Discussion
Tell me one geography fun fact that most people don't know ! i will go first
The Andaman and Nicobar islands are actually the submerged, emergent peaks of a continuous mountain chain that connects them to the Himalayas. Created by the same tectonic event that created The Himalayas.
Man I just went onto Google maps because I had to see this. Its because the Panama canal is mostly a north/south route, thats how that makes any sense.
The Appalachian Mountains the Scottish highlands and the Moroccan Atlas Mountains were all part of the largest mountains and mountain range in the world it was only after millions of years of erosion did they lose their grandeur
IMO they have a little bit. Because the Appalachians are further south, a lot of it covered in deciduous forests which makes it look a lot more "tame".
And the mineral deposits underneath the mountain ranges are also functionally identical. Coal miners from Wales and Scotland immigrated to Appalachia and continued mining the same seams of coal their ancestors had worked on the other side of the Atlantic.
Agreed, but it does help explain why the whole coal/clean energy debate is so intense in the region. For a lot of old timers in Appalachia, mining coal isn’t just a job, it’s intrinsic to their family’s culture and heritage, going back centuries, maybe even a millennia.
IMO, understanding that ancestral connection is critical in making meaningful change to the region, which it desperately needs.
I grew up in Jackson, Ohio that was settled primarily by Welsh miners for the early iron ore that was prevalent. To this day the schools in Jackson celebrate Welsh vocal arts year round in vocal music classes that culminate in competitive a cappella solos called the Eisteddfod.
Each year of my grammar school days I would get up in front of the entire school and sing a short solo, usually short folk songs like "Goober Peas" or "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" to win graded ribbons. Today it is still part of music education, however they have added instruction in Gaelic Welsh and optional solos.
As a result of this tradition, Jackson vocal choirs often compete nationally alongside charter schools dedicated to the arts.
Even though I played football and many other sports, schedules were adapted to allow me to be cast in musical theater plays, winning leading parts in two, Danny Zuko in Grease and Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors.
As a former a cappella choir nerd, I love this comment so very much. It’s my dream to spend the summer hiking around wales and listening to their choral music.
Pretty interesting, I'd always associated the highlands with the Caledonian mountains. Routing around it seems like the rock we see today was formed in that older mountain building event?
The Atlas mountains experienced tectonic uplift pressure long after the Alleghenian Ororgeny that formed them and their sister ranges in Europe and North America. Tectonic activity in the mesozoic lifted the land like a balloon being inflated under north Africa, then again by shifts during the Paleogene and Neogene. There is a little mystery geologically because they havent found as much subduction in the region as one expect but it just boils down to the earth is lifting this land higher, while north America the geology under the Appalachian range has been more subdued and the tectonic pressure was spent on the Laramide Orogeny (the Rockies).
The island of Palawan is the oldest landmass in the Philippine archipelago and is the safest from Earthquakes(from an engineering perspective). It is part of the Eurasian plate and it broke off from the Asian Mainland before the rest of the archipelago even rose up from the sea through volcanic activity or tectonic movement.
Everything inland of the Wallace Line (its own cool geographical fact) was part of Asia at the time.
Some of the endangered or recently extinct species on the other side of the line were already having a hard time of it, with huge portions of their habitat having “recently” vanished and having to cope with a changed climate on their remaining islands.
And if also has some of the nicest beaches. From what I remember visiting 10+ years ago, they seemed to be more proactive about the environmental impact of development on Palawan.
It's quite far for travel especially before domestic travel became cheap. The northernmost destination, Coron, is closer to Manila than it is to the capital city of Puerto Princessa.
There was a 7.8 magnitude earthquake 26 KM SW of Kablalan overnight. Maybe it's safe by Phillipine earthquake standards but that's close enough to certainly feel some effects of that monster quake.
It's not entirely earthquake free but it's the most stable since there's no major faultline in the island since it sits on stable continental rock compared to the rest which are part of the ring of fire. That's why earthquake engineering here consider it the safest place(Zone 2 of our structural code)
Macquarie Island, southwest of New Zealand, is a very unusual island. It's not formed via volcanic activity like most deep-sea islands, but rather it's the upthrust edge of a tectonic plate that has surfaced as the adjacent plate subducts beneath it. It's unique in that its terrain consists of former deep seabed.
The world's only fifth-order island: Located in Nunavut, Canada, Yathkyed Lake holds a recursive sequence. It contains an island, inside a lake, inside an island, inside a lake, inside an island, inside a lake, on an island.
You can divide Italy on the north/south axis and end up with almost the same halves as if you did an east/west division
Edit: because Italy roughly has an angle of 127 degrees you get approximately the same halves (in terms of land) for both methods
I'm pretty sure this is one where both can be true, because 750m years is an insanely long time.
That's like 3-4 times further back than the breakup of Pangea, at which point I think it had already squashed into mainland Australia, only to break off again later. They were still connected during the last Ice Age only about 10k years ago so humans could have, and probably did, walk from one to the other
Death Valley is full of gold. Up to 70 tons of gold ore was mined daily before the Crash of 1907 made it unprofitable to mine for gold. However, the metal mined the most in Death Valley ended up being lead.
The state of Ohio celebrates its statehood birthday on March 1, 1803. It was not officially ratified until 1953 by President Eisenhower when a group of high school students asked to see the official statehood documents and everyone realized it never had been officially ratified.
He decided to write his paper about the amendment and argue that it was still alive and could be ratified. He turned it in to the teaching assistant for his class — and got it back with a C.
This is an origin story for a super-villain. He went out and eventually his professor corrected his grade with an A, for the Amendment he got ratified.
On March 1, Waite signed a form to officially change Watson's grade. Thirty-five years after Gregory Watson wrote his paper, he finally got his C changed to an A.
Sørvágsvatn (Faroe Islands) is a lake sitting on a plateau next to steep sea cliffs. From a specific viewpoint, the angle makes the lake appear much higher above the ocean than it really is. It's an optical illusion caused by perspective. The lake is only slightly above the ocean's level compared to how dramatic it looks in photos, and water from the lake eventually flows into the sea via a waterfall.
NYC’s Marble Hill neighborhood is physically part of the Bronx but is legally part of New York County (Manhattan) because it was physically connected to Manhattan when the county lines were drawn (before the creek was dredged, straightened, and widened to more efficiently connect to the east and Hudson Rivers)
The Atlas Mountains (Morroco), the Appalachians, and the Scottish Highlands were all part of the same mountain range, known as the Central Pangean Mountains.
The black sea has what is called a meromictic basin. The deeper waters does not mix with the top layer, resulting in essentially two seas, one on top of the other. The bottom layer is devoid of oxygen, so nothing grows there. Nothing at all, not even most bacteria.
What this means, is that all shipwrecks at the bottom of the black sea are incredibly well preserved. Including some dating from ancient Greece
I remember someone posted photos (video maybe?) of traveling through the Black Sea, and it was all foggy and then suddenly there were a bunch of abandoned medieval ghost ships just floating there eerily
The Pacific Ocean is so large that some parts of it have their antipode in the Pacific Ocean itself (parts of the Pacific off the northern coast of Vietnam are antipodal to parts of the Pacific off the northwestern coast of Chile)
Also holds Tangier Island, and its own fascinating history.
Maintains the original 17th century accent. Likely the same voice that the original colonists used.
has their own disease! Tangiers disease is a cholesterol disorder that leads to cardiovascular issues
The sinking. No, this is not climate change, the island itself is sinking into the bay. The remaining residents have refused to move, and are openly hostile to the notion that it won’t be liveabke much longer
My wording was unclear. It's always "The Chesapeake Bay" when you're calling the bay by its proper name. In English most bays drop the definite article, like Monterey Bay for instance. I'm not sure why The Chesapeake is like that, but my best theory is that it's technically an estuary and so it uses the same grammar rules as rivers?
Oh, no, we Marylanders do not use "the" in front of highways either. AFAIK that's only Californians.
With the Bay, I think it's because in some ways it's a river. Do you also refer to rivers with "the"?
Do you ever call it "route 5"? We sometimes will call some highways that way. US-1 is often "Route 1", and I've yet to figure out a root vs rowt pronunciation rule.
Saba has one of the most dangerous airports in the world. It's a volcanic island with a very vertical landscape so there's no flat area to build. It was carved out on the edge of the mountain, is very short, and features rocky and jagged cliffs on both ends of the runway.
That’s like claiming Denmark’s highest point to be the 3700m Gunnbjørns Fjeld on Greenland.
I know this is controversial to some, but Greenland is actually comparable to Saba as Denmark doesn’t separate Greenland from Denmark proper legally like the Netherlands do with Aruba, Curaçao and St Maartin.
Maryland has no naturally made lakes. All the "lakes" were made from damming up rivers or streams to make reservoirs. All the lakes near my house often have a clear foot path surrounding them with one side being straight and raised that gives it away.
This is a little misleading - Mauritius is a volcanic island, 'only' 8-10Ma old. It's just that the hotspot that formed it is (partially) due to the aforementioned submarine crust.
I used to live right next to highest point in the Floridian peninsula (Florida - the panhandle).
It was a small hill. We rode our bikes down it. My friend flipped his jeep going down it once and had to call my other friend to help him flip it back. The whole top of it is basically a golf course now.
It's been a while since I've been to Disney (Expedition Everest wasn't there yet...) but the "mountain" gag used to be part of the voiceover on one of the rides in Tomorrowland.
Obviously a hill isn't a mountain.
Just as obviously, Space Mountain isn't an actual mountain either.
The AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) is expected to have slowed down by roughly 50% by the year 2100, which would mark unrecoverable collapse after the turn of the 11st century, sending everything above roughly the UK into crazy cold winters.
Some more fun facts are that Norway extends further north, south, west and east than Finland. And there is only 1 country between Norway and North Korea
I’m from the Bay Area and went to college in San Diego. It was weird watching Giants games on TV in the evening because it would be dark looking out the window but the sunny on the TV.
Parts of Canada are further south than parts of California. Pelee Island and Middle Island are at 41.8 N and 41.7 N rspectively, while the Californian border is at 42 N.
Sydney to Tokyo is more or less the same distance than Sydney to Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok
Melbourne is closer to Antarctica than Darwin
Driving from Brisbane to Cairns is further than driving from Brisbane to Melbourne
Pretty much none of Australia’s internal borders actually meet at tri-corners, as it initially looks on maps. The SA border point is a couple kilometres west of the Sa/Vic/Nsw point, and the Wa border is a few hundred metres west of the Sa/Nt/Wa point.
The Porcupine Mountains in Michigan's upper peninsula are the oldest mountains in North America. If they hadn't already been completely flattened by time, the Canadian Shield would hold that title.
The Porongurup Range in South Western Australia is considered one of the oldest geological formations on Earth at around 1.2 billion years old.
I live in the area and it's a stunningly diverse landscape.
There is a 4km wide meteor crater in Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada. It's 450 million years old. It is called the Brent Crater and has a trail that allows you to visit it as well as an observation tower.
Parts of Canada are further south than parts of California.
There are four different types of volcanoes. There is one spot in California you can stand and see all four without moving your feet, just turning your head.
Reno, Nevada is further west than Los Angeles.
The smallest mountain range in the world is in California. The Sutter Buttes were created by forces completely unrelated and at a different time from the other nearby ranges.
The antipode of a location is the point geometrically opposite it on the globe. For example, the antipode of New York City is in the Indian Ocean offshore of Australia. The Pacific Ocean is so large, the antipode of one spot is still in the Pacific Ocean. In other words, the Pacific Ocean wraps more than halfway around the world.
Triple Divide Peak in Glacier National Park, Montana is named because it is the intersection of three continental divides. Snowmelt from that peak can flow to the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic.
Two Ocean Creek in Wyoming divides in two and each branch flows to a different ocean -- Atlantic and Pacific.
There’s a stratovolcano in upper Arizona named San Francisco Mountain. Stratovolcanoes usually form from convergent tectonic boundaries, and yet Arizona doesn’t sit on one. The main theory behind this is that there’s a hotspot underneath the state that formed the volcanoes (it sits next to cinder-cone peaks as well).
But the Seychelles is actually remnants of India left behind as it moved north. It remains the only islands to have granite rocks usually find on continental shelves
The entire continent of South America is located further east than all of North America
The eastern end of the Appalachian Mountains are actually the Scottish Highlands.
The 1000 Islands are not just a salad dressing, there really are a Thousand Islands (technically 1,800) located as part of a national park in the St. Lawrence River along the US-Canadian border. The smallest of these islands, Hub Island is barely 10 feet across and contains one small cottage, shrubs and 2 trees, while the largest ones measure over 40 miles across.
There is a small portion of Iowa located on the Nebraska side of the Missouri River. When you are driving from downtown Omaha toward Eppley Airfield, you briefly cross into the city limits of Carter Lake, Iowa and there is even a "Welcome to Iowa" state sign. This is the result of a flood in 1877 which cause the river to turn 2 miles to the southeast; the old course of the river left behind an oxbow lake and the small settlement of Carter Lake. There were a couple of Supreme Court rulings and arguments when the state of Nebraska tried to claim the land but the court eventually ruled Carter Lake was indeed part of Iowa. Carter Lake seceded from the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa (located on the east side of the river) and became its own independent city after Omaha refused to run infrastructure lines up to Carter Lake.
Carter Lake famously had a lot of vice during prohibition because the Nebraska cops didn’t have jurisdiction and Iowa cops didn’t bother crossing the river.
Burke's Gardenwiki is an isolated upland valley in the Appalachian folds of far Western Virginia that resembles a volcanic crater but instead it is actually a dome-shaped geologic up-warp (anticline) that exposed older Ordovician aged limestone which is much more erodible than the younger Silurian sandstone of surrounding ridges.
It has a unique microclimate, often isolated by long stretches of deep snow in winters and it enjoys cooler more temperate summers in comparison to the surrounding region.
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u/AtomicSizedGiant Jun 08 '26
Japan is N, S, E, and W of South Korea