New Zealand is often imagined as a peaceful land of mountains, sheep, and breathtaking scenery, but the country also has a long history of strange events, eccentric traditions, and unbelievable true stories. 25 New Zealand Facts That Sound Unreal explores the bizarre and fascinating side of the country, from drunken prime ministers and homemade cruise missiles to rivers with legal personhood and mountains with impossibly long names. These facts reveal a nation that is every bit as unusual as it is beautiful.
French Words Memorized, Language Unspoken
1. In 2015, Nigel Richards from New Zealand memorized every word in the French Scrabble dictionary and won the French Scrabble Championship, yet he still does not speak any French.
2. In 1984, New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon became intoxicated and impulsively called a general election, which he then lost.
3. In 1878, former New Zealand politician Joseph Hatch established a company that killed 2 million penguins and extracted oil from them.
4. New Zealand politician Jerningham Wakefield drank so heavily that his friends would lock him in Parliament overnight to keep him sober enough to vote the next day; in 1872 this tactic failed when his political enemies started lowering bottles of whiskey down the chimney.
5. In New Zealand, “coffin clubs” are groups of elderly people who band together to make their own funeral caskets, saying it helps fight loneliness and is a cost-effective way to obtain a coffin; they also make baby coffins and donate them to local hospitals.
6. Although New Zealand’s native Māori make up only 15% of the population, they constitute over 50% of the imprisoned population.
7. In 2003, a New Zealand engineer named Bruce Simpson designed a $5,000 cruise missile from off-the-shelf parts bought on the Internet. Although the project was entirely legal, the government shut it down.
8. The New Zealand badminton team were called the “Black Cocks”; the International Badminton Federation (IBF) found the name unacceptable and made them change it.
9. The Parliament of New Zealand keeps an official list of “unparliamentary language”, that is, insults and obscenities its members have used over the years that were considered inappropriate, such as “His brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides.”
10. There is a mountain named Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu in New Zealand. Its name translates to “The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who traveled about, played his nose flute to his loved one.”
Smothering Flames Thousands Above
11. New Zealand Victoria Cross recipient James Ward won it for actions during a raid over Germany on 7 July 1941. When his aircraft was set on fire, Ward crawled out onto the wing, several thousand feet in the air, and smothered the flames out. The bomber made it back.
12. New Zealand is a small part of Zealandia, the eighth continent. Zealandia is known as a drowned continent.
13. Disappointment Island is an uninhabited island in New Zealand. In 1868 a steel tanker crashed on the island, killing 68 people and leaving 15 survivors who waited 18 months to be rescued. In 1907 another ship was wrecked there and 12 men drowned.
14. A shark at a New Zealand aquarium was discovered to be pregnant when another shark attacked her and four baby sharks emerged from the open wound. Staff were surprised and found four more babies in her. If she had given birth at night, then her babies would have been eaten alive by other sharks.
15. On a small field outside the town of Cromwell in the South Island of New Zealand is a beetle called the Cromwell Chafer (Prodontria lewisi). The beetle is found nowhere else on the planet. The entire species can be found on an 81-hectare nature reserve.
16. In Auckland, New Zealand, the Ministry for the Environment grades 62% of rivers and lakes as poor for swimming, and 0% are graded as good.
17. In Auckland, New Zealand, during the mid-1970s to the early 1980s the Dawn Raids involved special police squads conducting raids at dawn on the homes and workplaces of overstayers throughout New Zealand, and overstayers and their families were often prosecuted.
18. Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand is the world’s steepest street, with a maximum slope of 19° or 35%.
19. Following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, New Zealand had a shortage of Marmite sandwich spread for more than a year; the crisis was named “Marmageddon.”
20. Gisborne Airport in New Zealand is one of the very few airports in the world that has an active railway line intersecting the runway.
Thousands Declared Jedi Belief
21. In the 2001 New Zealand census, 53,715 people recorded their religion as ‘Jedi’.
22. The Bob Semple tank was New Zealand’s first tank. Built on a tractor chassis, it used corrugated iron armor and was armed with six machine guns. After public ridicule, Bob Semple defended his design, saying “I don’t see anyone else coming up with any better ideas.”
23. In 2017, the Whanganui River, New Zealand’s third-largest river, was legally recognized as a person.
24. New Zealand’s navy was the last navy in the world to discontinue the traditional midday rum ration.
25. Egmont National Park in New Zealand is an almost perfect circle with a radius of six miles, surrounding a dormant stratovolcano.
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