25 Mind-Blowing Geography Facts That Are Actually Going To Make Your Brain Hurt
"California is the closest state to Hawaii, but Hawaii is the furthest state from California."
People on Reddit are sharing their wildest geography facts — and they will totally mess with your perception of the world. Some of these might sound fake, but if you pull up a map, you'll see they're 100% real.
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It all started when Reddit user u/storm1902 posed a question to the internet: "What geography fact blows your mind?"
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Here are some of the most brain-melting responses:
1. "Australia is wider than the moon."
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2. "California is the closest state to Hawaii, but Hawaii is the furthest state from California."
3. "Detroit is farther east than Atlanta."
4. "The distance between New Zealand and Australia is roughly the same as the distance between the Netherlands and Libya."
5. "Palm trees grow in Ireland at 53 degrees north. In Canada at 55 degrees north, there are polar bears."
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6. "Despite Canada being the US’s 'neighbor to the north,' the majority of Canadians live south of Seattle."
7. "Texas is large enough that it could fit Copenhagen, Brussels, Zagreb, and Warsaw with their real-life distances from each other inside the state lines."
8. "There are more people in California than Canada."
9. "When I worked for FedEx back in the '90s, one of the reasons why they chose Anchorage, Alaska as a global hub was that it's one of the only places in the world that is within 10 hours of the three biggest global markets: North America, Europe, and Asia! Who would have thought that a place considered in the middle of nowhere is actually the center of the world."
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10. "Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined."
11. "Antarctica is the world's largest desert, since it doesn't get all that much rainfall."
12. "France's longest border is with Brazil."
13. "Dust from the Sahara Desert regularly makes its way to the Amazon. In fact, without that dust, the Amazon might not even exist. The soil there is pretty nutrient poor, and that dust acts as a form of fertilizer. Two massive but opposing geological features — one full of life, the other very sparse — yet very strongly connected."
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14. "Alaska is simultaneously the furthest west, east, and northern point in the US."
15. "Russia has more surface area than Pluto."
16. "Maine is the closest point in the US to Africa."
17. "Norway is north, south, east, and west of Finland."
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18. "More than half the world’s population lives within 2,500 miles of Mong Khet, Myanmar."
19. "The distance between the highest point and the lowest point in the contiguous United States is less than 85 miles."
20. "My parents in Canada live closer to me in England than they do to my in-laws in Canada."
21. "The Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal is west of the Pacific entrance."
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22. "The Appalachian mountain range formed before the North American continent broke away from Europe, so there's a little chunk of the Appalachians in France."
23. "Point Nemo is the loneliest point away from any other land (2,688 km or 1,670 miles away from all other land). If you're there, the closest people are the ones in the International Space Station."
24. "North Korea and Norway are only separated by one country."
And finally...
25. "Reno, Nevada is farther west than Los Angeles, California."
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