My Weird School Fast Facts: Geography Read online

  My mom once told me a wise saying: no man is an island. That made no sense at all. No man is a toothbrush either. But we don’t go around making up wise sayings about it.

  The Komodo dragon is a giant lizard that can only be found in Indonesia. It can grow to more than ten feet and weigh over three hundred pounds. Komodo dragons eat all kinds of meat—including humans.

  So maybe you don’t want to go to Indonesia after all.

  Europe

  Do you know what they say when you go to the bathroom in France?

  European! Get it? European? You’re a-peein’?

  That’s horrible, Arlo.

  I know. But did you know you could stand with one foot in Europe and one foot in Asia without even having to do a split? It’s true.

  Two countries—Russia and Turkey—are partly in Europe and partly in Asia. And there’s one major city that is in both continents: Istanbul.

  That’s a good trivia question to ask your parents, by the way. I bet they won’t get it right.

  Unless, of course, you live in Istanbul.

  Great Britain is a group of three countries in Europe and is also an island. To make things more confusing, the United Kingdom is made up of four countries—England, Scotland, and Wales, which are all part of Great Britain—and also Northern Ireland, which is not.

  Almost half of the Netherlands is below sea level. That doesn’t mean that the people of the Netherlands sit around underwater all day long. That would be weird. But thanks to a complicated system of dikes, canals, and pumping stations, they have managed to keep the water away from the land.

  The word “Netherlands” actually means “low country.”

  It would be cool to hop on your bike anywhere in your country, ride for five minutes, and be in a different country. Well, there’s only one place in the world where you could do that: Vatican City.

  It’s the smallest country in the world: one-fifth of a square mile. That’s about the size of one hundred football fields.

  Vatican City is in the middle of Rome, Italy, and it’s the seat of the Roman Catholic Church. Only about eight hundred people live there, but Vatican City has its own coins, stamps, and passports.

  Africa

  Here’s another good question to ask your know-it-all parents: How many tigers are there in Africa?

  The answer is . . . none!

  It was a trick question. Tigers are native to Asia, not Africa. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on your parents.

  There are more than fifty countries in Africa, and the people there speak two thousand different languages. Well, all of them don’t speak two thousand languages. That would be weird. Most of them probably only speak one or two languages. But you know what I mean.

  Does your mom have a diamond ring or diamond earrings? They probably came from Africa. More than half of the world’s diamonds come from there.

  By the way, next to Arlo’s head, a diamond is the hardest natural substance found on Earth. Diamonds are not just used for rings and earrings. They’re also used in saws and drills that can cut through granite.

  If you like to fly kites or ride dune buggies, you should go to Namibia. The rust-red sand dunes there are the highest in the world. The largest one is called Big Daddy, and it’s more than a thousand feet high. Namibia would also be a good place to build sand castles.

  The countries of Europe used to send people to Africa to establish colonies there the same way they had colonies in America. But by 1991, those colonies had all gained their independence, and most of them changed their names.

  So if you look at a map of Africa from before the 1990s and compare it with a recent map, you’ll see that most of the names of the countries are different. I guess the mapmakers were really happy, because everybody had to go out and buy new maps.

  North America

  If you’re reading this book, you probably live here, so you should know something about it. And if you’re not reading this book, how do you even know I just wrote that?

  The highest point in North America is Mount Denali (also known as Mount McKinley). It’s in Alaska, and it’s 20,320 feet above sea level. That is high!

  The lowest point in North America is Death Valley, California. It’s 282 feet below sea level. We’ll talk more about Death Valley later.

  If you look at a map, you’ll see there’s a lot of water between Siberia and Alaska. But thousands of years ago that water wasn’t there. The first Americans actually walked here across that land bridge. That’s how people spread across North America.

  Ha, and you thought they took the train.

  The Grand Canyon was carved by the Colorado River over millions of years. It’s one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World. Do you know how many dinosaur fossils have been found in the Grand Canyon?

  None! That’s because the canyon is so old that it’s older than the dinosaurs!

  Some people think Mexico is in South America. Those people are called dumbheads. Mexico is south of the United States of America, but that doesn’t mean it’s in South America!

  Mexico is in North America. So are the countries of Central America: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Central America is the strip of land that connects North and South America.

  Mexico, Central America, and South America are sometimes called Latin America. That’s weird, because hardly anybody there speaks Latin. In fact, hardly anybody anywhere speaks Latin.

  Greenland is the largest island in North America. It doesn’t have the perfect name, because it’s not very green. In fact, 80 percent of it is covered in ice. Only fifty-seven thousand people live in Greenland. That’s less than the number of people who attend an average NFL game.

  Many scientists think the dinosaurs were wiped out sixty-five million years ago when a comet slammed into North America and caused climate change. That comet left a huge crater, and it’s still there. It’s in Chicxulub, on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

  Artist’s rendering of the Chicxulub asteroid impact

  And don’t ask me how to pronounce Chicxulub.

  Did you ever wonder why North America and South America are called America? I’ll tell you why—they were named after an Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci.

  So why weren’t they named Vespucci? Because it would be weird to call our country the United States of Vespucci.

  Speaking of South America . . .

  South America

  Like Europe and Asia, North and South America are really just one continent. They’re connected by Central America, which is an isthmus.

  Don’t bother looking up “isthmus.” I already did. An isthmus is a strip of land that connects two larger land areas.

  The Amazon rainforest is the biggest tropical rainforest in the world. Over two and a half million square miles, it sits mostly in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. The Amazon River, the second-longest river in the world, flows through the rainforest.

  By the way, the wettest inhabited place on Earth is Buenaventura, Colombia.

  The highest waterfall in the world is Angel Falls in Venezuela. It is 3,212 feet high.

  Do you think there’s a single place on Earth that has not been explored by humans? There could be. Before 1911, no Westerner had ever seen or visited Machu Picchu. It’s an ancient city in Peru built high in the mountains.

  Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania

  Did you ever hear of a continent called Oceania? I’ll bet your parents never did either. But geographers now group Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Tasmania, and thousands of islands in the South Pacific together into a continent they call Oceania.

  Thousands of islands? Hmmm, I bet that’s where thousand island dressing came from!

  Actually, it didn’t, Arlo. Thousand island dressing came from the thousands of islands between the United States and Canada in the St. Lawrence River. Nice try, though.

  Some of those thousands of islands in Oceania may someday be covered by the Pacific Ocean, if climat
e change leads to rising sea levels. Many people from the island country of Tuvalu have already moved to New Zealand, just in case.

  Australia has lots of interesting animals, like koalas, kangaroos, platypuses, and my personal favorite, the Tasmanian devil. It’s a meat-eating marsupial (that’s an animal that carries its young in a pouch on the mother’s belly) and it lives only in Tasmania—an island off Australia’s southeastern coast.

  The reason why Australia has a lot of plants and animals that are different is because it’s so far away from Earth’s other landmasses. In fact, Australia didn’t have any cats, rabbits, or foxes until the Europeans brought them there.

  Antarctica

  Some days when I’m feeling sad, I want to run away to Antarctica and go live with the penguins. Penguins are cool. Their parents never yell at them. They don’t have to do homework or go to school and learn stuff. Nobody tells the people in Antarctica that they’re secretly in love with Andrea.

  But if I actually went to Antarctica, I would be afraid. Because it’s at the very bottom of the world. If you fall off the bottom, where do you go? Into outer space? I don’t know. And I don’t want to find out.

  Do you know what the largest land animal is in Antarctica? If you guessed penguins, you’re wrong! Penguins are sea animals.

  The largest land animal in Antarctica is the wingless midge. It’s an insect, and it’s less than half an inch long.

  Antarctica is where the South Pole would pop out if it was a real pole and not just some imaginary spot on the bottom of the world. But it is an imaginary place, so what’s the point of talking about it? Santa Claus doesn’t even live there.

  Antarctica is the coldest continent on the planet. How cold is it? It’s so cold that the birds pick up worms with gloves on.

  That wasn’t funny the first time, Arlo. But the truth is that it’s so cold that there aren’t any countries in Antarctica, and hardly any people.

  The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in Antarctica, of course. In July 1983, the temperature reached (are you ready for this?) 128 degrees below zero. Yes, that’s minus 128 degrees. I feel sorry for the guy who had to go outside to check that thermometer.

  Naturally, there are a lot of icebergs around Antarctica. Some of them are really huge. The biggest iceberg ever seen in the waters around Antarctica measured 208 miles long and 60 miles wide. Wow! That’s bigger than some countries.

  Antarctica is the only continent that gets larger and smaller during the year. In the winter, sea ice forms around the continent, and it more than doubles its size.

  They probably have a lot of snow in Antarctica, right?

  Wrong again! Snow doesn’t form when it’s too cold outside. So they hardly get any snow at all in Antarctica. And the small amount of snow they do get never melts. It just builds up to form big sheets of ice. And you know what those sheets of ice are called?

  Ice sheets! Duh! So they have the perfect name.

  Actually, the whole continent of Antarctica is technically a desert because it gets less than two inches of precipitation a year.*

  There’s also a huge lake under all that Antarctic ice. The weird thing is that nobody even knew about it until 1996, when scientists discovered it using radar. You probably wouldn’t want to go swimming in Lake Vostok, though. It’s two and a half miles under the ice cap.

  Satellite image of Lake Vostok

  Antarctica’s ice cap holds 70 percent of the earth’s freshwater. The other 30 percent is in my uncle’s swimming pool.

  Okay, I made that last part up. But my uncle does have a big pool.

  If you ask me, Antarctica is cool. In more ways than one.

  Oceans

  Oceans are cool because you can swim and surf and boogie board and collect seashells and buy cotton candy and go on rides.

  One summer my family rented a beach house, and we went to the boardwalk and I ate so much candy and popcorn and saltwater taffy that I got sick to my stomach. It was the greatest day of my life.

  Arlo, eating junk food has nothing to do with the ocean. The important fast fact to know is that water covers more than two-thirds of the planet.

  I knew that. But did you know this? The reason there are tides in the ocean is because of the moon. Isn’t that weird? Why should the moon have anything to do with tides? Well, I’ll tell you.

  Just like we have gravity on Earth, the moon has gravity too. When the moon is overhead, the water in our oceans is pulled toward it. The water on Earth is attracted by the moon’s gravity. So the water level in the oceans rises and falls every twelve hours.

  Your parents are probably going to tell you there are four oceans—the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, and the Arctic—but they’re wrong. A few years ago, the International Hydrographic Organization (which is a fancy name for the people in charge of oceans) decided that there are really five oceans.

  The fifth ocean is called the Southern Ocean. It includes the waters around Antarctica. Some people call it the Antarctic Ocean, just to make things even more confusing.

  An iceberg in the Southern Ocean

  Actually, there is really just one big ocean. If you look at a globe, you’ll see that all the oceans are connected in one way or another. Those bits of land we call continents just get in the way.

  How deep are the oceans? On average, they’re about twelve thousand feet deep. That might not mean much to you, but one mile is 5,280 feet. So the oceans are more than two miles deep. That’s deep! Of course, some parts of the ocean are much deeper and some are more shallow. If there weren’t shallow parts, you couldn’t stand up in the ocean and dig your toes into the sandy bottom.

  The lowest point on Earth is a valley in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench called Challenger Deep. It’s thirty-six thousand feet deep! That’s almost seven miles! Just to give you an idea of how big that is, if you picked up Mount Everest and dunked it into Challenger Deep, its peak would still be more than a mile underwater.

  Of course, the tough part would be picking up Mount Everest in the first place.

  The Pacific is the biggest of all the oceans by far. It covers almost a third of the earth’s surface. It’s fifteen times bigger than the United States, and it has tons of islands—twenty thousand to thirty thousand of them. Nobody really knows the exact number for sure. Some of them are tiny volcanic islands where nothing can grow, so no people live there.

  It would be cool to live on an island with no people. But then, of course, if you lived there, it wouldn’t be an island with no people anymore.

  The Atlantic Ocean isn’t nearly as big as the Pacific, but it’s getting bigger. Because the tectonic plates in the earth are constantly moving, they’re pushing the continents apart. The Atlantic is expanding at the rate of about one inch every year.

  At some point, it will take longer to fly from the United States to Europe. It might be a few million years. But my dad told me you can save a lot of money by booking flights in advance.

  Here’s another one to ask your parents: What is the longest mountain range on Earth?

  Give up? It’s the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It’s an underwater mountain chain that runs down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is ten thousand miles long. It stretches all the way from the Arctic Ocean to the southern tip of Africa.

  That’s one mountain range that you probably don’t want to ski down. It’s really hard to ski underwater.

  Of course, you could water-ski above it.

  The Gulf Stream is sort of like a giant river that flows through the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s warmer than the rest of the ocean, and it moves from Florida up the East Coast and then all the way across the ocean to Europe. Without the Gulf Stream, northern Europe would be a lot colder than it is.

  You’ll never believe who mapped out and named the Gulf Stream.

  It was Benjamin Franklin!

  Lakes

  Lakes are different from oceans, and not just because they’re smaller. A lake is a body
of water that is completely surrounded by land. Every continent has lakes—even Antarctica!

  Do you like swimming in lakes? If so, you should go to Finland. It has more than 185,000 of them! That’s a lot of lakes!

  There have been lakes that were formed when a bunch of guys with bulldozers dug big holes in the ground. But mostly, the lakes on our planet were formed naturally. You may have noticed that most of North America’s lakes are in the northern part of the continent. Like, there are zillions of lakes in Canada.

  About twenty thousand years ago, during the last Ice Age, glaciers from Canada started to slip and slide their way south. The moving ice cut into the ground, creating valleys and carrying rock away. When the glaciers started to melt, they turned into lakes and rivers. That’s how America’s Great Lakes were formed.

  Can you name all five of the Great Lakes? Most people can’t. Here’s a little trick: Think of the word “HOMES.” Each letter is the start of one of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.

  Or you could use the words “SHEMO,” “ME OHS,” or “SHO ME.”

  Most lakes have freshwater—the kind that most plants, animals, and humans need to live. Of all the water on Earth, only about 2.5 percent of it is freshwater, and most of that is frozen or deep underground. That means we can use only 1 percent of the earth’s water. That’s kind of scary when you think about all the things we do with water. We drink it. We clean ourselves with it. We water our lawns and wash our cars with it. We fill our water balloons with it.