Antarctica is a desert, despite being covered in ice.
Why it is true
A desert is defined by the amount of precipitation, not by temperature. Antarctica receives less than 50 millimetres of precipitation per year in many areas, making it the largest desert in the world. The interior of the continent is even drier than the Sahara.
Source: NASA
Would you rather be asked first?
This is the reading side of the site, so the answer is in the sentence above — that is the whole point of it. Test yourself works the other way round: the question comes on its own, and the fact and the explanation only appear once you have answered.
Related facts
The Atacama Desert in Chile is covered in flowers after unusual rainfall.
Welwitschia mirabilis, from the Namib Desert, can live more than a thousand years with just two leaves.
The Tree of Ténéré, in Niger, was the most isolated tree in the world until it was knocked down by a lorry in 1973.
A saguaro cactus can live more than 150 years and grow 12 metres tall.
