Know Your Capes

Question: The name of the South African city of Cape Town refers to which cape?

Answer: Cape Town, some 30 miles north of the Cape of Good Hope, originated as a 17th-century Dutch settlement known simply as De Kaap (the Cape).

Question: Which cape, in what is now Ghana, was once a major hub of the transatlantic slave trade?

Answer: A castle at Cape Coast, built in 1655 and now part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, held African slaves bound for the Americas until the 19th century.

Question: Which cape is the southernmost point of the archipelago at the bottom tip of South America?

Answer: Cape Horn is named for Hoorn, Netherlands, the birthplace of Dutch explorer Willen Schouten, who rounded the cape in 1616.

Question: Which cape, named for a British duke, forms the northernmost point of the Australian continent?

Answer: The British explorer James Cook, who sighted the cape in 1770, named it for King George III’s brother Prince Edward, duke of York and Albany.

Question: NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center is situated on which cape?

Answer: Cape Canaveral, located in the U.S. state of Florida, was known as Cape Kennedy in 1963–73.

Question: Which North Carolina cape shares its name with a popular 1962 film thriller (and its 1991 remake)?

Answer: The climax of the film—a fight between an ex-con and a lawyer who helped send him to jail—takes place on a houseboat on the Cape Fear River.

Question: Which African cape is the namesake of a nearby island country?

Answer: The country of Cabo Verde lies in the Atlantic Ocean, 385 miles west of the cape for which it was named.

Question: Which cape, a popular tourist destination, is located in the far southeastern part of the U.S. state of Massachusetts?

Answer: Cape Cod was named by the English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold, who visited its shores in 1602 and took aboard a "great store of codfish."

Question: Which cape, located on Nova Scotia’s largest island, gives its name to the island as a whole?

Answer: Cape Breton Island constitutes the northeastern portion of Nova Scotia and about one-fifth of the Canadian province’s total area.

Question: Which cape, part of the region known as the Mosquito Coast, marks the eastern end of the border between Honduras and Nicaragua?

Answer: The cape’s name (Spanish for "thanks to God") was reportedly bestowed by Christopher Columbus, who experienced favorable weather when passing it by ship in 1502.