CROSSWORD AND TRIVIA

DID YOU KNOW?

by Bryan Henry

The world’s largest volcano (it’s inactive) was recently discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean about 1,000 miles east of Japan. Called Tamu Massif, it’s about the size of New Mexico, and is 60 times bigger than Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano.

In 1993, scientists discovered the largest known concentration of active volcanoes on the seafloor in the South Pacific. The size of New York State, it contains more than 1,100 volcanic cones and seamounts.

The highest tides in the Pacific, up to 30 feet, occur near the Korean peninsula; the lowest, one foot, near the Midway Islands.

In 1929, author Zane Grey landed a 1,040-pound blue marlin in Tahiti, the first grander (a fish over 1,000 pounds) ever landed on rod and reel. A similar record was set with a 1,036-pound tiger shark in Australia.

lines or cables reaching from the rear of the vessel to the mast heads

Golf-club holder

Rotates from side to side about the fore-aft axis

When hatched, the giant Pacific octopus is the size of a grain of sand.

The deepest spot on Earth got protection in 2009 when the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument was established.

An unnamed mountain lying in the Pacific Ocean in a trench between Samoa and New Zealand is the world’s tallest completely submerged mountain. It’s 28,500 feet high, but its peak is 1,200 feet short of the surface.

More people have been to the moon than have been to the Challenger Deep in the Pacific, the deepest spot in the oceans.

The Pacific Ocean is five times wider than the moon.

More than 17 Arctic Oceans could fit into the surface area of the Pacific.

The strongest earthquake ever recorded occurred in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of southern Chile, in 1960.

Nine out of 10 earthquakes strike around the shores of the Pacific Ocean.