

Steven Spielberg, then 27, directed Jaws from Peter Benchley's 1974 novel; its wide June release made it the first summer blockbuster.

Which 2009 film overtook Titanic, by the same director, to become the highest-grossing film of all time?

Avatar beat James Cameron's own Titanic, breaking several box office records on the way to becoming the highest-grossing film of all time.

Which actor played the Joker in The Dark Knight and won a posthumous Oscar for it?

Heath Ledger died in January 2008, nearly six months before The Dark Knight opened; his family accepted his Best Supporting Actor Oscar in February 2009.

The Godfather was adapted from a best-selling 1969 novel by which author?

Mario Puzo's 1969 novel spent 67 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and sold nine million copies in two years; Puzo then co-wrote the 1972 screenplay with Coppola.

Black Panther is the monarch of which fictional African kingdom?

Wakanda first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 in July 1966, more than fifty years before the 2018 Black Panther film.

How many seasons did Breaking Bad run for on AMC?

Breaking Bad ran for five seasons, from January 2008 to September 2013, across 62 episodes; the fifth was split into two eight-episode halves.

Which country had won the most FIFA World Cups by the end of the 2022 tournament?

Brazil's five titles (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, 2002) led Germany and Italy on four; Brazil is also the only nation to have played at every World Cup through 2026.

What do the five interlocking rings on the Olympic flag stand for?

The rings stand for the inhabited continents, with the Americas counted as one, which is how the total comes to five.

In tennis scoring, what does the word 'love' mean?

'Love' means zero; one theory traces it to the French l'oeuf, the egg, because an egg looks like a nought.

Which city hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896?

Athens hosted the 1896 Games; American James Connolly won the triple jump there to become the first Olympic champion in more than 1,500 years.

In golf, what is a score of one stroke under par on a hole called?

One under par is a birdie; two under is an eagle, three under an albatross, and one over a bogey.

What is the maximum possible score in a game of ten-pin bowling?

A perfect 300 takes twelve strikes in a row, the last two coming as bonus balls in the tenth frame.

Wimbledon is the only tennis Grand Slam played on which surface?

Wimbledon has been played on grass since its first tournament in 1877, which also makes it the oldest of the four majors.

The Ashes is a series contested between England and Australia in which sport?

The Ashes is a cricket Test series played roughly every two years, alternating between England and Australia; the name comes from a mock obituary printed in 1882.

How many players does each side field at once in association football?

Each side fields eleven players, a number in regular use by the 1870s, when the first FA Cup final and the first England-Scotland international were both played eleven a side.

Which spirit is the base of a classic mojito?

A mojito is built on white rum; the Cuban cocktail rounds it out with sugar, lime juice, soda water and mint.

Marzipan is made mainly from sugar and which ground nut?

Marzipan is ground almonds and sugar; cheaper versions substitute apricot or peach kernels for the almonds.

Japanese sake is brewed by fermenting which grain?

Despite being called rice wine, it is made by a process closer to brewing beer, where starch is first converted to sugar.

Which cheese gives tiramisu its creamy layer?

Mascarpone, a rich Italian cheese from Lombardy, is whipped with egg yolks and sugar, layered over coffee-soaked ladyfingers and dusted with cocoa.

Paella originally comes from which country?

Paella comes from Valencia on Spain's east coast; the traditional version contains rabbit, chicken and snails, sometimes duck, rather than seafood.

The Scoville scale measures which property of a food?

The Scoville scale rates spiciness in Scoville heat units, based on capsaicin content; pure capsaicin sits at about 16 million.

A margarita is made with lime juice, triple sec and which spirit?

A classic margarita is tequila, lime juice and triple sec; some recipes add simple syrup, and the glass is often rimmed with salt.

Arthur Guinness started brewing his stout in the 18th century at St. James's Gate in which city?

Dublin's St. James's Gate brewery was started by Arthur Guinness in 1759 on a lease he signed for 9,000 years.

Which country drank the most beer per person in 2023, as it had every year since 1993?

The Czech Republic, home of the original pilsner from Plzeň, topped Kirin's per-capita beer table every year from 1993 through 2023, even as its consumption slowly fell.

Which band released the album Abbey Road in 1969?

Abbey Road was the Beatles' eleventh studio album and the last they recorded together; Let It Be, taped earlier, came out in 1970.

How many strings does a standard violin have?

A violin has four strings, tuned in perfect fifths to G, D, A and E, and played with a bow drawn across them.

Which singer is known as the Queen of Soul?

Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, topped Rolling Stone's greatest-singers list in both 2008 and 2023; her Respect reached number one in 1967.

The pop group ABBA came from which country?

ABBA's four members came together in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972; the name is an acronym of their first initials.

The Ode to Joy is the final movement of which composer's Ninth Symphony?

Beethoven's Ninth, premiered in Vienna in 1824, sets a 1785 poem by Friedrich Schiller and was among the first symphonies to add a chorus.

Which artist holds the record for the most Grammy Awards won in a lifetime?

Beyoncé passed Georg Solti's long-standing record of 31 in 2023 and reached 35 Grammys in February 2025, when Cowboy Carter took Album of the Year.

Queen frontman Freddie Mercury was born on which island?

Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Stone Town, Zanzibar, in 1946; his family fled the 1964 revolution there and settled in Feltham, Middlesex.

Who wrote the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four?

George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, months before his death; it gave English the words Big Brother, doublethink and thoughtcrime.

Which novel opens with the line 'Call me Ishmael'?

Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's 1851 whaling epic, sold poorly in his lifetime and was only hailed as a classic decades after his death in 1891.

Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?

Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813; its opening line about a single man in possession of a good fortune is among the most quoted in English.

Which author created the detective Sherlock Holmes?

Arthur Conan Doyle grew so tired of Holmes that he killed him at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893, then brought him back by public demand in 1903.

Who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude, the story of the Buendía family of Macondo?

Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian author, published One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

The magician Prospero and his daughter Miranda appear in which Shakespeare play?

The Tempest, first performed in 1611, takes place mostly on a remote island where Prospero rules over the spirit Ariel and the monstrous Caliban.

Who wrote The Great Gatsby?

F. Scott Fitzgerald drew on his youthful romance with socialite Ginevra King and the Long Island parties he attended after moving to Great Neck in 1922.

Where has the Rosetta Stone been on public display since 1802?

The Rosetta Stone has been in the British Museum since 1802 and is the museum's most visited object; Egypt has repeatedly asked for it back.

Who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

Michelangelo painted the ceiling from 1508 to 1512, mostly standing on scaffolding with his head tipped back rather than lying on his back.

The Mona Lisa hangs in which museum?

It has been there since 1797, apart from a two-year absence after it was stolen in 1911.

Which painter cut off part of his own left ear with a razor in 1888?

Vincent van Gogh did it in Arles in December 1888 after a row with Paul Gauguin, who had come to live with him; the friendship never recovered.

What is the largest animal known to have ever existed?

The blue whale reaches about 30 metres and up to around 200 tonnes, heavier than any dinosaur known.

How many hearts does an octopus have?

An octopus has three hearts: one main heart pumps blood around the body while two smaller ones push it through the gills.

What is the fastest land animal?

The cheetah can hit 93 to 104 km/h in a sprint, thanks to a flexible spine and long limbs; the pronghorn is faster only over long distances.

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

The others merely glide; bats make up about a fifth of all mammal species.

In which year was the first iPhone released?

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at Macworld in January 2007 and it went on sale in the US on 29 June 2007.

Who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975?

Paul Allen, Gates's schoolfriend from Lakeside, co-founded Microsoft in Albuquerque in 1975; its first product was a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800.

What does HTTP stand for in a web address?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the application-layer protocol of the Internet suite that browsers and servers use to exchange pages.

What is the title of the 19-second clip by co-founder Jawed Karim, the first video ever uploaded to YouTube?

Me at the zoo shows Jawed Karim in front of the elephants at San Diego Zoo, and was uploaded on April 23, 2005.

Which car model is the best-selling nameplate of all time?

The Toyota Corolla passed the Volkswagen Beetle in 1997 and went on to top 50 million cumulative sales in 2021, more than any other nameplate.

The properties on the original Monopoly board are named after streets in which US city?

Boardwalk and Park Place are real places in Atlantic City, New Jersey; the 1930s board Charles Darrow sold to Parker Brothers used the seaside resort's street names.

How many squares are there on a chessboard?

A chessboard has 64 squares, arranged in an eight-by-eight grid alternating light and dark.

The hansom cab was patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, who was by profession what?

Joseph Hansom was an architect, designer of Birmingham Town Hall; his light two-wheeled cab, pulled by one horse, could weave through London's notorious traffic.

Which work by Dante argues that the language of Adam was divine in origin and unchangeable?

De vulgari eloquentia holds that God gave Adam a fixed language that survived as Hebrew; in Paradiso XXVI Dante reversed himself, having Adam say his tongue had died out before Babel.

The tortoise Tu'i Malila, given to Tonga's royals by James Cook, died in 1965 at what age?

Tu'i Malila was about 188, born around 1777 and kept in royal care until it died of natural causes in 1965; Jonathan of St Helena has since passed that age.

Paid $1 million for Halloween II, what fee did Jamie Lee Curtis take for Trading Places?

Jamie Lee Curtis accepted just $70,000 for Trading Places, a fraction of her Halloween II fee, because Paramount balked at a 'scream queen'; the role won her a BAFTA.