Our Colourful World Trivia Quiz

Answer: United States of America

The White House is the official residence and office of the President of the United States of America. It is situated in Washington DC, the capital of the USA, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, one of the most well-known addresses in the world. It was designed by the architect James Hoban and was built between 1792 and 1800. It has been the home of every US president since John Adams first moved in there in 1800. President Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing in 1901 because the original building was getting too crowded and the very first Oval Office was created by President William Howard Taft in 1909.

Besides adding the West Wing, it was also President Roosevelt who officially gave the building its name of the White House in 1901 when he had the presidential stationary engraved with "The White House - Washington".

Answer: Italy

Situated on the island of Capri off the southern coast of Italy, the Blue Grotto, or Grotta Azzurra as it is known in Italian, is a sea cave that is world famous for the beautiful blue light found inside the cave. This blue light is caused by the reflection of sunlight passing through the seawater and entering the cavern. The cave is about 60 metres or 190 feet long and 25 metres or 80 feet wide. To enter the cave, visitors have to lie flat on the bottom of a row boat as the mouth of the cave is only about 1.2 metres or 4 feet high. Another interesting thing about the cave is that any objects that are placed in the water appear to be silver. This is caused by the bubbles surrounding the object reflecting the light differently.

The cave has been known since the time of the Roman Empire and was used by the Emperor Tiberius as his personal swimming pool. Unfortunately today, for safety and hygiene reasons, swimming in the grotto is forbidden.

Answer: Orange

The Orange River starts in the Drakensberg Mountains in Lesotho and flows for about 2200 kilometres or 1367 miles across South Africa before it empties into the Atlantic Ocean near Alexander Bay. The river was given its colourful name by the early Dutch settlers to the region who named it in honour of their royal family, the House of Orange.

Although the Orange River is its official name, the river is also known as the Gariep River or "great river" in the language of the local Khoi people. The river forms two international boundaries, one between South Africa and Lesotho and the other between South Africa and Namibia.

Answer: The Emerald Isle

Ireland is often referred to as the "Emerald Isle" because of the numerous shades of green found in the lush grasses and vegetation that cover the island. It has been said that there are over forty different shades of green to be found on the island.

The first recorded use of the nickname came in a poem written in 1795 by William Drebbam called "When Erin First Rose" . The island is made up of the independent Republic of Ireland with its capital in Dublin and the smaller Northern Ireland which is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

It has its capital in Belfast. The island is the world's 20th largest island and is situated just off the west coast of Great Britain in the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Answer: Black Forest

The Black Forest, or to give it its German name, Schwarzwald, is a heavily forested mountainous region that is found in southwestern Germany. The forest stretches for about 160 kilometres or 100 miles along the border between Germany and France and is situated in the German state of Baden-Wurttenberg and also includes the world famous spa town of Baden-Baden. The thick, dark forests which covered the area and which let little light through the trees' canopy to the ground led to the forest being called 'schwartz' or black by the local population.

Besides tourism, the Black Forest is also known for the manufacture of cuckoo clocks which the farmers made to help supplement their income during the long, cold winter months. The Black Forest also shares its name with a rich dessert called Black Forest Gateau which is made of layers of chocolate sponge cake interspersed with whipped cream and cherries to which a liqueur made from sour cherries has been added. This liqueur is a speciality of the Black Forest region hence the cake's name.

Answer: New Zealand

Aoteroa, which is commonly translated as "the land of the long white cloud", is the Maori name for New Zealand, although it originally only used to refer to the country's North Island. The Maoris are the indigenous Polynesian people who settled in what is today's New Zealand around 1300. New Zealand is situated in the southwestern Pacific Ocean and consists of two main islands, North Island and South Island together with about 600 smaller islands. Its capital city is Wellington which is located on the southern tip of North Island.

Sheep farming is a very important industry in New Zealand and it was once estimated that there were about twenty sheep for every person in the country. Rugby Union is the national sport of New Zealand and their national team, the All Blacks, are one of the most successful teams to play the game. New Zealand is a very colourful place because the national emblem of the All Blacks is the Silver Fern which is also used a symbol by a number of New Zealand companies and organizations.

Answer: Moscow

Officially known as Krasnaya Ploshclad, Red Square is one of the most well-known sites in Moscow, the capital of Russia. Contrary to popular belief, the name Red Square has nothing to do with communism. It comes from the old Russian word 'krasnayi' which originally meant beautiful, but which in the modern Russian has also come to mean red.

In addition, Red Square is not actually square, but is a long rectangle. It is situated east of the Kremlin, the old fortress which is now the official residence of the president of Russia. Red Square contains some of the most important landmarks in the country.

These include St Basil's Cathedral with its distinctive onion shaped domes, the huge GUM department store and the mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin, the man who founded the Soviet Union. Since 1941, Red Square has also been the site of the large military parades which are held on important dates such as May Day.

Answer: China

The Yellow River, or Huang He as it is also known, is the second longest river in China after the Yangtze River and is the sixth longest in the world. It starts in the Bayan Hur mountains in western China and flows across nine provinces for about 5464 kilometres or 3395 miles before it empties into the Bohai Sea near the city of Dongying. The river takes its name from the large amount of yellow clay dust which is deposited into the river by both wind and rain along its route and which gives the river a distinctive yellow colour. The Yellow River is also known as the "mother river of China" and is very important in the history of the country as its basin is where Chinese civilisation and culture began.

Unfortunately the river has also caused a great deal of damage as it is prone to large scale flooding and course changes which have resulted in the deaths of millions of people through the years. This has led to the river being called "China's Sorrow".

Answer: It is the world's largest island (excluding continents)

Greenland is the world's largest island if you exclude all of the continents. It comes in at a whopping 2 166 086 square kilometres or 836 109 square miles. This is more than twice the size of New Guinea, the world's second largest island, which is a mere 786 000 square kilometres or 303 500 square miles. It is situated between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans and forms part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Three quarters of the island is covered by a permanent ice-sheet, the only one to be found outside Antarctica.

There are a number of stories as to how the island came to be called Greenland, but the most popular one is that it was so called by the Erik the Red and the early Viking settlers in an attempt to make it sound like a pleasant place to live and so attract more settlers. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to have worked too well as the total population of the island is only around 56500 people which makes it the least densely populated country in the world. About a third of these people live in the capital city of Nuuk.

Answer: Gold

The Golden Gate Bridge is the most famous landmark in the Californian city of San Francisco and is said to be the most photgraphed bridge in the world. This beautiful suspension bridge takes its name from the Golden Gate Strait which is a 2.7 kilometre or 1.7 mile channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean and which the bridge crosses. This links the city of San Francisco to Marin County. Contrary to its name, the bridge is not actually gold but a colour called International Orange. This particular colour was chosen to make the bridge more visible in foggy weather conditions.

The bridge was opened in 1937 after four years of construction and has been declared one of the wonders of the modern world by the American Society of Civil Engineers.