Strange Facts About Geography Around the World

[ReFur]

Alaska

More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.

 

Amazon

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.

 

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. 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, i.e.), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.

 

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. Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."

 

Chicago

Next to Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world.

 

Detroit

Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M-1, named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.

 

Damascus, Syria

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.

 

Istanbul, Turkey

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

 

Kola Peninsula, Russia

The deepest hole ever made by humans is in Kola Peninsula in Russia, was completed in 1989, creating a hole 12,262 meters (7.6 miles) deep.

 

 

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.

 

New York City

The term "The Big Apple" was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930's who used the slang expression "apple" for any town or city. Therefore, to play New York City is to play the big time - The Big Apple. There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland; more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy; and more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv,

[Guest]

Interesting facts. The one that strikes me is Spain being called the land of rabbits. Romans brught some rabbits to Britain but the majority wre brought by the Normans. Yes the place they were most abundant was Spain. Everyone thinks the rabbit is indigenous to the British Isles but it is an introduced species! For hunting and fur.

 

That Alaska fact is amazing; I bet few people realise that.

 

Out of interest what was the seven mile hole for?

[White Fox]

Detroit

Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M-1, named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.

 

Yep, that's right all right. I remember riding down it before it was paved!

 

W

[ReFur]

This post and a few others I posted tonight came from a new site I found:

 

http://www.strangecosmos.com/index.html

 

Interesting site to explore. Great photos and jokes.

[Worker 11811]

The Kola Superdeep Borehole was drilled, basically, just to see how deep they could drill.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole

 

It was propoed in 1962, right about the same time the Americans said they were going to go to the moon. I guess the Russians figured, if we could go up, THEY could go DOWN.

[Guest]

Nice find, This one appealed to me, can't think why?

 

Insults about Nationalities and by Country

 

Germans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motor car.

- - - Bill Bryson

 

In America, only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.

- - - Geoffrey Cottrell

 

There have been many definitions of hell, but for the English the best definition is that it is the place where the Germans are the police, the Swedish are the comedians, the Italians are the defense force, Frenchmen dig the roads, the Belgians are the pop singers, the Spanish run the railways, the Turks cook the food, the Irish are the waiters, the Greeks run the government, and the common language is Dutch.

- - - David Frost and Anthony Jay

 

America

 

America is a melting pot, the people at the bottom get burned while all the scum floats to the top.

- - - Charlie King

 

Americans always try to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else.

- - - Winston Churchill

 

Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish.

- - - Henry Miller

 

America is one long expectoration.

- - - Oscar Wilde

 

America knows nothing of food, love, or art.

- - - Isadora Duncan

 

 

In California, they don't throw their garbage away - they make it into TV shows.

- - - Woody Allen

 

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to never practice either of them.

- - - Mark Twain (about America)

 

Never criticize Americans. They have the best taste that money can buy.

- - - Miles Kington

 

Of course, America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

- - - Oscar Wilde

 

The 100% American is 99% idiot.

- - - George Bernard Shaw

 

Their demeanor is invariably morose, sullen, clownish and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humor, vivacity, or the capacity for enjoyment.

- - - Charles Dickens (about Americans)

 

Canada

 

Canada is a country so square that even the female impersonators are women.

- - - Richard Brenner

 

I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold.

- - - Henry David Thoreau "A Yankee in Canada" (1853)

 

England

 

Britain is the only country in the world where the food is more dangerous than the sex.

- - - Jackie Mason

 

England, the heart of a rabbit in the body of a lion. The jaws of a serpent, in an abode of popinjays.

- - - Eugene Deschamps

 

English coffee tastes like water that has been squeezed out of a wet sleeve.

- - - Fred Allen "Treadmill to Oblivion"

 

I know why the sun never sets on the British Empire: God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark.

- - - Duncan Spaeth

 

The English think soap is civilization.

- - - Heinrich von Treitschke

 

The Englishman who has lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart.

- - - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

There is one thing on earth more terrible than English music, and that is English painting.

- - - Heinrich Heine

 

France

 

The French are sawed-off sissies who eat snails and slugs and cheese that smells like people's feet. Utter cowards who force their own children to drink wine, they gibber like baboons even when you try to speak to them in their own wimpy language.

- - - P.J.O'Rourke

 

France is a country where the money falls apart but you can't tear the toilet paper.

- - - Billy Wilder

 

Germany

 

German in the most extravagantly ugly language - it sounds like someone using a sick bag on a 747.

- - - Willy Rushton

 

Germany, the diseased world's bathhouse.

- - - Mark Twain

 

The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.

- - - Clifton Fadiman

 

You can always reason with a German. You can always reason with a barnyard animal, too, for all the good it does.

- - - P.J. O'Rourke "Holidays in Hell"

 

Greece

 

Few things can be less tempting or dangerous than a Greek woman of the age of thirty.

- - - John Carne

 

Ireland

 

This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.

- - - Sigmund Freud (about the Irish)

 

The problem with Ireland is that it's a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent.

- - - Hugh Leonard

 

Japan

 

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.

- - - Paul Theroux

 

Russia

 

In Russia a man is called reactionary if he objects to having his property stolen and his wife and children murdered.

- - - Winston Churchill

 

Russians will consume marinated mushrooms and vodka, salted herring and vodka, smoked salmon and vodka, salami and vodka, caviar on brown bread and vodka, pickled cucumbers and vodka, cold tongue and vodka, red beet salad and vodka, scallions and vodka-anything and everything and vodka.

- - - Hedrick Smith "The Russians"

 

Scotland

 

Scotland: A land of meanness, sophistry and lust.

- - - Lord Byron

 

Scotland: That garret of the earth - that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulfur.

- - - Sydney Smith

 

Yugoslavia

 

The food in Yugoslavia is fine if you like pork tartare.

- - - Ed Begley, Jr.

[Guest]

Excellent!

 

I will say this about the French.

 

I once had two days of hassle about being a "rosbeef" from some French friends, despite the fact I pointed out that I was actually a "Rosaigneau".

 

Anyway they kept on when I was really busy. So I turned round and said:

 

" Now listen.

I hear all about how much better France is than the UK and I am inclined to agree with you. BUT...some of your reputation is without grounding from what I can see.

You have never won a war, all your women are ugly and you can't cook a steak"

 

The reaction was shoulder shrugging.

 

"C'est vrai ....les plus belles femmes....tout...habite en Paris...seulement"

 

Yes its true, all the best looking girls are in Paris only.

 

And they then spent an hour thinking of a war they had won.They couldn't;

certainly not against us...i had to remind them the Normans were not French.

 

BUT they wouldn't have my assertion that they can't cook steak.

 

The vision of hell for the English is amusing but has little validity nowadays. Plastic Bertrand was a great singer.

[JGalanos]

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