149 Fun Facts About World Geography

Which national park, widely considered the world's first, sits on top of a supervolcano?

Yellowstone became a national park in 1872, while Wyoming and Montana were still territories rather than states.

Which river is traditionally ranked the longest in the world?

The Nile is traditionally ranked longest, though some studies measure a rival as longer; Egypt's Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970, ended its annual flood downstream.

Which city became Australia's capital as a Sydney–Melbourne compromise?

Canberra was the compromise: Australia's constitution put the capital in New South Wales but at least 100 miles from Sydney.

Which country's canal lifts ships 26 metres through locks to cross between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans?

Panama's canal lifts ships to Gatun Lake, a reservoir made by damming the Chagres River, so each passage spends the lake's fresh water.

Which is the only named sea in the world with no land boundaries?

The Sargasso Sea is bounded only by the currents of the North Atlantic Gyre, and eels from Europe and North America swim across the ocean to spawn there.

Which country spans the most time zones, thanks to its far-flung territories?

France's overseas territories give it 12 time zones, 13 counting its polar claim; mainland France switched to German time under the occupation and kept Central European Time after the war.

What is the smallest country in the world by area?

Vatican City has been a sovereign state only since the 1929 Lateran Treaty, which ended decades in which popes called themselves prisoners in the Vatican.

Which city is the northernmost capital of a sovereign state?

Reykjavík is the northernmost capital of a sovereign state; Nuuk lies a few kilometres further north, but it is the capital of an autonomous Danish territory.

Which South American country is the largest by area?

Brazil covers roughly half of South America, and after three centuries of Portuguese rule it became independent in 1822 as an empire, turning republic only in 1889.

What is the capital of Canada?

Queen Victoria chose Ottawa in 1857, partly because it lay on the border between Upper and Lower Canada and was harder to attack than rival cities.

Which African country was formerly known as Abyssinia?

Ethiopia routed an invading army at Adwa in 1896, forcing the would-be colonisers to recognise its independence in the Treaty of Addis Ababa.

The Great Barrier Reef lies in which sea?

The Great Barrier Reef lies in the Coral Sea, and in 1770 it ran James Cook's Endeavour aground, badly damaging the ship.

Which strait separates Europe from Africa?

The Strait of Gibraltar is about 14 km wide at its narrowest, and salty Mediterranean water flows out along its floor while Atlantic water pours in above.

Which city is the constitutional capital of Bolivia, even though the government sits in La Paz?

Sucre lost the seat of government to La Paz in 1898, after the decline of Potosí's silver mines cost the city its main resource.

Which country is home to the ancient city of Petra?

Jordan's Petra was reached in 1812 by Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who, disguised as a local, told his guide he wanted to sacrifice a goat at Aaron's tomb.

Lake Titicaca, often called the world's highest navigable lake, sits on the border of which two countries?

Peru and Bolivia share Lake Titicaca, where Uros communities live on floating islands built from totora reeds.

As of 2026, which European country has the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites?

Italy's sites include Venice, and from August 2021 Italy diverted large cruise ships from the city's centre as UNESCO weighed listing it as endangered.

What is the longest continental mountain range in the world?

The Andes are the longest mountain range on land, and the equatorial bulge makes one of their volcanoes, Chimborazo, the surface point farthest from Earth's centre.

Which island nation is the largest in the Caribbean by area?

Columbus landed on Cuba in 1492, claimed it for Spain and believed it was part of mainland Asia rather than an island.

Which capital city stands where the Sava River flows into the Danube?

Belgrade, at the Sava–Danube confluence, was taken by the Habsburgs three times between 1688 and 1789, and each time it went back to the Ottomans.

Which landlocked kingdom is entirely enclosed by a single neighbouring country?

Lesotho's lowest point, about 1,400 m, is the highest low point of any country, and in 1868 its king sought British protection against Boer settlers.

Which body of water in Siberia is the deepest lake in the world?

Baikal reaches 1,642 m, holds more water than all five North American Great Lakes combined, and is home to the nerpa, a freshwater seal found nowhere else.

The Galápagos Islands belong to which country?

Ecuador annexed the Galápagos in 1832, three years before Charles Darwin's visit helped inspire his theory of evolution by natural selection.

After Vietnam's reunification, Saigon was renamed in honour of which leader?

Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City in 1976, seven years after the leader's death, yet many residents call it Saigon.

Counting cold deserts, which is the largest desert on Earth?

The Antarctic Desert, though buried in ice, counts as Earth's largest desert because its interior receives very little precipitation.

What is the most populous country in Africa?

Nigeria moved its capital from overcrowded Lagos to purpose-built Abuja in 1991, choosing a central site seen as neutral among its major ethnic groups.

Which two countries share the longest international border in the world?

The United States and Canada share about 8,900 km of border, and a black line across the floor of the Haskell Free Library marks it between Vermont and Quebec.

In which country would you find Machu Picchu?

Peru: probably built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti, it was abandoned as the Spanish conquest unfolded, likely as its nobles joined the Inca court in exile.

Which city replaced Auckland as New Zealand's capital?

Wellington replaced Auckland in 1865 after MPs who could not agree on a more central capital left the choice to Australian commissioners.

Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere, stands in which country?

Aconcagua, in Argentina's Mendoza province, is the highest mountain outside Asia, yet its normal route is arguably non-technical, needing no ropes.

Which is the world's largest island, since Australia is counted as a continent?

Greenland is about four-fifths ice, yet Erik the Red is said to have given it that name to lure settlers.

Earth's deepest known point, the Challenger Deep, lies at the southern end of which ocean trench?

The Mariana Trench formed because the Pacific plate dives beneath a neighbouring plate there, in a subduction zone.

Which is the largest landlocked country in the world by area?

Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country, and Russia leases its Baikonur Cosmodrome, where Yuri Gagarin launched into space, until 2050.

Which river forms much of the border between the United States and Mexico?

The Rio Grande, called the Río Bravo del Norte in Mexico, forms the Texas–Mexico border, but irrigation now leaves little of its water to reach the Gulf.

Which country has coastline on both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans?

South Africa has coastline on both the Atlantic Ocean (west coast) and the Indian Ocean (east coast). The two oceans meet near Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa — not Cape of Good Hope as commonly believed.

What is the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world?

Angel Falls in Venezuela plunges 807 m unbroken and is named after aviator Jimmie Angel, who landed his plane on the plateau above it in 1937.

What is the largest inland body of water on Earth?

The Caspian Sea is about a third as salty as seawater, and its five shoreline states argued for decades over whether it is a sea or a lake, which decides how its oil and gas are shared.

Which sea's shores are the lowest land on Earth?

The Dead Sea lay about 440 m below sea level in the 2020s, and it has shrunk as the river feeding it was diverted upstream.

Which African country is named after a medieval stone city?

Zimbabwe took its name from Great Zimbabwe, whose ruins colonial-era writers credited to Phoenicians rather than the Shona people who built them.

Which island country sits astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart?

Iceland's Silfra fissure lies between the two plates, so divers there swim in the gap between North America and Eurasia.

Which country lies entirely within the Alps?

Liechtenstein lies wholly in the Rätikon range of the Alps, and it abolished its army in 1868 for financial reasons.

Which city straddles two continents?

Istanbul straddles the Bosporus, with about two-thirds of its people on the European side, yet it lost its role as capital to Ankara in 1923.

Which country flies the world's only national flag that is neither rectangular nor square?

Nepal's constitution spells out, step by step, how to construct its two-pennant flag, the only national flag taller than it is wide.

Which belt of volcanoes and trenches sees most of the world's earthquakes?

The Ring of Fire traces subduction zones, where water released from sinking plates melts the rock above into magma, which is why it holds so many volcanoes.

Which country shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic?

Haiti declared independence in 1804, after enslaved people rose up and defeated their colonial rulers.

What is the longest river in Europe?

The Volga drains into an inland sea, so Europe's longest river never reaches the ocean.

The Danube ends in a delta shared by Romania and Ukraine on the shore of which sea?

The Danube Delta on the Black Sea grew fast over the last two millennia, fed by soil that washed downriver after forests upstream were cleared.

Which Middle Eastern country is an archipelago in the Persian Gulf?

Bahrain, linked to Saudi Arabia by the King Fahd Causeway, has grown by more than a tenth through land reclamation.

Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, is located in which country?

Mount Kilimanjaro, in north-eastern Tanzania, is Africa's highest peak, and its glaciers have shrunk so fast that they are projected to vanish within decades.

The Strait of Malacca separates the Malay Peninsula from which large island?

The Strait of Malacca, between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, is so shallow that the biggest ships able to pass are called Malaccamax.

Which African capital has a national park just 7 km from its centre, where lions and rhinos roam?

Nairobi National Park is fenced on three sides, but its open southern boundary lets wildlife migrate to and from the Kitengela plains.

Which peak is the highest mountain in both Russia and Europe?

Mount Elbrus, a dormant volcano in the Caucasus, was topped with a Nazi flag by German mountain troops in 1942, a stunt that enraged Hitler.

K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth, lies in which range?

K2 rises 8,611 m in the Karakoram on the Pakistan–China border, and it kept its 1856 survey label because no widely used local name could be found.

What is the highest mountain peak in North America?

Denali's federal name changed from Mount McKinley to Denali in 2015 and back to Mount McKinley in 2025, while Alaska has officially called it Denali since 1975.

Which lake is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area?

Superior leads only if Michigan and Huron count as separate lakes, and in a 1975 storm it sank the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald with all 29 crew.

Which African rift lake is the longest freshwater lake in the world?

Lake Tanganyika is Africa's deepest lake, and on its shore at Ujiji in 1871 Henry Morton Stanley met the explorer David Livingstone.

Which river carries the largest discharge volume of water in the world?

The Amazon discharges about a fifth of all river water reaching the oceans, and in 1500 Vicente Yáñez Pinzón found fresh water far out at sea.

Which river is the longest in China and the third-longest in the world?

The Yangtze's Three Gorges Dam displaced more than a million people during its construction.

Which river is the longest in Australia?

The Murray runs 2,508 km, and irrigation cut its flow so much that from 2002 dredges had to keep its mouth open.

Which river, called the Lancang in China, flows past Phnom Penh to a delta in Vietnam?

When the Mekong floods, it forces Cambodia's Tonlé Sap River to flow backwards, swelling the great lake upstream.

Which river is the deepest ever recorded, with depths around 220 metres?

The Congo crosses the equator twice, so part of its basin is always in a rainy season, which keeps its flow unusually steady.

Which mountain range separates European Russia from Siberia?

The Ural Mountains mark the conventional boundary between Europe and Asia, and in World War II the Soviets moved hundreds of factories there, out of German reach.

Which strait separates Russia's far east from Alaska?

In the Bering Strait, Russia's Big Diomede and Alaska's Little Diomede lie 3.8 km apart, yet the International Date Line puts them almost a day apart.

The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the gulf named after which country?

The Gulf of Oman lies beyond the strait, whose southern shore is Musandam, an Omani exclave cut off from the rest of Oman by the United Arab Emirates.

Which Hawaiian volcano is called Earth's tallest mountain when measured from its base?

Mauna Kea's high, dry summit with stable air is one of the best places on Earth for astronomy, so observatories from many countries were built there.

Which Nordic capital, where the Nobel Peace Prize is presented, was called Christiania until 1925?

Oslo burned down in 1624, and King Christian IV had a new city built nearby and named it Christiania in his own honour.

Which South American desert is the driest non-polar desert in the world?

The Atacama is so dry and nearly lifeless that NASA tests Mars instruments and rovers there before sending them to another planet.

Most of the world's largest river delta, formed by the Ganges and Brahmaputra, lies in which country?

Bangladesh holds most of the Ganges Delta, whose low-lying land leaves millions exposed to cyclones and rising seas.

Which South Atlantic island is considered the remotest inhabited place in the world?

When a volcano erupted on Tristan da Cunha in 1961, all its residents were evacuated to England, and most returned home in 1963.

Which is the most densely populated sovereign state in the world?

Monaco is so crowded that it has reclaimed land from the Mediterranean, including the Mareterra district inaugurated in 2024.

Which country is the world's most sparsely populated sovereign state?

Mongolia has about two people per km², and in a zud, a brutal winter of deep snow or ice, livestock cannot reach grass and die in huge numbers.

Which former Soviet republic is one of only two doubly landlocked countries?

Uzbekistan's former fishing port of Moynaq was left with ships stranded in desert after Soviet irrigation schemes drained much of the Aral Sea.

Which Russian exclave on the Baltic is wedged between Poland and Lithuania?

Kaliningrad was the German city of Königsberg until Soviet troops captured it in 1945; it was renamed after Mikhail Kalinin in 1946.

What name is given to the spot in the ocean that is farthest from any land?

Point Nemo is about 2,688 km from the nearest land, so space agencies steer retired spacecraft to fall there.

What is the highest mountain on mainland Australia?

Paweł Strzelecki named Mount Kosciuszko in 1840 after the Polish hero Tadeusz Kościuszko, because the peak reminded him of the Kościuszko Mound in Kraków.

Lake Constance sits where Germany, Switzerland and which third country meet?

Lake Constance is shared by Germany, Switzerland and Austria, yet the three have never agreed where the borders run across its waters.

Longyearbyen is the largest settlement of which Arctic archipelago?

Under Svalbard's 1920 treaty, citizens of every signatory country have equal rights to fish, hunt and run businesses there.

Tórshavn is the capital of which North Atlantic islands?

The Faroe Islands are a self-governing part of the Danish realm, yet unlike Denmark they are not part of the European Union.

Easter Island, famed for its moai statues, is a special territory of which country?

Chile annexed Easter Island in 1888, and the island got its European name because Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen arrived on Easter Sunday 1722.

Which island is the world's fourth-largest?

Madagascar split from the Indian subcontinent long ago, so most of its wildlife evolved in isolation and lives nowhere else.

Which is the only sovereign state whose principal territory lies wholly on Borneo?

Brunei is the only country lying wholly on Borneo, and Malaysia's Limbang district cuts it into two separate pieces.

What is the world's second-largest island by area?

New Guinea was joined to Australia by land during the last ice age, until rising seas flooded what is now the Torres Strait.

Which island is the most populous in the world, with over 150 million people?

Java holds more than half of Indonesia's people, a density long sustained by wet-rice farming on its volcanic soils.

Which island nation is the world's lowest-lying country?

The Maldives' cabinet held a meeting underwater in 2009 to warn the world about rising seas.

What is the capital of Bhutan?

Thimphu, Bhutan's capital, has no traffic lights: one was installed but soon removed.

Which city lost its role as national capital when Brasília was inaugurated?

Rio de Janeiro lost the capital to Brasília in 1960, after President Juscelino Kubitschek had the planned city built in under four years.

Which city replaced Yangon as the administrative capital of Myanmar?

Naypyidaw became Myanmar's capital in 2005, apparently because the junta wanted a stronghold able to withstand foreign invasion or popular uprisings.

What is the official capital of Ivory Coast?

Yamoussoukro became the official capital in 1983 because it was President Félix Houphouët-Boigny's birthplace.

Which Japanese volcano's last eruption dumped ash on Edo?

Mount Fuji's Hōei eruption began in December 1707, and in 1708 rain washed its ash into the Sakawa River, which burst temporary dams and flooded the Ashigara plain.

The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea to which sea?

The canal's link to the Red Sea was blocked for six days in March 2021, when the container ship Ever Given ran aground across it.

Mosi-oa-Tunya, 'the smoke that thunders', is a great waterfall on which river?

The Zambezi's Victoria Falls has shifted upstream over time, and the zigzag of gorges below it holds the falls' earlier positions.

The ancient trading city of Timbuktu lies in which modern country?

Timbuktu, near the Niger River in Mali, grew rich on the trans-Saharan trade in gold and salt and became a great centre of Islamic learning.

Which city is the last divided capital in Europe?

Nicosia has been split by the UN buffer zone known as the Green Line since 1974, and its main shopping street, Ledra Street, reopened as a crossing only in 2008.

Which country's two heads of state are the Bishop of Urgell and a foreign president?

Andorra's shared rule began with a 1278 paréage between the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix, whose rights later passed to the head of state in Paris.

Which microstate claims to be the oldest extant sovereign state, founded in AD 301?

By tradition, San Marino was founded by Marinus, a stonemason fleeing Emperor Diocletian's persecution, who built a chapel on Monte Titano.

Which Pacific nation earns government revenue from leasing its '.tv' internet domain?

Tuvalu handed the marketing of its '.tv' domain to an outside company in exchange for a promised US$50 million.

Which 21 km² island nation is the third-smallest country in the world by area?

Nauru's phosphate mining, which began around 1900, stripped about 80% of the island, leaving much of it uninhabitable.

The Okavango Delta, a vast inland delta in the Kalahari, lies in which country?

Botswana's Okavango Delta floods in the dry winter, months after the summer rains that feed it fall in Angola's highlands.

Which mountain chain is the longest lying entirely within a single country?

The Great Dividing Range runs more than 3,500 km down eastern Australia and splits rivers flowing to the Pacific from those draining inland.

About a quarter of which European country lies below sea level, much of it land reclaimed as polders?

Netherlands literally means 'lower countries'. About 26% of its area and 21% of its population sit below sea level, on land won from the water since the 14th century.

Which desert nation is the largest country in the world without a single permanent river?

Saudi Arabia is the twelfth-largest country on Earth and the largest in the Middle East, yet no river flows through it all year round.

Which country, the world's largest archipelagic state, spreads as many as 17,000 islands across more than 5,000 km?

Indonesia has so many islands that the total depends on who is counting: published figures range from 13,466 named islands to more than 17,500.

Which California desert basin holds both North America's lowest point and the highest air temperature ever recorded?

Death Valley reached 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Furnace Creek on July 10, 1913, and its Badwater Basin lies 282 feet below sea level.

Which body of water in the Scottish Highlands holds more fresh water than all the lakes of England and Wales combined?

Loch Ness is only the second-largest Scottish loch by surface area, after Loch Lomond, but its great depth makes it the largest by volume in the British Isles.

Which Adriatic city is built on 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by more than 400 bridges?

Venice was long known as La Serenissima, 'The Most Serene', and the city and its lagoon were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

Which African country extends into Asia through the Sinai Peninsula, a land bridge between the two continents?

Egypt reaches Asia only through Sinai, the one part of the country outside Africa. The isthmus linking the peninsula to the Asian mainland is around 200 km wide.

Which river carved the Grand Canyon through Arizona before crossing into Mexico toward the Gulf of California?

The Colorado no longer reliably reaches the sea: since 1960 its final stretch to the Gulf of California has been dry or a trickle.

Which mountain on the border of China is known to Tibetans as Chomolungma, or 'holy mother'?

Mount Everest got its English name from Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India, who claimed he could not find a commonly used local name.

Which imaginary boundary, running mostly along 180° longitude, separates one calendar day from the next?

The International Date Line is not straight: it runs down the middle of the Pacific but deviates to pass around some territories and island groups.

Which island country in the Indian Ocean was known as Ceylon when it gained independence in 1948?

Sri Lanka's old name came from Ceilão, what the Portuguese called the island when they arrived in 1505. It became a republic in 1972.

Which Southeast Asian kingdom, formerly called Siam, was the only country in its region never colonised by Europeans?

Thailand kept its independence at a price: it ceded territory, trade rights and legal privileges to European powers through several unequal treaties.

Which sandstone monolith in Australia's Northern Territory was named Ayers Rock by a surveyor in 1873?

Uluru is sacred to the Pitjantjatjara people. In 1993 it became the first officially dual-named feature in the Northern Territory, and in 2002 the Aboriginal name was put first.

Horseshoe, American and Bridal Veil are the three waterfalls of which landmark between Ontario and New York?

Niagara is split by two islands: the largest cascade, Horseshoe Falls, straddles the international border, while the two smaller ones lie wholly on the New York side.

Which line of latitude crosses Gabon, Uganda and Somalia?

The Equator is the only line of latitude that is also a great circle, meaning one whose plane passes through the centre of the globe.

Which London district's observatory marked the prime meridian adopted for the whole world at an 1884 conference?

Greenwich also gave its name to Greenwich Mean Time. Its meridian was the world's reference line for a century, until the IERS Reference Meridian replaced it in 1984.

Which island, the largest in the Mediterranean Sea, is dominated by Mount Etna on its eastern coast?

Sicily is also the most populous island in the Mediterranean, and Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe, regularly casts black ash over it.

Which Asian mountain range takes its name from Sanskrit words meaning 'abode of snow'?

Himalayas joins hima, 'frost' or 'cold', to alaya, 'dwelling'. More than 100 peaks in the range rise above 7,200 metres.

Which Asian country is an archipelago of about 7,600 islands grouped into Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao?

Philippines comes from las Islas Filipinas, the name the explorer Ruy López de Villalobos gave the islands in 1543 in honour of the future King Philip II.

Which island, once called Van Diemen's Land, is separated from mainland Australia by Bass Strait?

Tasmania became a separate British colony under that older name in 1825, and today it is Australia's smallest and least populous state.

Which city, almost encircled by a loop of the Aare river, has served as Switzerland's federal city since 1848?

Bern owes its name, legend says, to a bear its founder met while hunting. The animal has been on the city's seal and coat of arms since at least the 1220s.

Which body of water, Africa's largest by area, did the British explorer John Hanning Speke reach in 1858?

Lake Victoria is the world's largest tropical lake. Speke renamed it for his queen, although it already had local names such as Nam Lolwe and 'Nnalubaale.

The Missouri, the longest river in the United States, empties into which other river just north of St. Louis?

The Mississippi is slightly shorter than its own tributary. Joined end to end, the Missouri and the lower Mississippi form the world's fourth-longest river system.

Which of North America's Great Lakes is the only one lying wholly within the United States?

Lake Michigan touches four states and no foreign shore, which also makes it the largest lake entirely within one country by surface area.

Which European country governs Ceuta and Melilla, two autonomous cities on the coast of North Africa?

Spain ran Ceuta as an ordinary municipality of the province of Cádiz until 1995, when a Statute of Autonomy made it an autonomous city.

Which peak, the highest in the Alps, was first climbed in 1786 by Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard?

Mont Blanc is big enough to create its own weather patterns, and since 1965 a road tunnel more than 11 km long has run beneath it.

Which Asian desert, the sixth-largest in the world, yielded a famous clutch of dinosaur eggs in 1923?

The Gobi's eggs came from Mongolia's Flaming Cliffs, a name given by the American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews, whose expedition found them.

Which river flows mostly through Pakistan before reaching the Arabian Sea near Karachi?

The Indus gave India its name: the ancient Greeks used it for all the lands east of Persia. It rises in Tibet, where it is known as Sengge Zangbo.

Baghdad, Mosul and Samarra all stand on which river, the eastern of the two that define Mesopotamia?

The Tigris has a Sumerian name that can be read as 'the swift river'. Its slower neighbour dropped more silt and built up a higher bed.

Which Central Asian lake shrank to a tenth of its size after Soviet irrigation projects diverted the rivers feeding it?

The Aral Sea once covered 68,000 square kilometres. It began shrinking in the 1960s, and by 2007 what was left had split into four separate lakes.

Which waterway, the second-longest in China, has been nicknamed both 'China's Pride' and 'China's Sorrow'?

The Yellow River gets its name, and its colour, from the huge load of sediment it picks up while crossing the Loess Plateau.

Which North African country became the largest on the continent by area when Sudan split in two in 2011?

Algeria is the tenth-largest country in the world, yet the Sahara dominates most of it, so most Algerians live in the fertile, mountainous north.

Which is the only country in Central America where English is the official language?

Belize was known as British Honduras until 1973, and it remains the only mainland Central American country that is a Commonwealth realm.

Which West African capital is the only one outside the United States named after an American president?

Monrovia honours James Monroe, a prominent supporter of the American Colonization Society and of its settlement in Liberia.

Which country, the smallest on the African mainland, is bounded by Senegal on every side except its Atlantic coast?

Gambia follows the Gambia River inland, a waterway the British and French empires struggled over throughout the 18th century.

Which coastal desert in southwestern Africa, arid for at least 55 million years, may be the oldest in the world?

Namib is a word from the Nama language, variously reported to mean 'vast place' and 'an area where there is nothing'. The desert is almost completely uninhabited.

Which semi-arid belt, whose Arabic name means 'coast' or 'shore', separates the Sahara from the savannas to its south?

The Sahel has seen so many coups and insurgencies since the 2010s that the region has also been called the Coup Belt.

Which rocky headland, not the more famous Good Hope, is the true southernmost tip of the African continent?

Cape Agulhas means 'Cape of Needles' in Portuguese. It also marks the start of the traditional dividing line between two oceans.

Which mountain range, whose highest peak is Toubkal, separates the Sahara from the Mediterranean coast?

The Atlas range runs about 2,500 km through three countries and is associated with the Titan of the same name from Greek myth.

Which peninsula in Russia's far east holds Klyuchevskaya Sopka and other volcanoes on the UNESCO World Heritage list?

Kamchatka also hides the Valley of Geysers, one of the largest geyser fields in the world, which was discovered only in 1941.

Which Pacific republic of 32 atolls and one solitary island extends into all four of Earth's hemispheres?

Kiribati is spread so widely that its easternmost islands, the southern Line Islands south of Hawaii, keep the most advanced clock time on Earth, UTC+14.

Which volcano's summit is the surface point farthest from the centre of the Earth, thanks to the globe's bulge?

Chimborazo rises only 6,263 m above sea level, well short of the world's highest summits, but Earth is thicker around its middle than from pole to pole.

Which roadless stretch of jungle and swamp is the only break in the Pan-American Highway?

The Darién Gap interrupts a road system about 30,000 km long: the highway stops at Yaviza and resumes roughly 106 km away at Turbo, in Colombia.

Which Siberian village, where −67.7 °C was recorded in 1933, is the coldest permanently inhabited settlement on Earth?

Oymyakon shares the title of Northern Pole of Cold with the town of Verkhoyansk, 629 km away, which logged a reading one tenth of a degree lower in 1892.

Which narrow strip of land gives Afghanistan its only border with China, squeezed between Tajikistan and Pakistan?

The Wakhan Corridor was created in the 1890s as a buffer, so that Russian Turkestan, now Tajikistan, would not touch British territory, now Pakistan.

Which Russian port on Kola Bay is the largest city in the world north of the Arctic Circle?

Murmansk has long, snowy winters, but the waters around it are generally ice-free, which is why a wartime railway was built to that coast in 1915.

Which uninhabited volcanic speck in the South Atlantic, a dependency of Norway, is the world's most remote landmass?

Bouvet Island is a protected nature reserve at the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Norway made it a dependency in 1930, after settling a dispute with the United Kingdom.

Which city on the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego claims the title of the world's southernmost city?

Ushuaia was founded in 1884 on a waterway named after HMS Beagle, the British survey ship that later carried Charles Darwin around the world.

Which South American salt flat, the largest in the world, covers a pool of brine exceptionally rich in lithium?

Salar de Uyuni is so large and so flat, under such clear skies, that it is used to calibrate the altimeters of Earth observation satellites.

Which lake, drained toward the Baltic by the Neva River, is the largest located entirely in Europe?

Ladoga is cut off from the Baltic by the Karelian Isthmus. A 12th-century chronicle calls it 'the Great Nevo', a clear link to the river that drains it.