Original photo by © lesniewski/stock.adobe.com
France’s colonial empire reached its peak centuries ago, but it hasn’t been entirely lost to history. There are still five French overseas departments today: Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean, Mayotte in the Mozambique Channel, Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and French Guiana in South America.
The last of those is responsible for France’s longest border, which is with the Brazilian state of Amapá and spans 454 miles. With a population of 293,200, about half of whom live in the metropolitan area of Cayenne (the capital), French Guiana also borders Suriname to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast. France itself borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Andorra, and Spain; the longest of those, with Spain, stretches 401 miles.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factBrasília was founded in 1960 to replace Rio de Janeiro as the country’s capital. Brasília is more centrally located and was intended to stimulate the economy in Brazil’s interior.
Brazil, meanwhile, borders nine other countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela; the longest of these boundaries, at 2,115 miles, is with Bolivia. (The only South American countries Brazil doesn’t border are Chile and Ecuador.)
Inhabitants of overseas departments and regions of France (DROM) are French citizens. Their currency is the euro, they elect members of the French Parliament, and they’re beholden to French laws. French is the official language of French Guiana, but French Guianese Creole is widely spoken as well.
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France’s mainland is nicknamed the “______.”
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France’s mainland is nicknamed the “Hexagon.”
The world’s longest border is between Canada and the United States.
At 5,525 miles, the border between Canada and the United States is the longest in the world. It spans 13 U.S. states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Alaska) and eight Canadian provinces/territories (New Brunswick, Québec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and Yukon).
The border isn’t continuous, however, and Alaska alone accounts for 1,538 miles of it. The longest continuous border is between Kazakhstan and Russia, spanning 4,750 miles. Other notably extensive borders include Argentina/Chile (4,185 miles), China/Mongolia (2,877 miles), Russia/China (2,597 miles), and India/Bangladesh (2,574 miles).
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
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