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50 free Panama trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Fifty questions on Panama, the isthmus that joined two continents and split two oceans. The canal gets its due: the French disaster under de Lesseps, the 22,000 dead, Gorgas and the mosquitoes, Gatun Lake, the SS Ancon, the swimmer who paid a 36-cent toll and the 1999 handover. Around it sit Balboa's 1513 crossing, Henry Morgan burning Panama City, the Scottish Darien scheme, the 1903 secession negotiated without a single Panamanian in the room, Torrijos, Noriega and Operation Just Cause. The rest is the Panama beyond the locks: Volcan Baru and its two-ocean view, the roadless Darien Gap, the Guna's molas and the San Blas islands, the pollera, the balboa that is really a dollar, the Colon Free Zone, a country with no army, the Panama Papers, baseball's Mariano Rivera, boxing's Roberto Duran and the awkward truth about Panama hats. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, the canal, its cities and its people, and the sentence that establishes it is quoted under each explanation. Works for a pub quiz, a classroom unit on Central America or a cruise-ship transit.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Panama shares land borders with Costa Rica and which other country?
Colombia
The two are joined only by roadless jungle; Panama was actually part of Colombia until 1903.
Q 02Which Spanish explorer crossed the isthmus in 1513 as the first European to see the Pacific from the Americas?
Vasco Nunez de Balboa
He called it the South Sea; Panama's currency is named after him, and he was executed in 1519 by the governor who had replaced him.
Q 03Panama City was founded in 1519 by which Spanish governor?
Pedro Arias Davila
It became the launch pad for the conquest of the Inca and is the fourth-oldest of the Americas' modern capital cities.
Q 04Which Welsh privateer sacked and burned the city of Panama in 1671?
Henry Morgan
The city was then the second most important in Spanish America; it was rebuilt 8 km away two years later, and the ruins are now the Panama Viejo World Heritage Site.
Q 05A failed 1698 Panama colony drained which country's finances before its 1707 union?
Scotland
The Darien scheme swallowed a large share of Scotland's capital; the debt was a factor in the Act of Union with England.
Q 06After leaving Spain in 1821, Panama joined which short-lived union led by Simón Bolívar?
Gran Colombia
When it dissolved in 1831, Panama stayed with New Granada, which became Colombia; Panamanians tried more than 80 times to secede.
Q 07Panama seceded from its larger neighbour, with tacit US backing, in which year?
1903
Colombia's senate had just rejected the Hay-Herran canal treaty; independence was proclaimed that November.
Q 08The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty granting the US the Canal Zone was signed for Panama by a lobbyist of what nationality?
French
Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a shareholder in the bankrupt French canal company, signed it the night before Panama's own delegation reached Washington.
Q 09Which Frenchman, fresh from the Suez Canal, led the doomed first Panama canal attempt from 1881?
Ferdinand de Lesseps
He insisted on a sea-level canal like Suez; the company went bankrupt in 1889 and 800,000 French investors lost their savings.
Q 10Roughly how many workers died during the first, European-led canal effort of 1881-1889?
22,000
Yellow fever and malaria did most of the killing; even Gustave Eiffel was prosecuted in the financial scandal that followed.
Q 11Colonel William Gorgas enabled US canal construction by attacking which two diseases?
Yellow fever and malaria
He fumigated buildings, oiled breeding pools and screened windows after Finlay, Reed and Ross had proven the mosquito link.
Q 12Which US Army engineer directed the canal to completion in 1914, two years ahead of schedule?
George Washington Goethals
He replaced Stevens in 1907; the toughest job, the Culebra Cut through the continental divide, went to Major David Gaillard.
Q 13The Panama Canal formally opened on 15 August 1914 with the passage of which cargo ship?
SS Ancon
Q 21Where did Noriega take refuge before surrendering on 3 January 1990?
The Vatican's embassy
US troops famously blasted rock music at the nunciature; he was flown to Miami and convicted of drug trafficking.
Q 22Since abolishing its army after 1989, Panama shares what distinction with only Costa Rica in the region?
No standing military
Public Forces, a border service and small air and sea units do the job; Panama also signed the UN nuclear-weapons ban in 2017.
Q 23Panama's official currency, fixed 1:1 with the US dollar since independence, is called what?
The balboa
Ancon is the hill overlooking Panama City; the first vessel to make the whole crossing in stages was actually a floating crane.
Q 14Ships transiting the canal are lifted about 26 metres to which lake, created by damming the Chagres River?
Gatun Lake
When finished it was the largest man-made lake in the world, and Gatun Dam the largest earth dam.
Q 15The lowest toll ever paid on the Panama Canal was 36 cents, charged in 1928 to a man who did what?
Swam it
Adventurer Richard Halliburton was assessed like any vessel, by tonnage; the trip took him ten days.
Q 16The 1977 Panama Canal treaties are named after Omar Torrijos and which US president?
Jimmy Carter
The surrounding Canal Zone was returned in 1979, but the canal itself only passed to Panama at noon on 31 December 1999.
Q 17The 2016 canal expansion added new locks that roughly did what to the waterway's capacity?
Doubled it
The Neopanamax locks at Agua Clara and Cocoli let much bigger container ships through; a drought later cut daily transits.
Q 18The 1964 riots over flying Panama's flag in the Canal Zone left dozens dead and are commemorated as what?
Martyrs' Day
The unrest forced the evacuation of the US embassy and pushed both sides toward renegotiating the 1903 treaty.
Q 19Panama's military strongman Omar Torrijos died in 1981 in what?
A plane crash
A 1972 constitution had named him Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution; his son Martin later won the presidency democratically in 2004.
Q 20The December 1989 US invasion that toppled Manuel Noriega was codenamed what?
Operation Just Cause
Blue Spoon was the plan's original name and Nifty Package the SEAL raid on Noriega's boat and jet; it was the largest US operation since Vietnam.
In practice the country is dollarised: US notes are the only paper money, and the sole Panamanian banknotes, printed in 1941, lasted seven days.
Q 24Panama's only ever banknotes, printed in 1941 and recalled almost at once, earned what nickname?
The Seven Day Dollars
President Arnulfo Arias issued them; the next government burned the stock, so surviving notes are collectors' items.
Q 25What is Panama's highest point, a 3,474-metre volcano from which both oceans can be seen?
Volcan Baru
It rises over the coffee town of Boquete in Chiriqui; the Los Quetzales trail wraps around its flank.
Q 26The Darien Gap on Panama's southeastern border is the only break in which road system?
The Pan-American Highway
Otherwise the road runs from Alaska to Patagonia; the highway stops at Yaviza in Panama and resumes at Turbo across the border.
Q 27In 2023 more than half a million people crossed the Darien Gap on foot, mostly heading where?
The US-Mexico border
Crossings jumped from 24,000 in 2019 to 250,000 in 2022; Haitians and Venezuelans made up most of the migrants.
Q 28Panama's Isthmus formed about three million years ago and had what global effect?
Land bridge for animals between the Americas
The Great American Interchange sent armadillos north and horses and cats south; it also rerouted ocean currents.
Q 29Panama is one of only three countries described as carbon-negative. Which two are the others?
Bhutan and Suriname
About 40 percent of Panama is still forested, though tree cover has halved since the 1940s.
Q 30Which UNESCO-listed Panamanian reserve is the largest of its kind in Central America?
Darien National Park
Soberania, near the canal, is the birdwatchers' favourite with more than 525 species; Coiba is the largest island.