More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.
Maybe you knew that, but I didn't, and I found it pretty amazing. It's just
one of the surprising items in a list titled "Interesting Geography". Here
are a few more gems from the list.
Detroit: Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M-1,
named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.
Amazon: 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.
Brazil: Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
Canada: Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
Ohio & Maryland: There are no natural lakes in the states of Ohio or
Maryland, every one is manmade.
Antarctica: 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.
However, Antarctica is essentially a desert. The average yearly total
precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice, Antarctica is
the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the
Gobi desert.
Damascus, Syria: Damascus was flourishing a couple of thousand years before
Rome was founded in 753 BC, making it the oldest continuously inhabited
city in existence.
Rome, Italy: The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was
Rome, in 133 B.C. There is a city called Rome on every continent.
Los Angeles: Los Angeles's full name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la
Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula - and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of
its size: L.A.
Siberia: Siberia contains more than 25% of the world's forests.
Sahara Desert: 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.
Spain: Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits.'
United States: The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one-mile in
every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as
airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.