New Zealand Cool Facts - Amazing Facts About New Zealand!

New Zealand has an interesting history, moving from wars to ultimately peace!

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The Maori people arrived by canoe from islands in Polynesia near Tahiti around 1,000 A.D. That is a seriously long time ago.

New Zealand was founded in 1642 by a Dutch explorer Abel Tasman. He visited the islands, but his party high-tailed it out of there over 100 years later after being attacked.

New Zealand was first called ‘Nieuw Zeeland’ after a region in the Netherlands.

In 1769, Captain James Cook came to the islands. He was British and they settled there. In 1840 they signed a treaty with the Maori people called The Treaty of Waitangi.

New Zealand is a really remote country, and a flight there from America would take about 13 hours and if you were flying from the UK you’d only get there about 24 hours later. This is one difficult place to get to.

It is rather small at 103,883 square miles (269,055 square kilometers). Now this is something to think about – it is about the same size as the UK.

Now the UK has 63 million people living there, and New Zealand only has about 4 million. Wow. This means New Zealand is one of the least populated countries in the world.

The capital city of New Zealand is Wellington; however the largest city is actually Auckland where most people live. Interestingly, Wellington is the southernmost capital in the world.

The highest mountain is Aoraki Mount Cook which is 12,316 feet high (3,754 metres). It was first just called just Aoraki or “Cloud Piercer” by the Maori people as they believed that the sons of the sky father, Raki, turned to stone and became the mountains.

Lake Taupo, the largest lake in New Zealand, was formed by a massive volcanic eruption 26,000 years ago. It was so huge that the dust could even be seen in China…that’s one mighty eruption.

New Zealand is home to one of the world’s heaviest insects. It’s called the weta and is part of the cricket family. It weighs 2.5 ounces (70 grams).

That is very heavy for an insect; it weighs three times more than a mouse and looks like a giant cockroach. Yuk! It’s hard to imagine an insect that size.

New Zealand has three official languages: English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language.

A huge 220 pounds (100kg) of butter and 143 pounds (65kg) of cheese are produced for each person that lives in New Zealand each year.

Try this for a tongue twister! The longest place name in the world is....wait for it - it even requires its own line here....
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, which is a hill in Hawkes Bay. Do you think you could pronounce that?

You probably know this, but all three Lord of the Rings movies were filmed in New Zealand. What you might not know is that this put heaps of money into the country’s pockets; around $200 million. They even created a Minister for Lord of the Rings.

And finally....Bungee jumping was invented in New Zealand! The world’s first commercial bungee jump was a 140 foot (43 meter) jump off the Kawarau Bridge in Queenstown in 1988.

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