50 Fun Facts About Western Hemisphere

Which US state's Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian into the Eastern Hemisphere?

Alaska is therefore the northernmost, westernmost and, by longitude, easternmost state in the United States all at once.

Which country, host of the 1968 Summer Olympics, has the world's most native Spanish speakers?

Mexico has been the most populous Spanish-speaking country since at least the 1970s, and it also gives 68 Indigenous languages equal legal standing with Spanish.

Which island, the largest in the world, is a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark?

Greenland is said to owe its name to Erik the Red, who hoped an attractive name would draw settlers, yet an ice sheet covers about four-fifths of the island.

Which Latin American country abolished its army for good after a brief civil war in 1948?

Costa Rica wrote the ban into its 1949 constitution and now spends the old military budget on health care and education.

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

The Amazon already outflows every other river on Earth at a point where it carries just a fifth of the water it finally pours into the Atlantic.

Which country covers roughly half of South America and borders every nation there except two?

Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas, a legacy of the fleet under Pedro Álvares Cabral that claimed the land for Portugal in 1500.

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

Superior covers about 82,000 square kilometres, roughly the size of Austria, though Lake Baikal and Lake Tanganyika both hold more water.

Which country's canal, opened in 1914, spares ships the long voyage around the tip of South America?

Panama's 82-kilometre waterway lifts ships through locks to an artificial lake 26 metres above sea level, then lowers them again on the far side.

Which mountain range, the longest on any continent, runs through seven countries?

The Andes are still being built as the Nazca Plate slides beneath South America, which is why earthquakes and volcanic eruptions keep shaking the range.

Which London district is home to the Royal Observatory that marks the prime meridian?

Greenwich was confirmed as the world's zero of longitude at an 1884 conference in Washington, D.C., which is why the Western Hemisphere is measured from there.

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

Chile is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, squeezed onto a strip of land between a mountain wall and the Pacific Ocean.

Which landlocked country splits its government between La Paz and its constitutional capital, Sucre?

Bolivia lost its Pacific coast in the War of the Pacific of 1879–84, yet it still keeps a navy and still presses its claim to the sea.

Which country, the smallest in South America, has Dutch as its official language?

Suriname stayed Dutch under a 1667 treaty in which the English, in return, kept New Amsterdam, the settlement they had renamed New York.

Which country owns the Galápagos Islands, about 1,000 km west of its mainland in the Pacific?

Ecuador is named after the equator, which runs through the northern outskirts of its capital, Quito.

Which South American country, with Bogotá as its capital, has coasts on both the Caribbean and the Pacific?

Colombia takes its name from Christopher Columbus, and its Pacific lowlands are jungle so thinly settled that Buenaventura is the main port on that coast.

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

Belize became independent in 1981 as the last British colony on the American mainland, and it is the only Central American country with no Pacific coast.

Which island nation, the largest in the Caribbean, lies about 150 km south of Key West, Florida?

Cuba stayed a Spanish colony until the war of 1898, then spent four years under United States occupation before gaining independence in 1902.

Which Caribbean nation, occupying the western end of Hispaniola, was founded by a slave revolt?

Haiti won its independence from France in 1804 and became the first country in the Americas to officially abolish slavery.

Which nation of some 700 islands was the site of Christopher Columbus's first landfall in the Americas?

The Bahamas lie in the open Atlantic rather than the Caribbean Sea, and scholars still debate exactly which of the islands Columbus stepped onto in 1492.

Which European country with the world's northernmost national capital lies wholly in the Western Hemisphere?

Iceland straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, so the island is slowly being pulled apart as the North American and Eurasian plates drift away from each other.

Which Argentine peak, about 110 km from the city of Mendoza, is the highest mountain outside Asia?

Aconcagua's first recorded ascent came in 1897, by the Swiss guide Matthias Zurbriggen, and its normal route is often called the world's highest climb that needs no ropes.

Which California desert basin contains Badwater, North America's lowest point at 86 metres below sea level?

Death Valley also holds the record for the hottest air temperature measured on Earth, 56.7 °C in 1913, because its high, steep walls trap warm air and keep reheating it.

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

Titicaca is home to the Uros people, who live on floating islands that they build from layers of cut totora, a buoyant sedge.

Which Venezuelan waterfall on Auyán-tepui, 979 metres high, is the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall?

Angel Falls is named after Jimmie Angel, a US aviator who flew over it in 1933 and four years later wrecked his plane trying to land on the mountain above.

Which desert, where some weather stations have never recorded rain, is the driest nonpolar place on Earth?

The Atacama lies in a double rain shadow between two mountain chains, and its soil is so lifeless that instruments for Mars missions are tested there.

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

The Mississippi is only the second-longest river in the United States, because its own tributary, the Missouri, runs farther.

Which narrow waterway, named for a Danish-born explorer in Russian service, separates Asia from North America?

The Bering Strait is about 82 km wide, but in the ice ages lower seas are thought to have exposed a land bridge there that people crossed on foot.

Which vast Canadian body of water is named after an English explorer whose crew mutinied in 1611?

Hudson Bay covers about 1.2 million square kilometres, and the mutineers cast the explorer, his teenage son and several crewmen adrift there, never to be heard from again.

Which peninsula hides the buried Chicxulub crater, left by the asteroid blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs?

Yucatán's crater, about 200 km across and buried a kilometre deep, was found in the late 1970s by geophysicists who were prospecting for oil.

Which headland, first rounded by Dutch sailors in 1616, marks where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet?

Cape Horn was named after the Dutch city of Hoorn, and strong winds, large waves and icebergs make the waters around it particularly hazardous.

Which city did Queen Victoria select in 1857 as Canada's capital over rivals including Toronto and Montreal?

Ottawa had been known as Bytown until just two years before the Queen's decision, and rival Kingston had already served as capital in the 1840s.

Which South American capital did Francisco Pizarro found in 1535 under the name City of the Kings?

Lima got that name in honour of the Epiphany, the feast of the Three Kings, after Pizarro had first tried and failed to set up his capital at Jauja.

Which Caribbean capital, founded in 1496, is the oldest European settlement still inhabited in the Americas?

Santo Domingo was founded by Bartholomew Columbus, who first named it La Nueva Isabela, and it holds the first cathedral and university in the New World.

Which metropolis, the world's largest Portuguese-speaking city, is the most populous in the Western Hemisphere?

São Paulo began in 1554 as a Jesuit college founded to convert the local Indigenous peoples, and it now outranks every other city in the Americas.

Which Argentine port on the Beagle Channel claims the title of the world's southernmost city?

Ushuaia grew up around a penal colony that Argentina promoted in order to plant permanent residents in the far south and back its claim to the region.

Which Caribbean island holds El Yunque, the only tropical rainforest in the US National Forest System?

Puerto Rico passed from Spain to the United States in 1898, and its people have been US citizens since 1917, although the island is not a state.

Which territory on South America's northern coast uses the euro and hosts Europe's main rocket launch site?

French Guiana is the only territory on the mainland of the Americas still under the sovereignty of a European state, and it once held the Devil's Island prison.

Which Italian navigator's first name did a German mapmaker give to the New World on a 1507 map?

Amerigo Vespucci claimed to have recognised the land as a fourth continent unknown to Europeans, which inspired Martin Waldseemüller to label it America.

Which fertile grasslands, named from a Quechua word for plain, cover central Argentina and all of Uruguay?

The Pampas were the range of the gauchos, wandering horsemen who hunted wild cattle there and became a folk symbol of Argentina.

Which 1823 US policy warned European powers against any new interference in the Western Hemisphere?

The Monroe Doctrine was largely ignored by the colonial powers at first, because the young United States lacked a navy and army strong enough to enforce it.

Which South American volcano's summit, thanks to the equatorial bulge, is the farthest point from Earth's centre?

Chimborazo stands just one degree south of the equator, so its peak is about two kilometres farther out than the top of Mount Everest.

Which roadless stretch of rainforest is the only break in the 30,000 km Pan-American Highway?

The Darién Gap halts the road for about 106 km, and environmental organisations and Indigenous groups have opposed building the missing link.

Which sea in the North Atlantic, named for its floating brown seaweed, is the only one with no land boundary?

The Sargasso Sea is hemmed in by four ocean currents instead of coasts, and it is where European eels go to breed.

Which Canadian island holds L'Anse aux Meadows, a Norse settlement dating from about 1,000 years ago?

Newfoundland's site, first excavated in the 1960s, holds the remains of eight sod buildings and shows the Norse reached North America long before Columbus.

Which Indigenous language is co-official with Spanish in Paraguay and spoken by most of the country's people?

Guaraní bucked a near-universal trend in the Western Hemisphere: Paraguayans kept their traditional language while also adopting Spanish.

Which two-island Caribbean federation is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere?

Saint Kitts and Nevis covers just 261 square kilometres, and in 1998 a vote on Nevis to break away fell short of the two-thirds majority it needed.

Which West African country's port city of Tema lies directly on the prime meridian?

Ghana lies mostly in the Western Hemisphere, with only its eastern strip, beyond the meridian through Tema, falling in the Eastern.

Which Pacific island nation is the only country besides Russia where the 180th meridian crosses dry land?

Fiji's island of Taveuni straddles the meridian, so one end of the island has an east longitude and the other a west longitude.

Which region holds Laguna del Carbón, a salt lake 105 metres below sea level and the Americas' lowest point?

Patagonia covers the southern end of South America, and Magellan named its people in 1520 after his expedition took them for giants.

Which Inca citadel above Peru's Urubamba River was brought to world attention by Hiram Bingham in 1911?

Machu Picchu was probably built around 1450 as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti, on a mountain ridge 2,430 metres above sea level.