HARDminute factoid #32 Interesting geography OUTSIDE America

The HARDminute # 32

A Series of “Top Tens”

That Took Forever to Compile

But Requires Only Sixty Seconds

for You to Read.


Top 10 Geographic

Stats OUTSIDE America



1. The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% the world's oxygen supply. The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that, more than one hundred miles at sea off the mouth of the river, one can dip fresh water out of the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon River is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined and three times the flow of all rivers in the United States.

2. Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country. Ninety percent of the world's ice covers Antarctica. This ice also represents seventy percent of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds, however, Antarctica is essentially a desert. The average yearly total precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice (all but 0.4% of it) Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.


3. Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.


4. Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined. Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village.”


5. Damascus, Syria was flourishing a couple of thousand years before Rome was founded in 753 BC, making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in existence.

5. Istanbul, Turkey, is the only city in the world located on two continents.

6. The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn Island in Polynesia, at just 1.75 sq. miles/4.53 sq. km. But, the actual smallest sovereign entity in the world is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (S.M.O.M.). It is located in the city of Rome, Italy, has an area of two tennis courts, and as of 2001 has a population of 80, 20 less people than the Vatican. It is a sovereign entity under international law, just as the Vatican is.


7. The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome, Italy in 133 B.C. There is a city called Rome on every continent.


8. Siberia contains more than 25% of the world's forests.


9. In the Sahara Desert, there is a town named Tidikelt, which did not receive a drop of rain for ten years. Technically though, the driest place on Earth is in the valleys of the Antarctic near Ross Island. There has been no rainfall there for two million years.

10. Spain literally means “the land of rabbits.”



(Thanks to my fishing buddy and bridge partner, John Damgaard in Victoria for these)


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