23 Beautiful Facts About New Zealand That’ll Surprise You

New Zealand is a small piece of the 8th continent Zealandia. It is known as a drowned continent.

Disappointment Island is an uninhabited island in New Zealand. In 1868, a steel tanker crashed on the island which killed 68 people, leaving the 15 survivors waiting 18 months to be rescued. In 1907, another ship ended up crashing there and 12 men drowned.

A shark at a New Zealand aquarium was discovered to be pregnant when another shark attacked her and 4 baby sharks emerged from the open wound. Staff were surprised and found 4 more babies in her. If she’d given birth at night, then her babies would have been eaten alive by other sharks.

On a small field outside of 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.

In Auckland, New Zealand, 62% of the rivers and lakes are graded as poor by the Ministry for the Environment for swimming, and 0% of the rivers and lakes are graded as good.

The Dawn Raids in Auckland, New Zealand back in the mid-'70s to early 1980s involved special police squads conducting raids on the homes and workplaces of overstayers throughout New Zealand usually at dawn. Overstayers and their families were often prosecuted.

The world's steepest street is Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand. At its maximum slope, it measures 19° or 35%.

The 2011 Christchurch earthquake caused a shortage of Marmite sandwich spread in New Zealand for more than a year. The crisis was named "Marmageddon."

Gisborne Airport in New Zealand is one of the very few airports in the world that has an active railway line intersecting the runway.

On the 2001 New Zealand census, 53,715 people listed their religion as “Jedi.”