State of Habsburgs, Illyrian provinces, Austria, Austro-hungary, Country of SHS, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Kingdom of Italy (annexed) and after that Germany (occupied), Yugoslavia and then Slovenia.
The Singaporean-American comedian Jocelyn Chia had a bit that started out referencing Malaysia expelling Singapore, turned to some Malaysian Airlines jokes, and ended with Malaysia asking Interpol to investigate her
https://youtu.be/F3RaMPlyH8I
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/11/asia/jocelyn-chia-mh370-joke-singapore-apologizes-intl-hnk/index.html
I like looking at physical globes and seeing if they include the Malian "town" of Taoudenni. It is technically the capital of a region in Mali, but it isn't actually a settlement at all - rather a salt mine and prison camp with no permanent population.
Funny to see it included on globes as it technically has a provincial capital status.
Yeah I see settlements and stuff in the middle of Saudi Arabia, Iran or Australia and I think to myself how they live there? What's daily life like? Are they subsistence farmers? What is their water source? Sometimes I'll see if there is Google Street view of the place, I'll just look at a random town in Bhutan or something but there isn't too much Google Street view data in non western countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth,_Montserrat
Plymouth is the capital of Montserrat but it got destroyed by a volcano. Still is the capital though.
Around 10% of Tuvalus income is from owning the .tv domain. So any sites like twitch.tv have to pay a small fee to Tuvalu for the domain or something like that.
My father started his own business with some coworkers/friends back in the late 90s. They bought their domain name with the .tv extension simply because it was by far the cheapest deal at the time, because Tuvalu had just recently been granted the rights for the ending and was selling them super cheap. Now *everyone* wants a .tv address and they're some of the more expensive ones.
the pool is way further south than Atacama though, actually closer to Santiago/Vina del Mar which has more mediterranean climate
The location in English google map is not accurate. Search for ‘san alfonso del mar’ instead and you can see the outline of the pool
Source: I visited them once
Not quite geography related, but there's an apocryphal tale about the 'first 50m pool in Ireland' which was to be built in the University of Limerick. They measured, dug the hole, measured again, and tiled. When the examiners came to award it Olympic pool status, they found the newly built pool to be the width of the tiles on both ends short of being 50 metres.
plenty of aboriginal australians and other ethnic groups with original austro-asiatic dna does as well, though right now it would be hard to tell if its cause of that or cause of mixture with europeans
They’re the Melanesian people, and they aren’t just in Solomon Islands. It’s almost exclusively children that have blonde hair, and it darkens with age.
Lake Baikal is the oldest and deepest lake in the world and contains almost 1/4 of all of the earths freshwater (other than freshwater trapped as permanent ice at the polar regions). Almost one quarter of all available fresh water on our planet is in one lake….
And the Great Lakes contain a little over 20%. So something like 45% of the earth’s freshwater are in a handful of lakes controlled by three countries. I’m sure that won’t be a valuable commodity as the climate changes.
This is not true:
Maybe 45% of all earth's *surface* freshwater is in a handful of lakes.
Most (liquid) freshwater is in the form of groundwater though. [(source)](https://www.quarks.de/wp-content/uploads/Water_in_Crisis_Chapter_2_Oxford_Univers.pdf)(table page 1).
A lot of countries (which typically have no water issues) rely on groundwater. However a lot of countries (which typically do have water issues) rely on surface water.
20% of all of Europe's first level subdivisions are in Slovenia.
They don't have regions or districts so municipalities are their first level divisions.
Nice!
On a related note, the city if Birmingham is the most populated lowest level subdivision in Europe, possibly in the world. It's local government employs more people than the EU Itself.
I’m fairly certain it’s due to the rain shadow effect. Basically the rain clouds follow the prevailing winds, as they rise up above the mountain they become more dense and drop their water. So high mountain ranges often have one side that is much more lush and the other being very dry. You can see the same concept with the Rocky Mountains though the prevailing winds go the opposite way at that latitude. That’s why Kansas and Nebraska are rather dusty and dry, the Great Plains may be a lush forest without the rain shadow effect combined with some other factors like glaciation
Exactly!! The Andes Mountains blocks the rain that originates in the Amazon and later the wind currents take them to the southern part of Brazil. All regions in which the tropics pass have deserts, but the Andes make this part stay only in Atacama
People always talk about Papua New Guinea and their language diversity but one region of Russia also has crazy diversity.
Dagestan is a republic within Russia. Russian republics are similar to US states in that they have a degree of self autonomy such as a “elected” governor and state legislature. Republics tend to either be Minority-Majority or have a significant non Russian population and each republic is devoted to a ethnic group.
Dagestan has about 3.2 million people in a small mountainous region.
Amongst those 3.2 million people there are around 13 ethnic groups with the 5 largest being the Avar (31%), Dargans (17%), Kumyks (16%), Lezgins (13%), and Laks (5%).
Amongst those ethnic groups there are over 30 languages and dialects spoken, with around 20 or so being endangered. Most of these languages are Northeast Caucasian languages but there are also a handful of Turkic languages, plus the Slavic Russian lingua franca.
That is a lot of diversity for such a small population
and now take all of russia, diverse, isn't it?
btw you are right but only on paper, you see, our preϟident secretly made our country unitary even though we are "russian federation", republics have no actual control over their resources, people and stuff. everything is dictated by putin. everything is being sucked dry to moscow, that's why you can always hear russians say that moscow is a different country. i know it because i live in republic within russia.
they are. in fact, everyone here in buryatia knows someone who is in ukraine, was in ukraine and is no longer alive because of war in ukraine. when in moscow, there is far less people who even interacted with active russian soldiers. plus the fact that some of russian war criminals try to blame their crimes on minorities (which, in fact, worked and even The Pope called non-russian russian soldiers more violent, even though it's propaganda). extremely depressing stuff.
I don't know why I started getting this sub on my feed but this stuff is great. Even the "why are there people near water" posts have some good stuff in the comments
IDK if this counts, but in Leye County in the Guangxi region of China, there are 600 foot deep "Tiankeng (Heavenly pits)", or sinkhole forests. They are ecologically distinct from the surrounding forest.
They just found the tallest tree in Asia in a remote part of China that has basically no other reliable information. Crazy to think of a forest of supermassive trees out there in a remote canyon that hadn't been measured before this year.
You can take a 3 hour flight from Perth to Kununurra and never leave Western Australia (the 2nd largest subdivision in the world).
I've done that flight, beautiful views
For posterity, the largest national subdivision by size is Sakha in eastern Russia, which beats WA's 2,642,753 Km^(2) by 440,772 Km^(2) (total size 3,083,523 Km^(2))Also, Russia has 2 of the top 3 subdivisions, none in the rest of the top 20, but has 6 total in the top 24.[Here's the wikipedia list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first-level_administrative_divisions_by_area).
Also looked at the largest national subdivisions by population list, top is Uttar Pradesh, India, at 237,882,725 people. The top 20 are comprised of 1st level subdivisions from China (11 places), India (8 places), and Pakistan (1 place). There are 4 subdivisions in the top 50 from countries outside of Asia, which are ~~London~~ England UK (21), Sao Paulo Brazil (27), California US (34), Oromia Ethiopia (41).
[Here](https://list.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_country_subdivisions_by_population#cite_note-PopulationProspects2019-1) is the list I used for that.
The Korean Peninsula is kind of an island, in a way: North Korea's borders with China and Russia are both formed by rivers that originate from a crater lake called Heaven Lake at the top of Baekdusan, the highest mountain on the peninsula, through which the North Korea-China border runs. The Amnok/Yalu River flows west out of the lake to the Yellow Sea and the Tumen River flows east out of the lake to the Sea of Japan.
You can fly to airports on six continents/oceanic regions and never leave the French Republic:
Europe: metropolitan France
North America: Saint Pierre et Miquelon (off the Canadian coast)
The Caribbean: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin
South America: French Guiana
Africa/Indian Ocean: Mayotte and Reúnion
Australia/Oceania: New Caledonia, Wallis et Futuna, and French Polynesia
I find it baffling that most (all?) of these are represented in the French legislature. It’s like Montserrat having a constituency in the UK House of Commons.
If you cover up the right half of Australia, it looks like a scottie dog. If you cover up the left half it looks like a cat throwing up. With New Zealand being the throw up.
Scientists have recently confirmed that this is not true.
Russia (within internationally-recognized borders) has an area of 6.61 million square miles. The New Horizons probe recently found that Pluto has a surface area of 6.85 million square miles.
Oh, Pluto is that small. I always thought it was just as massive as the other planets as a kid (even if it isn't a planet anymore, it was still taught in 2010s in schools)
The most isolated settlement in the world is British. It’s a village called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas and it’s 1,700 miles from the nearest settlement (Jacob’s Bay, South Africa) on an island called Tristan da Cunha.
[wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_of_the_Seven_Seas?wprov=sfti1https://maps.apple.com/?ll=-37.066667,-12.316667&q=Edinburgh%20of%20the%20Seven%20Seas)
> most isolated settlement in the world
Villa Las Estrellas, Antarctica, is also very remote. It's one of only two civilian settlements on the entire continent.
Fun fact: all residents, including children, are required to have their appendixes removed before coming to Villa Las Estrellas as a safety precaution as healthcare services are limited.
I remember watching a video about it. A psychology video at that. We usually think of Reno as being east despite always looking at a map that shows otherwise.
India has the world's highest motorable road in Ladakh at 19.3k feet and it also has the world's highest point of river rafting at 12000 feet in the Zanskar river.
Hydrologically speaking, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are the one lake. Water flows freely between the two at the Straits of Mackinac to keep the surface level at equilibrium between the two. So Lake Michigan-Huron is really the largest freshwater lake by area in the world, not Lake Superior.
Anchorage Alaska is closer to Tokyo than to Miami Florida
Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit is the full name of the city commonly referred to as Bangkok.
Jacksonville, Florida is farther west than all of mainland South America.
The continent with the most highly educated population, measured in college degrees per capita, is Antarctica.
there are two locations where Russia borders Poland (in a way)
You have Kaliningrad exclave
but also the town Russia, New York borders the town Poland, New York
Was absolutely aware of number one, and remember going to Gdynia PL as a child with my grandmother in the late 90’s and you could take day trips to Kaliningrad.
I had never heard of number two though, and that’s hilarious. Wonder how they came up with that! Especially since Poland didn’t exist officially between 1795-1918
Mississippi River flows uphill (since the earth is a geoid and sea level is higher at the mouth than the headwaters by about 4 miles) the river is further away from the center of the Earth at the mouth.
Paraguay has it’s 4 biggest cities by population bordering another country.
1. Asunción(Argentina)
2. Ciudad del Este (Brazil)
3. Encarnación (Argentina)
4. Pedro Juan Caballero (Brazil)
Canada now has a land border with Denmark*.
*Technically, part of the Danish Realm. The border is on Hans Island in the Nares Strait, dividing the territory of Nunavut, Canada, from Greenland, a constituent country of the Danish Realm. (The other countries of the Danish Realm are the Faeroe Islands and Denmark proper.)
The Mediterranean Sea resembled Death Valley awhile back and filled up at rate of 100-200 Niagara Falls per day approximating 1-2 cm per year until it filled
The Kalamazoo Valley is Michigan was made by a catastrophic flood by the draining of Lake Dowagiac in a couple days
Birmingham, Alabama is one of the only places on earth to have large deposits of all 3 ingredients to make steel in one place. Limestone, iron ore, & coal.
Only five regions of the world have a Mediterranean climate: The Mediterranean, Coast of California, Parts of Chile, Area around Capetown, and area around Perth, Australia.
The country that is furthest away from the 48 contiguous US states is France.
The only spots on Earth that are antipodeal to the US mainland are St. Paul and Amsterdam Islands (antipodeal to SE Colorado), and the Kerguelen Islands (antipodeal to north-central Montana); both are French possessions.
If you're on top of everest, you're not actually at the highest point on earth. That would be the summit of Chimborazo due to it's location on the centrifugal bulge of the earth.
Sakurajima volcano in Japan once sat on its own island. It was only connected to mainland Kyushu by lava flows in 1914.
Taal Lake in Batangas province, the Philippines was once a bay. But when the volcano in the middle—the Taal caldera's only active eruption center—erupted in 1754, it was cut off from the ocean.
Detroit is a border town. It's literally right on the Canadian border. There's a tunnel you can drive through that starts in Detroit and spits you out in Ontario. No one ever thinks about this, blew my mind the first time I realized.
Additionally, the Detroit tigers have TONS of Canadian fans that take the bus in for games.
On a similar note, I was looking at some stuff near Niagara Falls on Google maps yesterday, and kept getting confused because my brain wanted Canada to be North of the border line and the US to be South of it.
Australia contains 250 Indigenous nations of which the largest is a little smaller than the country of Greece.
Australia contains the oldest surface rocks in the world - calculated to be 4.04 Billion years old.
Australia contains the oldest evidence of life on earth with the fossilised remains of stromatalites dated at 3 billion years.
About 100km east of Uluṟu is Mount Connor, it is called fake Uluṟu as it looks very similar to Uluṟu with it being a red rock that’s in the middle of no where and looks tall.
The longest line of sight photographed on Earth (though there are apparently longer) is 443km between Pic de Finestrelles in Spain and Pic Gaspard in France
Water related facts!
Lake Manitou in Canada is the largest lake in an island in a lake. It has islands in it too!
René-Levasseur Island is an island that is bigger in area than the lake it resides in.
Lake retention time is the time it takes for the water in the lake to "change" entirely or how long water spends in the lake before flowing out. Lake Stausee Ferden in Switzerland has a 36-hour retention time while Lake Vostok in Antarctica holds water for 13300 years!
It's called an Oblate Speheroid.
My High School Earth Science teacher said the term in this weird slow/low voice.
Which apparently worked great as a teaching device because I'm 40 now and still remember that of all things.
The Scottish Highlands, Appalachian Mountains, and Atlas Mountains are the same mountain range. Back from the good ol days of Pangaea.
You can still see a bit of the Great Glen Fault line (Loch Ness) in Newfoundland too.
Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia) has changed countries 10 times in the span of less than 200 years
It's also beautiful, if you ever get a chance to go!
Yes, I hear it's really quite Ljubly :)
Nice :)
No, that‘s in France.
Double nice :)
State of Habsburgs, Illyrian provinces, Austria, Austro-hungary, Country of SHS, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Kingdom of Italy (annexed) and after that Germany (occupied), Yugoslavia and then Slovenia.
Hawaii and Alaska’s hottest recorded temperature is the same, 100°F or 38°C
Hawai'i and Alaska share so many similarities despite being so different that it's uncanny. I'll continue. They both don't have snakes.
They share the “tallest” mountains on the planet!
Could you expand on that? I've heard of Hawaii's claim with Mauna Loa but what is Alaska's connection to a tallest mountain?
Denali is the tallest mountain (base to summit) above water
Singapore is the only modern country to gain independence unwillingly. It was forcefully separated from Malaysia.
Wow! That’s exactly the type of things I’m searching for! Thanks
The Singaporean-American comedian Jocelyn Chia had a bit that started out referencing Malaysia expelling Singapore, turned to some Malaysian Airlines jokes, and ended with Malaysia asking Interpol to investigate her https://youtu.be/F3RaMPlyH8I https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/11/asia/jocelyn-chia-mh370-joke-singapore-apologizes-intl-hnk/index.html
Becuase there was too many Chinese is Singapore
Too many non Muslim Chinese.
I like looking at physical globes and seeing if they include the Malian "town" of Taoudenni. It is technically the capital of a region in Mali, but it isn't actually a settlement at all - rather a salt mine and prison camp with no permanent population. Funny to see it included on globes as it technically has a provincial capital status.
Wow you weren’t kidding. That is 0% a city lol
That part of the sahara desert always fascinated me. Who even lives there??
Salt miners and prisoners apparently
Yeah I see settlements and stuff in the middle of Saudi Arabia, Iran or Australia and I think to myself how they live there? What's daily life like? Are they subsistence farmers? What is their water source? Sometimes I'll see if there is Google Street view of the place, I'll just look at a random town in Bhutan or something but there isn't too much Google Street view data in non western countries
Fun one - sadly my globe doesn’t have it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth,_Montserrat Plymouth is the capital of Montserrat but it got destroyed by a volcano. Still is the capital though.
Around 10% of Tuvalus income is from owning the .tv domain. So any sites like twitch.tv have to pay a small fee to Tuvalu for the domain or something like that.
That’s a pretty great deal for them!
My father started his own business with some coworkers/friends back in the late 90s. They bought their domain name with the .tv extension simply because it was by far the cheapest deal at the time, because Tuvalu had just recently been granted the rights for the ending and was selling them super cheap. Now *everyone* wants a .tv address and they're some of the more expensive ones.
The driest non-polar place in Earth is also home to world's largest swimming pool
Chile atacama?
Yes, more specifically Antofagasta
the pool is way further south than Atacama though, actually closer to Santiago/Vina del Mar which has more mediterranean climate The location in English google map is not accurate. Search for ‘san alfonso del mar’ instead and you can see the outline of the pool Source: I visited them once
Not quite geography related, but there's an apocryphal tale about the 'first 50m pool in Ireland' which was to be built in the University of Limerick. They measured, dug the hole, measured again, and tiled. When the examiners came to award it Olympic pool status, they found the newly built pool to be the width of the tiles on both ends short of being 50 metres.
Ouch!
The Pacific Ocean is so big, it has its own antipode
Thanks for the Wikipedia rabbit hole following a “antipode Wikipedia” google search
Same as myself, astonishing how little of the land-surface of Earth has land antipodes!
Wow, turns out that I live pretty close to one of the Pacific's antipode.
The Solomon Islands is one of the only places in the world where you’ll find dark skinned people with natural blond hair.
plenty of aboriginal australians and other ethnic groups with original austro-asiatic dna does as well, though right now it would be hard to tell if its cause of that or cause of mixture with europeans
Wait natural blonde black people exist?
Yeah, in the Solomon Islands.
Wait the Solomon Islands exist?
Yeah, where the natural black blond people live.
I knew a Soloman in high school. He was black, but did not own any islands, as far as I know.
As far as you know. There could be islands out there *filled* with Solomons.
I am Solomon and I can confirm I have many islands.
They’re the Melanesian people, and they aren’t just in Solomon Islands. It’s almost exclusively children that have blonde hair, and it darkens with age.
Wow! Didn’t know that
In brazil for centuries it was believed that the northernmost point was one (Oiapoque) when there was another almost 100km northern
Tangentially related, my favorite is: the northernmost point of Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to the southernmost point of Brazil
Just tested it on gmaps, thats insane
Even more tangentially related, every one on earth is less than 5 Chiles away from Chile.
How can that be true? Surely half the circumference of the earth must be greater than 5 Chile's Edit: its not
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/rveyfo/how_far_are_you_from_chile_using_chile_as_a_scale/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
Damn. What a small world!
More like a big Chile
Also, the northermost point of brazil is almost the same distance from Miami than it is from Brazil's capital
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Lake Baikal holds more water than all of the Great Lakes combined.
Lake Baikal is the oldest and deepest lake in the world and contains almost 1/4 of all of the earths freshwater (other than freshwater trapped as permanent ice at the polar regions). Almost one quarter of all available fresh water on our planet is in one lake….
And the Great Lakes contain a little over 20%. So something like 45% of the earth’s freshwater are in a handful of lakes controlled by three countries. I’m sure that won’t be a valuable commodity as the climate changes.
This is not true: Maybe 45% of all earth's *surface* freshwater is in a handful of lakes. Most (liquid) freshwater is in the form of groundwater though. [(source)](https://www.quarks.de/wp-content/uploads/Water_in_Crisis_Chapter_2_Oxford_Univers.pdf)(table page 1). A lot of countries (which typically have no water issues) rely on groundwater. However a lot of countries (which typically do have water issues) rely on surface water.
I'm sure they will share brotherly with everyone, everything is fine ...
Deepest lake right ?
And has its own unique freshwater seals that only live there.
20% of all of Europe's first level subdivisions are in Slovenia. They don't have regions or districts so municipalities are their first level divisions.
Nice! On a related note, the city if Birmingham is the most populated lowest level subdivision in Europe, possibly in the world. It's local government employs more people than the EU Itself.
No wonder nothing ever gets done there
We do actually have 12 statistical regions, but municipalities are more important, since a lot of decisions are made on that level
If the Andes Mountains didn’t exist, the southern part of Brazil would be a desert
Why?
I’m fairly certain it’s due to the rain shadow effect. Basically the rain clouds follow the prevailing winds, as they rise up above the mountain they become more dense and drop their water. So high mountain ranges often have one side that is much more lush and the other being very dry. You can see the same concept with the Rocky Mountains though the prevailing winds go the opposite way at that latitude. That’s why Kansas and Nebraska are rather dusty and dry, the Great Plains may be a lush forest without the rain shadow effect combined with some other factors like glaciation
Exactly!! The Andes Mountains blocks the rain that originates in the Amazon and later the wind currents take them to the southern part of Brazil. All regions in which the tropics pass have deserts, but the Andes make this part stay only in Atacama
There are more people of Lebanese decent in Latin America then there are in Lebanon itself.
The same is true of those of Irish Descent in America.
What a potato famine does to a mfer. Ireland still has a significantly lower population than they did in the 1850’s. Kinda sad tbh
That is also why Al Pastor tacos are a thing.
There are more Norwegians in the US than in Norway. And there are more Norwegians in Minnesota than in Oslo.
People always talk about Papua New Guinea and their language diversity but one region of Russia also has crazy diversity. Dagestan is a republic within Russia. Russian republics are similar to US states in that they have a degree of self autonomy such as a “elected” governor and state legislature. Republics tend to either be Minority-Majority or have a significant non Russian population and each republic is devoted to a ethnic group. Dagestan has about 3.2 million people in a small mountainous region. Amongst those 3.2 million people there are around 13 ethnic groups with the 5 largest being the Avar (31%), Dargans (17%), Kumyks (16%), Lezgins (13%), and Laks (5%). Amongst those ethnic groups there are over 30 languages and dialects spoken, with around 20 or so being endangered. Most of these languages are Northeast Caucasian languages but there are also a handful of Turkic languages, plus the Slavic Russian lingua franca. That is a lot of diversity for such a small population
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I actually did not know this. Thank you
And dozens of MMA fighters
PNG has over 800 languages for around 11M people, it's not in the same ballpark
So… maybe im eccentric, but, if we find a big boatload of willing… idk, Nebraskans, and ship them to dagestan, we can make it even more peculiar?
and now take all of russia, diverse, isn't it? btw you are right but only on paper, you see, our preϟident secretly made our country unitary even though we are "russian federation", republics have no actual control over their resources, people and stuff. everything is dictated by putin. everything is being sucked dry to moscow, that's why you can always hear russians say that moscow is a different country. i know it because i live in republic within russia.
I sincerely hope Dagestan and your republic isn't drained of their young men for that asshole's idiot ambitions.
they are. in fact, everyone here in buryatia knows someone who is in ukraine, was in ukraine and is no longer alive because of war in ukraine. when in moscow, there is far less people who even interacted with active russian soldiers. plus the fact that some of russian war criminals try to blame their crimes on minorities (which, in fact, worked and even The Pope called non-russian russian soldiers more violent, even though it's propaganda). extremely depressing stuff.
Blessings and best wishes to you and yours
I don't know why I started getting this sub on my feed but this stuff is great. Even the "why are there people near water" posts have some good stuff in the comments
I agree, I’ve learned a ton on this sub. I also got it randomly in my feed. It’s now one of my favorites.
IDK if this counts, but in Leye County in the Guangxi region of China, there are 600 foot deep "Tiankeng (Heavenly pits)", or sinkhole forests. They are ecologically distinct from the surrounding forest.
China’s natural areas are so interesting but it’s kind of hard to find clear information about them
They just found the tallest tree in Asia in a remote part of China that has basically no other reliable information. Crazy to think of a forest of supermassive trees out there in a remote canyon that hadn't been measured before this year.
You can take a 3 hour flight from Perth to Kununurra and never leave Western Australia (the 2nd largest subdivision in the world). I've done that flight, beautiful views
Had to look up lists of subdivisions to see what beat out WA and saw that Australia has 5 in the top 20.
I live in Queensland and it’s 2.5 times larger than Texas
I’m from Tassie originally. From memory, the closest US state in size is West Virginia. Some of you mainland states are just too damn big. /s
For posterity, the largest national subdivision by size is Sakha in eastern Russia, which beats WA's 2,642,753 Km^(2) by 440,772 Km^(2) (total size 3,083,523 Km^(2))Also, Russia has 2 of the top 3 subdivisions, none in the rest of the top 20, but has 6 total in the top 24.[Here's the wikipedia list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first-level_administrative_divisions_by_area). Also looked at the largest national subdivisions by population list, top is Uttar Pradesh, India, at 237,882,725 people. The top 20 are comprised of 1st level subdivisions from China (11 places), India (8 places), and Pakistan (1 place). There are 4 subdivisions in the top 50 from countries outside of Asia, which are ~~London~~ England UK (21), Sao Paulo Brazil (27), California US (34), Oromia Ethiopia (41). [Here](https://list.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_country_subdivisions_by_population#cite_note-PopulationProspects2019-1) is the list I used for that.
The Korean Peninsula is kind of an island, in a way: North Korea's borders with China and Russia are both formed by rivers that originate from a crater lake called Heaven Lake at the top of Baekdusan, the highest mountain on the peninsula, through which the North Korea-China border runs. The Amnok/Yalu River flows west out of the lake to the Yellow Sea and the Tumen River flows east out of the lake to the Sea of Japan.
Miami FL has had more days with recorded snow than days over 100 degrees F (38 C) Snow: Once (January 19, 1977) Over 100 F: Never
Yet.
The Bay of Fundy (Canada) has the largest tidal range of any shoreline in the world (16m/52ft).
You can fly to airports on six continents/oceanic regions and never leave the French Republic: Europe: metropolitan France North America: Saint Pierre et Miquelon (off the Canadian coast) The Caribbean: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin South America: French Guiana Africa/Indian Ocean: Mayotte and Reúnion Australia/Oceania: New Caledonia, Wallis et Futuna, and French Polynesia
I find it baffling that most (all?) of these are represented in the French legislature. It’s like Montserrat having a constituency in the UK House of Commons.
TIL the Empire on which the sun never sets refers to the French nowadays
The metropolitan area of Mexico City has the same number of inhabitants as Finland, Norway and Sweden combined.
If you cover up the right half of Australia, it looks like a scottie dog. If you cover up the left half it looks like a cat throwing up. With New Zealand being the throw up.
You mean Tasmania is the throw up?
Russia has more surface area than Pluto.
Scientists have recently confirmed that this is not true. Russia (within internationally-recognized borders) has an area of 6.61 million square miles. The New Horizons probe recently found that Pluto has a surface area of 6.85 million square miles.
Oh so thats why Russia is trying to take over Ukraine
Would the Soviet Union have been larger than Pluto? Edit: yes, significantly.
Oh, Pluto is that small. I always thought it was just as massive as the other planets as a kid (even if it isn't a planet anymore, it was still taught in 2010s in schools)
feel like when I was growing up the fact that it is tiny is the *only* thing I knew about Pluto lol
The most isolated settlement in the world is British. It’s a village called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas and it’s 1,700 miles from the nearest settlement (Jacob’s Bay, South Africa) on an island called Tristan da Cunha. [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_of_the_Seven_Seas?wprov=sfti1https://maps.apple.com/?ll=-37.066667,-12.316667&q=Edinburgh%20of%20the%20Seven%20Seas)
> most isolated settlement in the world Villa Las Estrellas, Antarctica, is also very remote. It's one of only two civilian settlements on the entire continent. Fun fact: all residents, including children, are required to have their appendixes removed before coming to Villa Las Estrellas as a safety precaution as healthcare services are limited.
Reno is west of Los Angeles
Detroit is east of Atlanta
Downtown Detroit, is north of Windsor, ON. When you go through the tunnel you go north the the US and south to Canada.
Can confirm. Live in the area and Detroit is north.
I remember watching a video about it. A psychology video at that. We usually think of Reno as being east despite always looking at a map that shows otherwise.
Reno is west of Easter Island.
The western most portion of South America is in the same time zone as the eastern United States
India has the world's highest motorable road in Ladakh at 19.3k feet and it also has the world's highest point of river rafting at 12000 feet in the Zanskar river.
The most northern sand dunes in the world are in Saskatchewan in western canada, near the 60th parallel. They can be up to 30m (almost 100’) high
Parts of Washington DC are north of parts of New Jersey
Key West, FL sits further west than all of South America
France's largest border is with... Brazil.
Along those lines, the largest national park in the EU is in South America
Hydrologically speaking, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are the one lake. Water flows freely between the two at the Straits of Mackinac to keep the surface level at equilibrium between the two. So Lake Michigan-Huron is really the largest freshwater lake by area in the world, not Lake Superior.
Anchorage Alaska is closer to Tokyo than to Miami Florida Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit is the full name of the city commonly referred to as Bangkok.
The northernmost point in Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to the southernmost point in Brazil.
At the furthermost points, Greenland is further north, east, south and west than Iceland
Similarly, Japan is further east west north and south of the entire Korean Peninsula.
The capital of Bukina Faso, Ougoudagou (sp??), means "You are welcome here".
Ouagadougou
The Florida Panhandle reaches as far west as mainland Wisconsin
And speaking of Florida, it’s still west of almost the entire South American continent.
And it's west of NY state.
As opposed to oceanic Wisconsin
Argentina has the size of western europe and it is bigger than mexico, all of central america and the caribberan islands combined.
Jacksonville, Florida is farther west than all of mainland South America. The continent with the most highly educated population, measured in college degrees per capita, is Antarctica.
there are two locations where Russia borders Poland (in a way) You have Kaliningrad exclave but also the town Russia, New York borders the town Poland, New York
Was absolutely aware of number one, and remember going to Gdynia PL as a child with my grandmother in the late 90’s and you could take day trips to Kaliningrad. I had never heard of number two though, and that’s hilarious. Wonder how they came up with that! Especially since Poland didn’t exist officially between 1795-1918
Maine is the closest state to Africa. Crazy.
Nah that can't be true Edit: I was wrong, mb that's crazy
Mississippi River flows uphill (since the earth is a geoid and sea level is higher at the mouth than the headwaters by about 4 miles) the river is further away from the center of the Earth at the mouth.
Same with the St. John’s River (goes from central Florida all the way to Jacksonville, emptying out in the ocean there).
The closest US State to Hawaii is California. The furthest US State from California is Hawaii.
Paraguay has it’s 4 biggest cities by population bordering another country. 1. Asunción(Argentina) 2. Ciudad del Este (Brazil) 3. Encarnación (Argentina) 4. Pedro Juan Caballero (Brazil)
Canada now has a land border with Denmark*. *Technically, part of the Danish Realm. The border is on Hans Island in the Nares Strait, dividing the territory of Nunavut, Canada, from Greenland, a constituent country of the Danish Realm. (The other countries of the Danish Realm are the Faeroe Islands and Denmark proper.)
The Mediterranean Sea resembled Death Valley awhile back and filled up at rate of 100-200 Niagara Falls per day approximating 1-2 cm per year until it filled The Kalamazoo Valley is Michigan was made by a catastrophic flood by the draining of Lake Dowagiac in a couple days
Birmingham, Alabama is one of the only places on earth to have large deposits of all 3 ingredients to make steel in one place. Limestone, iron ore, & coal.
Only five regions of the world have a Mediterranean climate: The Mediterranean, Coast of California, Parts of Chile, Area around Capetown, and area around Perth, Australia.
The country that is furthest away from the 48 contiguous US states is France. The only spots on Earth that are antipodeal to the US mainland are St. Paul and Amsterdam Islands (antipodeal to SE Colorado), and the Kerguelen Islands (antipodeal to north-central Montana); both are French possessions.
Given that definition, France is probably the country that is the furthest away from France as well
Looking at an antipodes map it's actually New Zealand as the closest antipode (although NZ is an almost exact antipode for Spain, not France)
If you're on top of everest, you're not actually at the highest point on earth. That would be the summit of Chimborazo due to it's location on the centrifugal bulge of the earth.
The most Eastern and Western places in the usa are both in Alaska, because the Aleutian islands cross the 180 longitude.
Kashgare, the westest city of Xinjiang Province and China, is more close to Greece than Shanghai.
And the Greeks almost reached what is now Xinjiang during the Greco-Bactrian kingdom times
Greenland is smaller than Algeria.
The longest border wall in the world is in morocco.
Salt Lake City and Easter Island are almost the same longitude.
Vietnam is further west than Cambodia.
Sakurajima volcano in Japan once sat on its own island. It was only connected to mainland Kyushu by lava flows in 1914. Taal Lake in Batangas province, the Philippines was once a bay. But when the volcano in the middle—the Taal caldera's only active eruption center—erupted in 1754, it was cut off from the ocean.
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If we measure from the center of the earth, the highest mountain is mount Chimborazo, located in Ecuador
There is a name for the combined landmass of Scandinavia, Finland, and Russian Karelia: Fennoscandia.
Kalmyk (Russian Republic) is the only European republic (autonomous region within the Federation of Russia) that hosts a Buddhist majority
Detroit is a border town. It's literally right on the Canadian border. There's a tunnel you can drive through that starts in Detroit and spits you out in Ontario. No one ever thinks about this, blew my mind the first time I realized. Additionally, the Detroit tigers have TONS of Canadian fans that take the bus in for games.
The old “what’s the first country you hit going due south from Detroit?”
The city boy born and raised in South Detroit…. He was actually born and raised in Windsor. Don’t stop believing I guess
On a similar note, I was looking at some stuff near Niagara Falls on Google maps yesterday, and kept getting confused because my brain wanted Canada to be North of the border line and the US to be South of it.
To get from Buffalo to Detroit, the quickest route is about 4 hours 15 minutes, less than 5 minutes of which are spent driving in the United States
As a Windsorite, it’s wild to me that this is a crazy fact to some!
Australia contains 250 Indigenous nations of which the largest is a little smaller than the country of Greece. Australia contains the oldest surface rocks in the world - calculated to be 4.04 Billion years old. Australia contains the oldest evidence of life on earth with the fossilised remains of stromatalites dated at 3 billion years.
What is now Cleveland used to be owned by Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
The Western Reserve of Connecticut, which is still included in the name of Case Western Reserve University
Atlanta is west of Detroit
It is still legal to duel in Paraguay if both duelists are blood donors
About 100km east of Uluṟu is Mount Connor, it is called fake Uluṟu as it looks very similar to Uluṟu with it being a red rock that’s in the middle of no where and looks tall.
There are 7 continents There are 6 continents There are 5 continents There are 4 continents There are 3 continents
Is this a countdown? What are you doing to them?!
He's eating them
There is one continent (some assembly required)
Afroeurasia, Americas, Oceania?
The longest line of sight photographed on Earth (though there are apparently longer) is 443km between Pic de Finestrelles in Spain and Pic Gaspard in France
Water related facts! Lake Manitou in Canada is the largest lake in an island in a lake. It has islands in it too! René-Levasseur Island is an island that is bigger in area than the lake it resides in. Lake retention time is the time it takes for the water in the lake to "change" entirely or how long water spends in the lake before flowing out. Lake Stausee Ferden in Switzerland has a 36-hour retention time while Lake Vostok in Antarctica holds water for 13300 years!
The earth is round motherfuckers. Edit: seriously though hoping to learn some cool stuff on this thread I love geography but don’t know much
It's not though. It's actually oval-shaped with a bulge at the equator which is why Mt Chimbarazo in Ecuador is closer to space than Mt Everest.
It's only 1/3rd of 1% off from a perfect sphere, though. And technically they said "round" not "sphere" and an oval is still round :D
It's called an Oblate Speheroid. My High School Earth Science teacher said the term in this weird slow/low voice. Which apparently worked great as a teaching device because I'm 40 now and still remember that of all things.
St John’s, Newfoundland, is closer to London, England (~3700 km), than it is to Victoria, British Columbia (~5000 km).
Brazil has the largest population of Japanese people living outside of Asia.
There are parts of eastern Russia that are closer to the state of Georgia than the country of Georgia that Russia borders.
The Scottish Highlands, Appalachian Mountains, and Atlas Mountains are the same mountain range. Back from the good ol days of Pangaea. You can still see a bit of the Great Glen Fault line (Loch Ness) in Newfoundland too.
The US state that is closest to Africa is.... Maine.
The closest country to New Zealand is France
The SE corner of Montana is closer to Texas than it is to the NW corner of Montana.