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50 free Nauru trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Nauru is a 21-square-kilometre speck of coral just south of the equator, the third-smallest country on Earth and the smallest republic, with no official capital, no rivers and no armed forces. For most of the 20th century it was one of the richest places per head in the world thanks to phosphate, and then one of the poorest when the phosphate ran out and the trust fund evaporated. This quiz covers that arc: the twelve clans and Buada Lagoon, John Fearn's 'Pleasant Island', the civil war fought with sailors' guns, German annexation in 1888, the doorstop in a Sydney office that turned out to be phosphate, Australia's mandate, the Japanese deportations to Chuuk, the Curtis Island resettlement plan, Hammer DeRoburt and independence on 31 January 1968. Modern Nauru is here too: the Australian detention centre that supplies a third of GDP, the switches between Taiwan and Beijing, recognition of Abkhazia, the golden-passport plan to move the population uphill, the world's highest obesity, diabetes and smoking rates, weightlifting, Australian rules football and the flag whose gold stripe is the equator. Easy questions ask which ocean; hard ones want the height of Command Ridge and the name of the airline whose only jet was repossessed. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Nauru, its flag, Yaren, Hammer DeRoburt, phosphate mining, the Regional Processing Centre and Nauru at the Olympics, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nauru lies in which subregion of Oceania?
Micronesia
Its nearest neighbour is Banaba, part of Kiribati, about 300 km to the east.
Q 02Nauru ranks where among the world's countries by area?
Third-smallest
Only Vatican City and Monaco are smaller; Nauru covers 21 square kilometres.
Q 03Roughly how many people live on Nauru?
12,000
Only two sovereign states have fewer people.
Q 04Nauru's squandered mining wealth is often cited as a classic example of what?
The resource curse
Mismanagement of the accumulated wealth caused serious financial trouble through the 2000s.
Q 05What is Nauru's name in the Nauruan language, adopted as its official English name in 2026?
Naoero
Early colonial spellings included Naura, Nawodo and Onawero.
Q 06What did British captain John Fearn call Nauru when he sighted it in 1798?
Pleasant Island
He was the first Westerner to report seeing it, from the trading ship Hunter.
Q 07How many traditional clans did Nauru have, as represented on its flag?
Twelve
Descent was traditionally traced through the mother's line.
Q 08Traditional Nauruans raised which fish in Buada Lagoon after acclimatising them to fresh water?
Milkfish
The juvenile fish, called ibija, gave the island a reliable food supply.
Q 09What did the Nauruan Civil War of 1878-88 have in common with the arrival of European ships?
Islanders traded food for the firearms used in it
The war ended with the colonial annexation of 1888.
Q 10Which empire annexed Nauru in 1888?
Germany
It was administered as part of the Marshall Islands Protectorate.
Q 11Who discovered phosphate on Nauru in 1900?
Albert Fuller Ellis
He had spotted a suspicious lump of 'petrified wood' in a Sydney office.
Q 12The rock that led Albert Ellis to Nauru's phosphate had been serving as what in Sydney?
A doorstop
His colleague had planned to make children's marbles from it.
Q 13Which country's troops captured Nauru from its colonial ruler in 1914?
Australia
The Treaty of Versailles later placed the island under a League of Nations mandate.
Q 14Under the 1919 Nauru Island Agreement, mining was handled by which intergovernmental body?
Q 21Roughly what share of Nauru's land has been left uninhabitable by mining?
80%
The plateau is a wasteland of limestone pinnacles up to 15 metres high.
Q 22What is the highest point on Nauru?
Command Ridge, 71 m
Coral cliffs surround the raised central plateau.
Q 23Nauru's phosphate trust fund shrank from A$1.3 billion in 1991 to roughly what by 2002?
A$138 million
Failed investments included financing Leonardo the Musical in 1993.
Q 24What was repossessed from Air Nauru in December 2005?
The British Phosphate Commission
Canberra, Wellington and London shared the arrangement.
Q 15During World War II, Japan deported 1,200 Nauruans to work as labourers where?
The Chuuk Islands
Only 745 survived to be repatriated in January 1946.
Q 16In the 1960s Canberra proposed resettling the entire Nauruan population where?
Curtis Island, off Queensland
Nauruans refused because they would not be granted sovereignty there.
Q 17On what date did Nauru become independent?
31 January 1968
Independence came under the Nauru Independence Act 1967 passed in Canberra.
Q 18Who was Nauru's first president?
Hammer DeRoburt
He served four separate terms between 1968 and 1989.
Q 19Which of these is true of Nauru's seat of government?
There is no official capital
Yaren, seat of parliament, is usually listed as the de facto capital.
Q 20How many seats are there in Nauru's parliament?
19
All are elected every three years, and most members sit as independents.
Its only Boeing 737
Service resumed with a replacement 737-300 in June 2006.
Q 25What currency does Nauru use?
The Australian dollar
The same neighbour is also responsible for the island's defence.
Q 26Nauru's detention centre was opened in 2001 as part of which Australian government policy?
The Pacific Solution
It began under the Howard government in 2001.
Q 27As of 2017, the detention centre accounted for roughly what share of Nauru's GDP?
35%
Its 2008 closure had cost about 100 jobs on the island.
Q 28Nauru's 2001 detention arrangement grew out of which incident involving a Norwegian ship?
The Tampa affair
The MV Tampa had rescued 438 refugees and was refused entry and boarded by troops.
Q 29In 2009 Nauru became the fourth country to recognise which two breakaway regions of Georgia?
Abkhazia and South Ossetia
Moscow was reported to reward the move with tens of millions of dollars in aid; the recognition was withdrawn in 2026.
Q 30Nauru switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 2002 for how much aid?
US$130 million
It swung back to Taipei in 2005 and to Beijing again in January 2024.