50 Fun Facts About The Americas

Which South American river carries more water to the sea than the next seven largest rivers combined?

The Amazon has no bridges across it at all, even though engineers could easily span most of its length. It flows through rainforest with very few roads to connect.

Which island, the world's largest, is part of North America and lies about four-fifths under an ice sheet?

Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, which makes the biggest island in North America part of a European realm.

Which desert in the Americas, the driest outside the poles, is a test site for Mars mission instruments?

The Atacama gets about 15 mm of rain a year, and some of its weather stations have never recorded any at all.

Which lake on Peru's border, 3,812 metres up in the Andes, is often called the world's highest navigable lake?

Titicaca is home to the Uru people, who live on floating islands that they build from layers of cut totora reeds.

Which country's canal takes ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific by sailing southeast rather than west?

Panama curves so sharply at that point that the canal's Pacific end lies east of its Atlantic end. Locks at each end lift ships 26 metres up to Gatun Lake on the way across.

Which country's flag shows an eagle on a cactus devouring a snake, the sign from an Aztec founding legend?

Mexico's emblem recalls the omen that told the Aztecs where to found their city, Tenochtitlan, whose ruins lie beneath the modern capital.

Which country's main island, some 1,250 km long, lies only about 150 km south of Key West, Florida?

Cuba's main island is the largest in the Caribbean, big enough to rank as the 17th-largest island in the world.

Which explorer gave his name to the Americas after a German mapmaker printed it on a 1507 world map?

Vespucci's first name, Amerigo, was Latinized as 'America' by mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller, who by 1513 had changed his mind and relabelled the land 'Terra Incognita'.

Which country stretches over 4,300 km from north to south yet averages only about 175 km in width?

Chile is squeezed into a narrow strip between the Andes and the Pacific, and its far south makes it the closest country to Antarctica.

Which South American waterfall, the tallest uninterrupted one on Earth, spills off the Auyán-tepui mountain?

Angel Falls is named after US pilot Jimmie Angel, who flew over it in 1933. He came back in 1937 and tried to land on the summit, where his plane sank into marshy ground.

Which European country still governs a small group of islands lying just off Canada's Atlantic coast?

France regained Saint Pierre and Miquelon under the 1763 Treaty of Paris even as it gave up the rest of New France, and smuggling there boomed during US Prohibition.

Which river flows about 3,770 km from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to a delta downstream from New Orleans?

The Mississippi drains all or parts of more than 30 US states and two Canadian provinces, yet it is only the second-longest river in the United States, behind the Missouri.

Which Great Lake, the northernmost and highest, is the world's largest freshwater lake by surface area?

Superior holds enough water to cover the entire land mass of North and South America to a depth of 30 centimetres.

Which mountain range runs some 4,800 km from western Canada to the US Southwest, peaking at Mount Elbert?

The Rockies carry the Continental Divide, the line that decides whether rain and snowmelt drain to the Atlantic or to the Pacific.

Which table-top mountain, highest of the Pacaraima chain, is shared by Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana?

Mount Roraima lies 85% in Venezuela, and heavy rainfall has etched its flat top into a maze of rifts and caves that runs for more than 15 km.

Which South American salt flat, the largest in the world, turns into a giant natural mirror after rain?

Salar de Uyuni covers about 10,582 square km, and the brine beneath its salt crust is exceptionally rich in lithium.

Which river marks the southern edge of Texas and forms up to 2,000 km of the US international border?

The Rio Grande is known on its southern bank as the Río Bravo, 'bravo' meaning furious or wild.

Which vast bay in northeastern Canada is named after an English explorer set adrift by mutineers in 1611?

Hudson Bay is the second-largest bay in the world after the Bay of Bengal. Its namesake was left in a small boat by his crew, and what became of him is still unknown.

Which narrow waterway, about 82 km across at its tightest, separates mainland North America from Asia?

The Bering Strait holds two islands only 3.8 km apart: Big Diomede belongs to Russia and Little Diomede to the United States.

Which Canadian province, the largest by area, is the only one where French is the sole official language?

Quebec made French its official language in 1974, and English has no official status in the province's own law.

Which city, founded in 1826 as Bytown, did Queen Victoria choose as capital of the Province of Canada?

Ottawa's isolated site, on a cliff surrounded by dense forest and far from the US border, was seen as easier to defend from attack.

Which planned capital, laid out in the shape of an airplane, took over from Rio de Janeiro in 1960?

Brasília was built in the 1950s to move Brazil's capital to a more central location. The airplane's 'fuselage' is the Monumental Axis, two wide avenues flanking a large park.

Which Argentine capital lies on the southwest side of the Río de la Plata, often called Earth's widest river?

Buenos Aires shares the river with Montevideo on the opposite shore, and tango was born in the 1880s in the working-class districts of both cities.

Which capital of Peru did Francisco Pizarro found in 1535 as the City of Kings, on a strip of coastal desert?

Lima is one of the world's largest desert cities, yet the cold Pacific keeps its temperatures mild all year.

Which Colombian capital sits 2,640 metres up on a high Andean plateau and was known for centuries as Santafé?

Bogotá is one of the highest capital cities in the world. Its Spanish founder first called the settlement Our Lady of Hope, until the crown renamed it in 1540.

Which capital, the closest to the equator of any in the world, sits on the slopes of Pichincha volcano?

Quito stands 2,850 metres above sea level, so despite its position in the middle of the globe it keeps a cool, steady climate all year round.

Which city, the world's highest seat of government at about 3,650 metres, shares capital status with Sucre?

La Paz has been the seat of the national government since 1898, while Sucre, the constitutional capital, keeps only the judiciary.

Which Caribbean capital was, by the mid-1700s, a far bigger city than Boston or New York?

Havana had more than seventy thousand inhabitants by then, and its old quarter was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.

Which Caribbean capital, founded in 1496 by a brother of Columbus, has the first cathedral of the Americas?

Santo Domingo is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas, and it also had the New World's first university, castle, monastery and fortress.

Which 15th-century Inca citadel on a ridge in Peru did Hiram Bingham bring to world attention in 1911?

Machu Picchu was probably built around 1450 as an estate for the emperor Pachacuti, then abandoned roughly a century later during the Spanish conquest.

Which South American country lost its entire coastline in the War of the Pacific yet still keeps a navy?

Bolivia's navy works on rivers and lakes, and every year the country holds a Day of the Sea to renew its claim to an outlet on the ocean.

Which country governs the Galápagos Islands, whose wildlife helped inspire Darwin's theory of evolution?

Ecuador's volcanic islands lie around 1,000 km out in the Pacific, and several of their volcanoes have erupted within the last few decades.

Which country abolished its army for good after a brief civil war in 1948 and became a pioneer of ecotourism?

Costa Rica wrote the ban on a standing army into its 1949 constitution, making it one of the few sovereign nations without a military.

Which nation on the western side of Hispaniola is the only country in history founded by a slave revolt?

Haiti won its independence in 1804 after a revolution that began in 1791, and it became the first country in the Americas to officially abolish slavery.

Which Central American country, called British Honduras until 1973, has English as its only official language?

Belize has a coast flanked by a barrier reef that Charles Darwin called 'the most remarkable reef in the West Indies', a World Heritage Site since 1996.

Which country, South America's smallest sovereign state, has Dutch as its sole official language?

Suriname is more than 90% rainforest, one of the highest shares of forest cover of any country in the world.

Which South American country's flag carries a different emblem on each side, one of them a lion?

Paraguay's flag shows the national seal, a yellow star in a wreath, on the front and the treasury seal, a lion beneath a red Phrygian cap, on the back.

Which Caribbean country's black, green and gold flag is the only national flag with no red, white or blue?

Jamaica's flag was first drawn with horizontal stripes, but that looked too much like the flag of Tanganyika, so a gold diagonal cross was used instead.

Which Caribbean country's flag bears a broken trident, a symbol of its break from British colonial rule?

Barbados borrowed the trident held by Britannia in its colonial coat of arms, then left off the staff to show that the old tie had been cut.

Which peak in the Andes of Argentina, at nearly 7,000 metres, is the highest mountain anywhere outside Asia?

Aconcagua is often described as the highest non-technical mountain in the world, because its normal northern route needs no ropes or specialized equipment.

Which peninsula, dotted with Maya sites such as Chichen Itza, hides the dinosaur-killing asteroid's crater?

Yucatán hides the Chicxulub crater, blasted out 66 million years ago by an asteroid 10 to 15 km wide and found in the 1970s by geophysicists searching for oil.

Which stormy headland near the southern tip of South America was named in 1616 after a Dutch town?

Cape Horn marks the point where the Atlantic and Pacific meet, and strong winds, large waves, strong currents and icebergs make its waters particularly hazardous.

Which road network runs some 30,000 km from Prudhoe Bay to South America's tip, broken only by the Darién Gap?

The Pan-American Highway has never been joined up: the missing 100 km crosses rugged, mountainous jungle, and environmentalists oppose building a road through it.

Which Canadian island holds L'Anse aux Meadows, a Norse site dated almost 500 years before Columbus set sail?

Newfoundland's Norse outpost has been dated to exactly the year 1021, thanks to tree rings that recorded an atmospheric anomaly from the year 993.

Which emblem, named for an 1810 revolution, appears on the national flags of both Argentina and Uruguay?

The Sun of May is a golden disc with a human face, often said to represent Inti, the sun god of the Incas, though no record from the time confirms it.

Which language family of the Inca Empire is still the most widely spoken Indigenous one in the Americas?

Quechua has roughly 7 million speakers, and it was spreading across the central Andes long before the Incas promoted it as the official language of their empire.

Which South American wetland, the world's largest tropical one, lies mostly in Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul?

The Pantanal turns into a vast sheet of water every rainy season, when roughly 80% of its floodplains are submerged.

Which volcano near the equator has a summit that is the farthest point on Earth's surface from its centre?

Chimborazo stands 6,263 metres high, well below Mount Everest, but Earth bulges around its middle, which pushes this summit farther out than any other.

Which South American lake is home to the Catatumbo lightning, storms that flash on some 150 nights a year?

Maracaibo's storms, nicknamed the Everlasting Storm, can flash for nine hours a night and give the area the highest density of lightning in the world.

Which two-island Caribbean federation is the smallest sovereign state in the Americas by area and population?

Saint Kitts and Nevis covers just 261 square km, which also makes it the smallest sovereign federation in the world.