Scenic Gems Trivia Quiz

Answer: Belle Fourche River

This freak mountain erupts like a monstrous tree-stump 869 feet above the Belle Fourche River in the Black Hills northwest of Sundance, Wyoming. It is the first American National Monument to be declared. There is no proven explanation on how this mountain was formed.

Answer: 277 miles long

The canyon is more than 277 miles long, 1/4 to 15 miles wide and up to 5,300 feet deep. More than 2.6 trillion cubic yards of rock were swept away in its making and no one has yet worked out where this vast quantity of debris went.

Answer: A bristlecone pine

Trees more than 4,000 years old were discovered in the White Mountains of eastern California during the 1960s. The oldest is a bristlecone pine dating back 4,700 years, the tree rings of which were studied and compared to even older trees, enabling scientists to produce a reliable chronological sequence going back more than 6,000 years.

This tree, christened 'Prometheus' was cut down by vandals in 1964. The next oldest tree's location, 'Methuselah', was not disclosed to protect the tree.

Answer: Arizona

Thousands of conifer trees were turned to stone to form the Petrified Forest in Arizona. Some 175 million years ago, the desert plateau where the trees are now found was part of a swampy flood plain. In time, a layer of volcanic ash, rich in silicon compounds, covered the dead trees, and then rain and ground water began to pull silicon oxides (silica) from the ash, making a silica solution that slowly replaced the cell walls in the dead trees. Each former woody cell was in effect rebuilt into a stony cell made of silica.

Answer: Amazon

The Amazon has about 1,100 tributaries running into it, more than any other river in the world. Several of them, such as the Negro, the Xingu, the Tapajos, the Madeira and the Trombetas, are more than 1,000 miles long themselves. Although the Nile River is the longest river in the world (4,160 miles as opposed to approximately 4,000 miles of the Amazon), the Amazon drains a basin of approx. 2.5 million square miles, drawing water from both the north and south hemispheres and from six countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and Venezuela.

The mouth of the Amazon is 200 miles wide and from it flows one-fifth of all the river water in the world. All this from a river that finds its source from a silver thread of a mountain brook about 17,000 feet high in the snowbound peaks of the Peruvian Andes.

Answer: False

Although fish cannot live in the super-salty waters of the Dead Sea, some salt-tolerant organisms thrive there. One of these, Halobacterium halobium, contains a purple pigment that enables living cells to photosynthesize (like chlorophyll in green plants) to absorb the energy of sunlight and use it to convert water and carbon dioxide to carbohydrates such as glucose.

Answer: The shore of the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea, which is not technically a sea but rather a salt lake, has its shore 1,371 feet below the mean sea level of the eastern Mediterranean, making it the lowest point on the earth's land surface.

Answer: Stone Mountain, Georgia

Stone Mountain is a dome shaped Stone Mountain, Georgia, 12 miles northeast of Atlanta, is the largest mass of exposed granite in North America. It is some 1.5 miles across and rises 800 feet above the surrounding plain. On its face is the largest bas-relief in the world, and the faces of Confederates Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis can be seen there.

Answer: Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln

The first 150 years of American history are represented by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. The mountain took fourteen years to carve, and was named after a New York lawyer, Charles E. Rushmore.

Answer: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson

Three revered Civil War heroes of the Old South embellish the giant granite mass: Jefferson Davis (President of the Confederacy); General Robert E. Lee (commander in chief) and General Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson. This is where the second founding of the Ku Klux Klan was held.

Answer: Tamerlane

The bones of the dreaded Mongol conqueror Tamerlane (originally Timur-i-Lenk, meaning 'Timur the Lame') rest in the mausoleum, called Gur-e Amir. The skeleton revealed he had tuberculosis in his right thigh and shin and that both his right knee joint and right arm were immobilized. The tomb is reputedly cursed, and nobody dares entering it.

Answer: Uluru (Ayers Rock)

Australian Aborigines, who call this rock Uluru, revere it as sacred. One blood-streaked cave was used until earlier last century for initiation rites: Pitjantjara Aborigines opened veins in their arms there as a sign of approaching manhood. The rock was given its European name in 1873 by the explorer William Gosse, who named it after Sir Henry Ayers, premier of South Australia.

Answer: The Island of Capri, Italy

The Blue Grotto of the island of Capri in the Bay of Naples, Italy, became a popular tourist attraction after some quick thinking by a local hotel keeper. The Hidden Grotto, a more popular tourist attraction in 1826, was suddenly blocked by a landslide so a local hotel keeper had the bright idea of offering the Grotto Azzura ('Blue Groto') as a substitute.

The Blue Grotto can be reached only by boat and must be seen on a calm, sunny day. As sunlight enters the grotto from the small opening half below the sea, it is refracted and bathes the cave in a brilliant blue light.

Answer: Cape Three Points, Ghana

Cape Three Points, on the Gulf of Guinea near Tokoradi in Ghana, West Africa, is known as The Land Nearest Nowhere. It is the nearest land to a spot in the sea where zero latitude meets zero longitude at zero altitude.

Answer: False

During the past 10,000 years, Niagara Falls has been moving upstream at an average rate of about 300 feet per century. Geologists estimate that it will take another 25,000 years at least before the Niagara River cuts its way back to its source, Lake Erie, some 17 miles upstream from the present location of the {falls;} when that finally happens, most of the lake will drain away, and Niagara Falls will disappear.

Answer: Mount Athos

According to a special decree issued in A.D. 1060, no 'woman, female animal, child, eunuch or person with a beardless face' was allowed to set foot on Mount Athos, a mountain which is dedicated to a woman. Athos is regarded as sacred by the Eastern Orthodox Church and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Only recently has the ban been lifted for clean shaven men.

Answer: Cholula de Rivadabia in central Mexico

A massive pyramid believed to be the biggest monument ever built was raised by the fierce Toltec people at Cholula de Rivadabia in central Mexico. It stands 210' high, less than half the height of Egypt's Great Pyramid at Cheops, but its volume is estimated to be 4.3 million cubic yards compared with 3.3 million cubic yards of the Egyptian structure. Known as the pyramid of Quetzalcoatl, it was built between A.D. 900-1200 and covers 45 acres--more than three times the area of the Great Pyramid.

Answer: The Great Barrier Reef

The skeletons of countless billions of tiny sea creatures form the Great Barrier Reef, which stretches 1,250 miles along the northeast coast of Australia, almost as far as Papua New Guinea. The largest structure ever created by any living creature, including the human species, the reef is a complex chain of coral reefs and islands rather than one single great wall.

The Great Barrier Reef covers an area roughly the size of Kansas and has taken 12-15 million years to form.

Answer: Jagersfontein Mines ,South Africa

The largest excavation ever dug--the Big Hole at Kimberley, in South Africa--was the work of diamond miners wielding picks and shovels. In the course of 44 years, from 1871 until the mine closed in 1915, they removed about 25 million tons of clay and rock--and 14.5 million carats (about 3 tons) of diamonds. The great mine is now an open-air museum.

Answer: the megalithic buildings of Malta and Gozo

The oldest examples of human construction still standing are megalithic buildings on the islands of Malta and Gozo in the Mediterranean Sea. Dating from about 3250 B.C. and thought to be ancient temples, they are great slabs of rock arranged in a pattern that somewhat resembles Stonehenge.

Answer: Great Library at Alexandria

The Greek author Antipater of Sidon, who lived in the 2nd century B.C., was one of several writers to list the greatest monuments and buildings known to the classical world. He settled on seven because that was considered a magic number by the Greeks.

The Seven Wonders are: The Egyptian Pyramids, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Asia Minor, the Pharos of Alexandria, the Statue of Zeus at Olympus and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Asia Minor.

Answer: Great Australian Desert

Scientists define deserts as areas that have less than 10 inches of rain per year. Such areas include not only hot deserts but cold deserts (such as Greenland, Antarctica and northern Russia). A third type of desert, known as edaphic, is an area where, despite adequate rainfall, the soil is too poor to support plants. The Great Australian desert is actually made up over several deserts.

Answer: Atacama Desert in Chile

The driest warm spot on earth is the Atacama Desert in Chile. Some parts went without rain for 400 years, from 1570 to 1971. Why warm spot? Well, studies aren't definite, but the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica may be drier.

Answer: Lambert Glacier in Antarctica

The world's longest glacier is the Lambert Glacier in Antarctica, which is at least 250 miles long. The fastest-flowing major glacier is the Qarayaq Glacier in Greenland, which has been reported to be moving forward as much as 80 feet per day.

Answer: Mexico City, Mexico

In Mexico City, as wells draw out more and more water for the city's expanding population of more than 15 million people, the entire city is slowly sinking at the rate of 6 to 8 inches per year.