Five questions about Brazil – Quick Quiz answers

By Dave, 28 January 2014

We asked you five quick trivia questions about Brazil. Here are the answers:

1. Brazil’s so big it even shares a border with a European Union member state! Which one?
   France. Other than Ecuador and Chile, Brazil has a border with every country and territory on the continent of South America – including French Guiana, which is a fully-fledged French département.
2. Brazil’s top-selling beer is the international brand Skol. Where was it first brewed?
   Alloa, in Clackmannanshire. It started out as Graham’s Skol Pilsner Lager in 1959, but was selected by new owners Allied Breweries in the early 1960s to become an international beer to capitalise on growing overseas tourism. Skol arrived in Brazil in 1967 and had become the No.1 beer there by 1988.
3. What are castanhas do Pará (“Pará chestnuts”) better known as to English-speakers?
   Brazil nuts. Although Brazil produces and exports 8,000 tons of the world’s total annual production of 20,000 tons, it’s not the biggest producer – Bolivia is.
4. England crashed out of the 1950 FIFA World Cup after suffering a shock 1-0 defeat to the USA. In which Brazilian city?
   Belo Horizonte. It wasn’t England’s last group match – in theory they could have gone through if they’d beaten Spain on 2 July and then beaten them again in a playoff. But they lost that match too. Ominously, England face another unfancied team (Costa Rica) in Belo Horizonte on 24 June this year, although expectations aren’t so high this time round.
5. An early Sixties bossa nova song written by Antônio Carlos Jobim with original Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes, re-recorded in English by Astrud Gilberto in 1964, became a huge international hit. Can you name it?
   “Garota de Ipanema”, or “The Girl From Ipanema”. It’s believed to be the second most recorded pop song in history after Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday”. Ipanema is a wealthy beach suburb towards the south of Rio de Janeiro; in the Tupi language its name originally meant “stinky lake”.

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If you’d like to know more about Brazil and the Brazilians, you can find plenty more amazing facts like this in Dave’s book The Facts Lab Book of Brazil, available through the Amazon Kindle Store.