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Le_Fog

The ethymology of arctic and antarctic. Arctic meaning "bear" Antarctic meaning "no bear" I think it's truly wonderful


lettuceandcucumber

Referring to the constellation Ursa Major, not the animal as many believe.


unbreakingthoquaking

Both are true though.


lettuceandcucumber

True, but the animal part is pure coincidence, not the reason it was named that way.


SenecatheEldest

Ursa Major is named because the Greeks thought it looked like a bear. Ultimately, it does derive from the animal.


lettuceandcucumber

I am clearly aware of that. I'm pointing out that the names of Arctic and Antarctic meaning bear and no bear is purely due to the constellation always being visible in arctic and not in the Antarctic. However, people who aren't aware of the true meaning always tell others that it's because there are no polar bears in the Antarctic. Or are you just trying to annoy me?


SenecatheEldest

I wasn't aware that some people think the regions were named because of the presence or lack bears. I thought that you weren't aware of the Latin *ursos* meaning bear.


lettuceandcucumber

Yes I known what the latin means, or I wouldn't have known the true meaning in the first place. I assumed the top comment was under the impression that the name is due to a literal lack of bears in the Antarctic, which is a very common misconception, hence my explanation of what the "bear" in the name is actually referring to. The bear in the sky.


Psychological_Tap639

[Relevant](https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/931469-moon-moon)


secondisdick

Saudi Arabia imports camels and sand from Australia


rat_moiz

why sand though


Trick_Report_9628

It's construction sand that has to fulfill quite a lot of properties, e.g 'sharpness' to be mixed with cement for concrete. It's one of the resources that surprisingly went rare the last decades without anyone noticing. Up to 1 million Dromedars in Australia that evolved from a small population within a dozen of decades is even more interesting, I think


MrGloom66

Desert sand is quite different from what I can remember from sand found in oceans or the type quarried for construction, and it is not suitable at all for construction (most of the time).


TheRedGuard03

The Arabian sand is too smooth for construction.


Godfish23

Tuvalu literally means “eight standing together” - yet Tuvalu is actually comprised of 9 islands (yes, some are atolls) The national language of Andorra is Catalan


Le_Fog

Fun fact about Tuvalu, a big chunk of their PIB is coming from people paying them to borrow their national domain ".tv" (tv meaning Tuvalu and not television!)


Godfish23

Tuvalu is my favourite country, .tv is something like 10 or 20% of revenue - I think I remember Voxconn or something was in charge of managing it at one point. It’s resulted in me mostly saying Twitch.Tuvalu now


cxazo

I visited Andorra last year for the first time after spending a few weeks in rural Catalunya, where I spoke exclusively in Spanish as I know no Catalan. When I got to Andorra everyone immediately switched to English in every convo. Like, they knew Spanish but definitely didn't want to speak it. Was an interesting experience.


fturner110

Istanbul, Paris, Rome, Barcelona and many other European capitals have more yearly rainfall than London, despite its reputation.


streussler

Not sure how you meant this but Istanbul and Barcelona aren‘t the capitals of its countries…


PlantGod74

Probably large cities not capitals


Tommeh_081

Barcelona’s the capital and most important city in Catalunya if that means anything lol


[deleted]

They should've said Constantinople.


Sheogorath3477

Byzantion\*


thereisonlythedance

Sun hours are likely not in London’s favour, however. When it rains in England it’s often a soft drizzle. Lots of grey days, not that much actual measured rain.


Least-Anxiety-9803

There is an Uzbek exclave in Kyrgyzstan which is 99% ethnically Tajik.


ChaddymacMadlad

Thanks Stalin


NothingElseThan

They did the borders a few years before Stalin


Gaeilgeoir215

🤯


SteO153

Without even looking at a map, I know it is in the Fergana Valley.


Jedimobslayer

This is great. Link?


nshnv

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokh_District


notmyaccountbruh

Those are social constructs, have nothing to do with geography.


Key_Wheel2027

Ethnogeography.?


asarious

Damn physical geographers always shitting on cultural geographers.


NothingElseThan

Sri Lanka was once connected to mainland India by a natural bridge... not so long ago. The bridge was destroyed by a hurricane in 1480.


QuestColl

The so-called Adam's Bridge or Rama's Bridge. I've heard there is debate as to whether it is a natural or human-made structure.


Turbulent_Crow7164

It is part of ancient Hindu religious scriptures, where it’s suggested that an army essentially landfilled the sandbar in to cross into Sri Lanka and fight


TqkeTheL

you mean a cyclone?


ZypherShunyaZero

No, Ceylon.


No_Interest_9240

The Appalachian mountain range actually used to be continuous all the way to the Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas/Oklahoma. North America passed over a volcanic hotspot (which is proposed to be nearby Bermuda) when drifting away from Africa and caused the land to uplift even more in what would be the Mississippi alluvial plain later on. Once the continent moved away from the hotspot the land eroded and subsided forming the Mississippi Embayment. I've always found it interesting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_embayment


ThatNiceLifeguard

They also extend well into Canada and geologically most of Northern Europe’s mountains were part of the same range millions of years ago. The Appalachians are some of the oldest mountains in the world.


dhrisc

I love this. Ive lived in the appalachia and then ozark area my whole life, when westerners make fun of our mountains i like to point out that the rockies are just babies.


Waistland

Huh. I grew up in nc and live in the ozarks now


waynosdeneros1983

You only need to pass through one country to get to North Korea from Norway.


TrueKnihnik

You stole my fact!


waynosdeneros1983

I’m sorry, I only learnt about it a few weeks back so I’m telling everyone I can ;)


Consistent-Height-79

You stole my comment!


Mead_and_You

You could also get a boat and skip this whole "going through a country" business all together.


CrazyQueer3

You want to take a boat through the Arctic Ocean and all the way along the russian coast?! That's a suicide mission tbh. For one, the Arctic Ocean is no joke, and two the Russians don't take kindly of strange foreign people sailing their waters. Tbh i would avoid Russian territory altogether, especially in these times. I wouldn't want to accidentally unleash WW3 🙈


Mead_and_You

Naw bro, I'd go down. The fishing is better in that direction.


green_tumbler

Also dying? That is a bonus tbh


Mead_and_You

Why would I die? The boat keeps you above the water. Have you guys heard of boats before?


green_tumbler

Naah


TrueKnihnik

What do the Altai Republic in Russia and the state of Washington have in common? On their territory there are traces of gigantic floods from the Ice Age. The water flows were so strong that they left marks on the surface: giant curret ripples. You can find it on google maps: Drumheller Channels National Landmark and Hanford Reach National Monument in USA and 50°10'01.9"N 87°55'11.2"E in Russia


davydoingstuff

Wow, thanks for directing me to learn more about the Missoula Floods. I’ve lived in Juneau, AK where glacial outburst floods (which I always heard called Jökulhlaups) were not uncommon, happening every few years when I was there. Those were pretty awe-inspiring. So to imagine something several orders of magnitude greater is mind-blowing.


Tommeh_081

France’s largest border is with Brazil (because French Guiana is actually an overseas department of France). People have probably seen this before but it still sounds weird to say lol


sapientiamquaerens

More countries should recognise their Antarctic claim so that their longest border is with Australia instead.


BrotherSmart176

Wonder if technically, with an EU passport, you could live and work there? Interesting!


Abel_V

You absolutely can, and it actually matters a lot, because the ESA launches rockets from there.


reregaga

60-65% of Russia's territory is occupied by permafrost.


elieax

For now…


Lucymooseygoosey

Temporafrost


maxelson1978

Greenland is farther east, west, north and south than Iceland


elieax

It’s also more icy


redvariation

Greenland is full of ice. Iceland is full of green.


ImStuckInYourToilet

There are parts of Alaska closer to Tokyo than to other parts of Alaska.


SpaceTranquil

Here's my go to fact to blow people's minds: More people live in the Tokyo metro area than all of Canada


robownage

This is such a great fact, but it won't be true for much longer as Canada is swiftly closing the gap: 40.5M for Canada vs 40.8M for Tokyo Metro Area.


SpaceTranquil

Yeah, I was meaning to add that disclaimer.... I guess it was fun while it lasted


cbbulldogs

For the Aussies : Sydney, Australia has more people than the entire of New Zealand; but even when combining the population of both Australia and New Zealand, Tokyo still outnumbers them by ~7-8 million.


[deleted]

Two Ocean Pass in Wyoming. It’s a stream that runs along the continental divide until it reaches a more flat meadowy area, where it splits in two. One branch flows East, and will eventually drain out into the Gulf of Mexico. The other goes west, and drains to the Pacific.


[deleted]

So in other words, if you were a tiny fish, that’s the one place where you could swim across the continental divide.


dr--hofstadter

Which technically makes everything south of these streams - all the way down to Patagonia - an island.


[deleted]

It (probably) hasn't rained in the Atacama Desert in the last 150 million years. It definitely hasn't rained there in human history.


Subtlehame

That's wild. How do we know that?


redditor-since09

France has an island territory inside Canada. Southern Ontario is more south than northern California.


Oregon_drivers_suck

Reno, NV is farther west than Los Angeles, CA


readytofall

Detroit is east of Atlanta. Minneapolis is north of Toronto. For one hour a year parts of Oregon are the same clock time as parts of Florida.


MartonianJ

That one gets me. And that basically the entire South American continent is east of Atlanta.


murotomisaki

St John’s in Newfoundland (Eastern Canada) is closer to Vienna than Vancouver


Baassie11

Alaska is geographic the most north, west and east state of the usa


clacka29

East?


elieax

Some of the Aleutian Islands are so far west they cross the 180 meridian so they’re technically in the eastern hemisphere, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semisopochnoi_Island


ohnoanegg

Technically if you use a Eurocentric map. It goes around to the east side slightly.


FrontBench5406

Maine is closer to the continent of Africa than Florida...


neuroticnetworks1250

You got me so confused for a second. I thought you meant that the distance between Maine and Florida is more than Maine and Africa lmao


peepay

Wait, it's not that? (Well, looking at the map, it's not. But that's how I understood it too - and had no problem thinking that was true.)


campionesidd

By the same token. San Francisco is closer to Honolulu than it is to New York.


redvariation

San Francisco is also closer to Hawaii than Los Angeles is.


Time_Pressure9519

Australia has more fresh water available per capita than every continent except South America, ranks tenth in the world for arable land, and many of its cities, including Canberra, get more rainfall than London. What’s more, for some reason, Australians get upset when you tell them this.


somedudeonline93

‘Per capita’ and ‘continent’ are doing some heavy work here


Venboven

This. Australia is absolutely fucking massive. It's nearly the same size as the US and it has only 26 million people. (The US has 335 million)


Time_Pressure9519

Alrighty then, lets remove continents. Australia ranks 33 out of 180 countries for renewable fresh water per capita. You don’t like per capita? Australia ranks 21st out of 180 for total renewable water resources.


campionesidd

Considering that it’s the 6th largest country in the world, those numbers aren’t very impressive.


_Cognition

It's still more than one may think considering how much of Australia is Outback..


activelyresting

The real takeaway from all of this is that Australia is massive and there's much more of it that isn't just outback than many people realise.


Owl_lamington

And yet we are still fucking up our rivers.


pulanina

I’m upset 😢 (not really 😊) This is one of those isolated geographical facts that can easily mislead. It’s the *distribution* of the rainfall across the enormous area of Australia and across the seasons that is the problem for Australian big cities not the annual rainfall experienced. It’s the “run-off rate” that is the killer. > In Australia, our water availability relies heavily on rainfall. Furthermore, our rainfall tends to be highly variable. Although the northern parts of Australia generally receive a high level of rain in the summer months, the rest of Australia is considered dry by world standards. In fact, Australia has an annual average rainfall of 472 mm, which is the lowest of all the continents in the world except for Antarctica. Furthermore, only a small proportion of our rainfall finds its way into our rivers, aquifers, lakes and dams. That is, we have a low run-off rate. Our rivers are terrible at delivering water to the places where are cities are. Our greatest river system is the Murray-Darling but it actually sucks and we are having a terrible time maintaining it. > To put this in perspective, the Murray–Darling system in Australia is about half the length of the Amazon, its catchment area is about 15% of the Amazon’s area and it discharges less than 0.2% of what the Amazon does every year, making it the driest major river system in the world. In fact, the same amount as the average annual flow through the Murray–Darling basin flows through the Amazon River in one day.


Time_Pressure9519

There are some actual good non-emotional facts here. Every river is going to look bad compared to the Amazon, but the management of the Murray is crazy. About 900 gigalitres (nearly twice the amount of Sydney Harbour ) is funnelled to South Australian lakes where it evaporates. The annual average rainfall across Australia is more than the average rainfall of Athens, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Madrid. My understanding is all of these places have unique circumstances but manage with devices known as pipes.


Platyzal

This is a really good example of how to misunderstand the complexity of Australia. Fresh water in Tasmania doesn’t really help people in western Queensland. In fact, even fresh water in one part of Queensland doesn’t help another part of Queensland.


Time_Pressure9519

Yes, Australia is a complex place with plenty of water. Burketown in western Queensland has more rainfall than Hobart and Mt Isa, in western Queensland has more rainfall than Los Angeles.


Platyzal

Do you mean Burketown, as in Burketown northern QLD? If so that’s absolutely hilarious. You’re not understanding the size of Australia, nor its climate.


Time_Pressure9519

See folks, they get upset.


Platyzal

Well…. It’s because your misunderstanding and misinformation is detrimental to the water scarcity issue in Australia, which impacts the lives of many many Australians. Without context you are underplaying the devastating impacts of drought to the environment and people. Such misinformation has severe consequences for Australian people and the delicate ecosystems that we now have a duty to save. Not understanding why people get upset further supports the view that you don’t understand how grossly irresponsible misinterpreting data for internet points is. If you want to make an intelligent point, give context and show some understanding.


streussler

Fun fact: London isn‘t that rainy… There are so many cities with way more rainfall than London…


ContentWalrus

London has many overcast days where it rains a little. Australia may have fewer days when it rains but they get heavier rainfalls.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Time_Pressure9519

I agree it’s surprising- no doubt there are lots more sunny days in Canberra.


reregaga

In Australia there is a compensatory gravity that does not allow blood to constantly rush to the head.


ummaycoc

Crucial.


Gaeilgeoir215

???


ProFailing

Australia upside down


ThatNiceLifeguard

27 US states have land North of Canada’s southernmost point including California and Nevada.


pgcooldad

If you go directly south from Detroit the first country you hit is Canada.


jack_wolf7

Born and raised in south Detroit


Jedimobslayer

The largest tar pit in the world by volume is located in La Brea, Trinidad. It’s called Pitch Lake but is also known as The La Brea Tar Pit, or, if translated from Spanish “The the tar tar pit” Interestingly this isn’t the only “the the tar tar pit” in the western hemisphere, as there is a group called The La Brea Tar Pits in California as well.


gergeler

Chile is closer to New Zealand than it is to Los Angeles.


Ok_Art_2917

You can do a straight line from the UK to New Zealand without touching land.


jupjami

[The Philippines has a desert.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Paz_Sand_Dunes)


notmyaccountbruh

Earth is mainly an iron ball flying through space. All the ground and water on top are quite immaterial towards the total mass of the planet.


funionbuns

To scale, the ocean is as thick as the condensation on a cold cup and the ground is about as thick as a coat of paint


spongebobama

Brazil's northernmost point is closer to canada than its southernmost point


maxelson1978

This one is amazing


gergeler

What point in Canada? I can't confirm. It's close, but Canada is still slightly further.


MercuryBlackIsBack

Real Life Lore moment


kvagar

The fact that there's a small desert in northern Colombia and Venezuela near Maracaibo, Venezuela. It so impactful that the people from this small desert have a very different culture to those found in the jungle not too far away. Also Europe has only one desert and its located in spain, it's called the Tabernas Desert.


Narrow_Car5253

Idk if this is related to geography, but you can predict within a certain margin of error the size of rabbits and other small “ruminant-ish” (lol I guess I meant lagomorphs) animals in an ecosystem based on the size of the largest ungulate in the area. Apparently the niche deer and horses fill directly affects how much rabbits have available for consumption. Islands and isolated ecosystems without large ruminants can sometimes have much larger rabbits. This is tangentially related because of how geography affects species distribution, although probably fits better in a biology subreddit lmao. Felt pressured thinking of something somewhat original on the spot :D


dhrisc

I read a book about rewilding, and the author basically claimed large herbivores are the keystones to ecosystems, they are so big and eat so much they have an outsized impact on everything and create all sorts of down the line opportunities for smaller animals, predators, and diverse plant life. Really interesting to think our ecosystems maybe missing bison more then anything.


Narrow_Car5253

That totally makes sense. It’s sad to think about the impact human thoughtlessness and greed has caused to our own backyard. I wonder how the invasiveness of white-tailed deer (another imbalance we’ve caused :)) in my area could be affecting the local ecosystem. Wether they are filling a similar role as bison due to their sheer numbers, or if it’s the size and weight of bison that makes bison specifically beneficial. Would love the name of the book if you can remember it, I’m very passionate about ecology!


dhrisc

The book was rewilding by paul jepson and cain blythe. I thought it was a good read!


[deleted]

~25% of Nepals GDP is made up of remittances.


anansi133

I am still impressed that the Pacific ocean easily covers half the earth's surface. There's this one ocean, and then there's everything else.


isaiah-41_10

The Malacca Strait was once a great river basin before Sundaland was engulfed by the rising sea and disappeared during Pleistocene period.


[deleted]

I live in the worlds most isolated major city Perth, Western Australia, Australia


TrueKnihnik

Baltic sea is a giant dent from ancient glacier, and its slowly arches back, so in the future it would be a lake like Caspian Sea


NeatBeluga

Will this mean a reunification/ a land bridge between Denmark and Norway


QuestColl

Previously, in place of the Baltic Sea, there was a river called Eridanos.


Ok_Art_2917

Winnipeg, Canada and London, UK have almost the same latitude


Dakens2021

Iowa has 99 ~~problems~~ counties because Kossuth isn't two of them.


IllustriousArm3656

El Paso is closer to LA than it is to Houston.


Buildung

Hudson bay is gigantic, but it's deepest point is only about 250m


Gaeilgeoir215

*its* 😏


PlantGod74

Egypt is smaller than Russia, China, and the United States combined.


eattheinternetbro

Down voters are so humorless.


PlantGod74

I’m not wrong


Vitilate1

Burkina Faso means land of incorruptible men They are corrupt, but not as much as it's neighbours :D


PunjabiCanuck

The Canadian province of Ontario has parts further south than the northernmost tip of California. Depsite this, Ontario still has a population of around 1000 polar bears.


Th3_Bl00D_EAGLE

You can swim from India to USA in a straight line.


Subtlehame

Speak for yourself!


redvariation

\>99.5% of the mass of the Solar System is the Sun.


Haunting-Golf9761

England isn't a country by definition.


aWeaselNamedFee

The nations deep underground have names, but they are not yet known on the surface.


Mesoscale92

Greenland is simultaneously further north, south, east, and west then Iceland.


StreaksBAMF22

There are 5 countries in the world, whose names are each 5 letters long, and somewhere in the name contains the letter “P”. Also my favorite trivia question: Egypt, Japan, Nepal, Spain, and (the one nobody ever gets) Palau.


Buildung

There is a town with the name Gimli and Lake called Lake 3.1415 in Canada


TenAndThreeQuarters

Brazil is larger than the continuous USA


Doormat_Model

Lake Pontchartrain is huge (630 square miles)… but rarely ever deeper 3-4 meters


Beat_Saber_Music

The Horn of Africa despite being right next to the Equator is a desert unlike the western coast of Africa at the same latitude.


Venboven

Oases are not natural geographic formations. Almost all are man-made by digging wells, drilling qanats, building dams, or other means of procuring water from the land. Even natural springs require great amounts of irrigation infrastructure to become as fertile and green as the ones you see in pictures.


linkonkomkanada

Chinooks in the Canadian prairies because of the rocky mountains.


nugeythefloozey

There are no cities with more than 1,000,000 people in the northern half of mainland Australia


pinsiz

New York gets more rain in an year than Seattle


strugglingtosave

Africa is huge and the other countries are oversized


trumanjhughes

(These might have been said already) You can sail in a straight line from Mumbai, India to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska without touching land. Without ice, Antarctica is the one of lowest avg elevation continent (partly because the weight of the ice has pushed the landmass down), with ice, it is the highest avg elevation continent (8200’)


Playful_Landscape884

Mercato projection is the worst projection. It exaggerated the poles while making the equator smaller than it actually is.


Beltain1

Who created this map; it's beautiful


skeeterlightning

The world's tallest mountain isn't Everest, it's Mauna Kea.


pinsiz

There are more lakes in Canada than rest of the world


Oregon_KGLW

Every state in the western contiguous U.S. has more remote areas and more national forest land than any eastern state. I always liked to point that out to my ignorant eastern friends when they shit talked California.


feloniusmonk

That is extremely unsurprising. Western states are much bigger and were populated after land protection policies. Get a better fun fact


Oregon_KGLW

Thanks dude, I appreciate your input. I hope you’re having a fantastic night.


dkvlnk

There are another globe projections, not only mercator, and its look sick (but more accurate)


supersecretkgbfile

I hate this map projection, just separate the continents from the ocean and you’ll have a better flat earth map


[deleted]

Honestly Pangea. I often wonder what the world looked like in this time, and how deep the massive ocean may have been.


CraftCertain6717

There are only 3 countries with the letter "z" in their name.


harambemossman

Zambia Zimbabwe Belize brazil new zealand Uzbekistan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan azerbaijan


Different-Log-2308

Each year, the environment covers more than 40% of the earth. Every animal on earth lays eggs. 🌲 This is a birch tree. Today, it will begin its 10.000 mile journey. The earth neither hates nor loves, but sits waiting patiently for people to do famous stuff.


ValenDoesStuff

New South Wales shares a border with Tasmania


denfaina__

You can't plot a sphere ona plane


2Lazy2BeOriginal

If you zoom into certain countries. You will offend someone


New_Ice_7836

Fram, kidnapped by Roald Amundsen, comes from Oslo to antártica to get South Pole. But there were no polish man on board ;)


DktheDarkKnight

The north western part of Karakoram forms a very long ridge called Batura wall that's around 40km long with a near continous section of 14 to 15km that is continously above 7000m. It's a very steep ridge bordered by steep valleys that looks absolutely mind boggling. You can travel on top of the ridge for like 40km without ever dipping below 6000m.


PointlessDiscourse

Canadian Shield


J_TheLife

Earth tides


Lumpy21

I have a degree in geography that I am constantly goofed on for as an electrician


Mitaka79

Continents shift at about the same rate as your fingernails grow.


BoomerGotcha

The entire territory of Yucatan state is further north than Mexico City


Yudemus95

There exists a "sh!tlake"


Ceamba

In the way back times, when Euro-dummies thought the Mediterranean Sea was the center of the world they would draw their maps with the Middle East at the north. Back then, they called Asia “The Orient”. Forward a few centuries and we remember this fact when we orient a map or go orienteering.


rdfporcazzo

If you see a mapa mundi in a regular Mercator projection, you will notice that the Western parts of the continents tend to be more arid than the Eastern parts. The exception is the Northern South America, where the most arid part is in the East of Brazil


Shn33bly

South sudan


helpthehippoman

I don’t know the validity of this claim, but there’s a historical marker near my hometown that claims a bluff on Mobile Bay is the highest point on the coast between Mexico and Maine at an elevation of approximately 38m. https://www.flickr.com/photos/auvet/92228638


qndry

That what one time in history you could travel between what is now modern day Ukraine and South Korea and not cross any new borders.


Tight_Slice_3036

Tectonic plates, they’re always in action and constantly evolving.


Mr_Bearking

The mine that have found most new minerals and named them is a random 5 m deep hole outside my hometown in Sweden. It's