Trivia Facts
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130 free Trivia Facts trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Seventy-four trivia facts that sound made up and are not, each turned into a four-option question so you can test yourself instead of just nodding along. Venus has a day longer than its year. Bananas are mildly radioactive. Nintendo is older than the zipper. A tsar taxed beards. Sherlock Holmes never says the one line everyone quotes. The first webcam existed to watch a coffee pot. The set is deliberately random: science, animals, history, geography, food, sport, technology, film and TV, music, books and the human body, with no more than a handful from any one area. It works as a fun facts round for a pub quiz or family night, a stash of icebreakers, or ten minutes of "wait, really?" on your phone. Difficulty is mixed, and there is no filler. Every fact was checked against the relevant Wikipedia article and the sentence that supports it is stored with the question, so if someone at the table refuses to believe the flamingo one you can show them.
30 of 130 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which food essentially never spoils when sealed, partly because it slowly makes its own hydrogen peroxide?
Honey
Honey keeps almost indefinitely when sealed: it holds too little water for microbes to grow, and an enzyme added by bees makes gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide, which hold bacteria back.
Q 02On which planet does a single day (one rotation) last longer than its year?
Venus
Venus takes about 243 Earth days to spin once but only about 225 to circle the Sun; it also spins backwards, so there the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
Q 03Which everyday fruit is radioactive enough to serve as an informal unit of radiation dose?
Banana
The 'banana equivalent dose' comes from naturally occurring potassium-40, and eating one is worth roughly 0.1 microsieverts.
Q 04The air around a lightning bolt heats to roughly what temperature?
30,000 °C
A lightning channel heats the surrounding air to roughly 30,000 °C, about five times the temperature of the Sun's surface; the air's explosive expansion is what we hear as thunder.
Q 05What makes the Eiffel Tower's top lean up to 18 cm on a hot day?
Its sunlit iron expanding
Its sunlit iron expanding does it: the side facing the sun grows longer than the shaded side, so the top bends up to 18 cm away from the sun; the heat also makes the whole tower a little taller in summer.
Q 06Which microscopic animals have survived direct exposure to the vacuum of outer space?
Tardigrades
Tardigrades, also called water bears, survived exposure to open space on the 2007 FOTON-M3 mission; they curl into a dried-out 'tun' state that shrugs off vacuum, radiation and near-absolute-zero cold.
Q 07Which planet is the only one in the Solar System less dense than water?
Saturn
Saturn's average density is about 0.69 grams per cubic centimetre, below water's 1.0, so in a big enough bathtub it would in theory float; every other planet is denser than water.
Q 08Which planet's position was worked out mathematically before anyone had knowingly seen it?
Neptune
Neptune's position was calculated by Urbain Le Verrier, and independently John Couch Adams, from wobbles in Uranus's orbit; Johann Galle found Neptune within a degree of Le Verrier's prediction in September 1846.
Q 09Which world orbits the Sun so slowly that it won't finish its first lap since discovery until 2178?
Pluto
Pluto takes about 248 Earth years to circle the Sun, so when it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 it had covered less than a third of one orbit since its discovery in 1930.
Q 10If all the gold ever mined were melted into a single cube, roughly how long would each side be?
About 22 metres
All the gold ever mined would form a cube only about 22 metres on each side; gold is so dense, 19.3 tonnes per cubic metre, that the whole historic total fits comfortably inside a stadium.
Q 11Which famously slow mammal can hold its breath underwater for up to 40 minutes by slowing its heart?
Sloth
Sloths can drop their already slow heart rate even further, which lets them stay underwater for up to 40 minutes; they are strong swimmers and cross rivers by paddling with their long arms.
Q 12What gives flamingos their pink colour?
Their food
Their food does it: flamingos hatch grey, then liver enzymes break down carotenoids from the algae and brine shrimp they eat into pigments that are laid down in the feathers and skin.
Q 13To stop themselves drifting out to sea while resting, sea otters anchor themselves with what?
Kelp
Sea otters wrap themselves in strands of kelp before sleeping so they do not drift off; mothers also wrap their pups in kelp while diving for food, and the pup cries if it wakes alone.
Q 21Which birds cannot move their eyes at all and must turn their whole head instead?
Owls
Owls' eyes are fixed in bony tubes called sclerotic rings, so they cannot swivel them; instead extra neck vertebrae let an owl turn its head most of the way round.
Q 22Where are the taste receptors that a female butterfly drums against a leaf before laying her eggs?
On its feet
On its feet: a female butterfly drums a leaf with her front feet and tastes the sap, checking that it will feed her caterpillars before she lays eggs on it.
Q 23Which university's teaching is first documented in 1096, making it older than the Aztec Empire?
Oxford
Oxford was teaching by 1096 and grew fast after 1167, when Henry II barred English students from the University of Paris; the Aztec Triple Alliance was not formed until 1428.
Q 14Which bird's wing structure allows helicopter-like flight in any direction, including backwards and hovering?
Hummingbird
Hummingbirds rotate their wings at the shoulder to generate lift on both the forward and backward stroke, which lets them hover and fly backwards; their wings beat up to about 80 times a second.
Q 15Which Mexican salamander can regrow lost limbs, gills and even parts of its brain?
Axolotl
The axolotl regrows limbs, gills and even parts of its brain, which has made it a laboratory favourite: it thrives in tanks worldwide yet is critically endangered in its only wild home, Mexico City's Lake Xochimilco.
Q 16Which crustacean's club strikes so fast that prey is hit twice, by the blow and then by collapsing bubbles?
Mantis shrimp
The peacock mantis shrimp swings its club so fast that the water beside it flashes into vapour bubbles; their collapse lands a second blow just after the punch, enough to smash a snail's shell.
Q 17In which animal does the male carry the developing eggs and give birth?
Seahorse
Seahorse females deposit eggs in a brood pouch on the front of the male's tail; he fertilises and carries them for ten days to six weeks, depending on species, then gives birth to fully formed young.
Q 18Which animal has the longest known lifespan of any vertebrate, estimated at 272 years or more?
Greenland shark
The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate known: radiocarbon dating of eye-lens proteins put the oldest sampled female at about 392 years, give or take 120, so at least 272.
Q 19Which birds have been shown to recognise and remember individual human faces?
Crows
Crows recognise and remember individual human faces: in John Marzluff's Seattle experiments, crows trapped by people wearing a 'dangerous' mask scolded that mask for years afterwards and taught others to do the same.
Q 20What colour is a polar bear's skin under its fur?
Black
A polar bear's skin is black, which helps it absorb warmth; the fur only looks white because its transparent, hollow guard hairs scatter visible light.
Q 24Which famous fire destroyed over 13,000 houses yet has only a handful of officially recorded deaths?
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed about 13,200 houses, more than 80 churches and St Paul's Cathedral; only a few deaths were officially recorded, though some historians think poorer victims went uncounted.
Q 25According to legend, which Roman emperor planned to make his horse Incitatus a consul?
Caligula
Caligula gave Incitatus a marble stall, an ivory manger and purple blankets, Suetonius writes, but the consulship was only ever a rumoured plan and never happened.
Q 26As a young man, Julius Caesar was kidnapped and held for ransom by whom?
Pirates
Cilician pirates seized Caesar near the island of Pharmacusa; Plutarch says he joked he would return and crucify them, then did exactly that once the ransom was paid.
Q 27In 1698, Tsar Peter the Great introduced a tax on what?
Beards
Peter the Great's 1698 beard tax was part of his drive to make his empire look Western European; men who paid to keep their beards carried a copper or silver token as proof.
Q 28Woolly mammoths were still alive on an Arctic island when which of these was built?
Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza went up about 4,500 years ago, while a last herd of woolly mammoths, cut off by rising seas on Wrangel Island off Siberia, survived until roughly 4,000 years ago.
Q 29In 1859, San Francisco resident Joshua Norton proclaimed himself what?
Emperor of the United States
Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor of the United States in September 1859; San Francisco played along for two decades, restaurants took his own banknotes and some 10,000 people attended his 1880 funeral.
Q 30Which farm animal was the only casualty of the 1859 US-British standoff over the San Juan Islands?
A pig
A pig was the only casualty: American settler Lyman Cutlar shot it for rooting in his garden, and the quarrel over it drew British warships and US troops into what became known as the Pig War.