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The essentials of Brazil in eight sunny questions. Everyone can join in, and you might pick up a surprising fact or two along the way.
First day on the beach 0–3 · Feeling the rhythm 4–6 · Brazilian at heart 7–8
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Portuguese sailors reached Brazil in 1500, and their language stayed. Today nearly all of Brazil's more than 200 million people speak Portuguese, so there are about 20 times as many Portuguese speakers in Brazil as in Portugal itself. Most of Brazil's neighbours speak Spanish.
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Brazil's flag has a yellow diamond on a green background, with a blue globe in the middle. The stars on the globe show the sky over Rio de Janeiro on 15 November 1889, and there are 27 of them: one for each of the 26 states and one for the Federal District.
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About 60% of the Amazon rainforest lies in Brazil, and the rest is shared by eight other countries and territories. Scientists estimate that it holds about 390 billion trees of some 16,000 different kinds. The Congo rainforest, in Central Africa, is the second-largest on Earth.
Photo: CIAT, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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Brazil grows about a third of all the world's coffee. The first coffee bush in Brazil was planted in 1727, and a famous story says that the seeds were smuggled into the country hidden inside a bouquet of flowers.
Photo: Knase, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 de.
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Samba grew out of Afro-Brazilian music in the state of Bahia, with roots in West African rhythms. Rio has more than 200 'samba schools', which are not real schools at all but clubs of neighbours who dance together and compete in the giant Carnival parades. Tango comes from Argentina and Uruguay.
Photo: Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 br.
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Brasília was built almost from nothing in the middle of the country, in just 41 months. Seen from above, its plan looks like an aeroplane, with the government buildings lined up along its 'body'. São Paulo is Brazil's biggest city, but not its capital.
Photo: Arturdiasr, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Pelé won the World Cup in 1958, 1962 and 1970, and he is still the only player ever to win it three times. He was just 17 at his first final. His real name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento: his parents named him after the American inventor Thomas Edison.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Capybaras are superb swimmers and can hold their breath underwater for up to five minutes. They are so calm that birds often sit on their backs, catching the insects the capybaras stir up from the grass. Beavers are the second-biggest rodents, but they live in North America, Europe and Asia.
Photo: Giles Laurent, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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