Extreme Environments
Covering parts of eleven countries, this massive African desert is the largest hot desert on the planet.
What is the Sahara Desert?
To honor the origins of the ancient games, this European nation's athletic team always marches out first during the Parade of Nations at the Opening Ceremony.
What is Greece?
Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1400s, this world-changing machine allowed for the mass production of books—the first being the Bible.
What is the printing press?
This historic capital city of Greece is named after an ancient Greek goddess and is famous for the ruins of the Parthenon.
What is Athens?
This is the term for a deep, state of inactivity that some animals enter during the winter to conserve energy and survive freezing temperatures.
What is hibernation?
In 1903, these two famous American brothers achieved the world's first sustained, controlled flight of a powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Who are the Wright Brothers (Orville and Wilbur)?
Reaching nearly 36,000 feet deep in the Pacific Ocean, this trench is the deepest known point in any of the world's oceans.
What is the Mariana Trench?
This American swimmer is the most decorated Olympian of all time, holding a jaw-dropping total of 28 medals, including 23 golds.
Who is Michael Phelps?
This gas, which makes up about 78% of the Earth's atmosphere, is the most abundant element in the air we breathe.
What is nitrogen?
This Dutch city is world-famous for its historic network of canals, millions of bicycles, and beautiful fields of tulips.
What is Amsterdam?
This ocean predator is the only fish capable of blinking with both of its eyes simultaneously.
What is a shark?
This is the fast-moving, narrow band of strong wind high up in the atmosphere that commercial airplanes use to get a massive speed boost when flying east.
What is the jet stream?
This is the specific name of the frozen, treeless biome found in the Arctic, where the subsoil remains permanently frozen as permafrost.
What is the tundra?
Represented on the famous Olympic flag, there are this exact total number of interlocking rings, symbolizing the unity of the inhabited continents.
What is 5?
This classic medical breakthrough, discovered by Alexander Fleming from a type of mold, was the world's very first effective antibiotic.
What is penicillin?
This is the capital and largest city of the country of Egypt, located right along the banks of the Nile River.
What is Alexandria?
A group of lions is famously called a pride, but a large gathering of crows goes by this dark, dramatic group name.
What is a murder?
This basic instrument uses a small magnetic needle to detect the Earth's magnetic fields, allowing explorers to always find north.
What is a compass?
Located between Israel and Jordan, this hyper-salty lake is the lowest land-based elevation on Earth, where it's impossible for humans to sink.
What is the Dead Sea?
Originally a footrace in ancient times, the modern marathon gets its official, highly specific distance from a race route laid out at the 1908 London Games. This is the distance in miles.
What is 26.2 miles? (Accept 26)
This is the lightest and most abundant chemical element in the entire universe, making up roughly 75% of all cosmic mass.
What is hydrogen?
This beautiful mountain city served as the historic capital of the Inca Empire and is the jumping-off point for visiting Machu Picchu.
What is Arequipa? (or Asunción)
This unique defense mechanism allows lizards to intentionally drop this body part when grabbed by a predator, later growing a brand-new one.
What is its tail?
These specific, fluffy, flat-bottomed clouds are often called "fair weather clouds" because they look like giant cotton balls on a sunny day.
What are cumulus clouds?
This South American river basin contains the world's largest tropical rainforest, producing roughly 20% of the planet's oxygen.
What is the Amazon?
The winter and summer Olympic games used to be held in the exact same year. They were finally split into alternating, even-numbered years starting after this specific decade.
What are the 1990s? (Specifically 1994)
This American inventor and statesman didn't just fly a kite in a storm; he also invented bifocal eyeglasses and the lightning rod.
Who is Benjamin Franklin?
This coastal city is the capital of Western Australia, widely known as one of the most geographically isolated major cities on the planet.
What is Adelaide?
This slow-moving mammal spends its entire life hanging upside down in the trees, moving so slowly that green algae actually grows right on its fur to help camouflage it.
What is a sloth?
In 1932, this legendary aviation pioneer became the very first woman to fly solo across the entire Atlantic Ocean.
Who is Amelia Earhart?