The hemispheres divide the world into four sections, with the equator separating the Northern and Southern hemispheres at zero degrees latitude and the prime meridian separating the Western and Eastern hemispheres at zero degrees longitude. Most continents fall within only a few of these invisible boundaries, but one has land in all four hemispheres: Africa. The equator passes through seven African nations (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Republic of Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, Somalia, and Uganda), while the prime meridian crosses five (Algeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, and Togo).

Africa is the world’s largest continent.

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Asia is the world’s largest continent by both size and population, with an area of 17.2 million square miles and a population of more than 4.7 billion. Africa is No. 2 on both lists — it has an area of 11.7 million square miles and is home to 1.3 billion people.

Countries beyond Africa that lie in both the Western and Eastern hemispheres include the United Kingdom, France, and Spain, while Indonesia, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Kiribati, and the Maldives intersect the Northern and Southern hemispheres. (In fact, the atolls of Kiribati cross all four hemispheres; some other nations also cross several hemispheres if you include their overseas possessions.) But with 12 hemisphere-spanning countries and land at both the prime meridian and equator, Africa’s spot on the map is unparalleled.

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The average person can probably name a couple of the more famous shipwrecks — maybe the Titanic or Queen Anne's Revenge — but there are many, many more that have sunk from sight and public recollection. Altogether, it's believed that at least 3 million such wrecks dot the ocean floors.

Bermuda has the most shipwrecks per square mile of any location on the planet.

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Although Bermuda measures less than 21 square miles, the combination of its location within trade routes and hazardous coral reefs has produced more than 300 shipwrecks off its coast.

If that number doesn't seem particularly remarkable (humans have been building boats for at least 10,000 years, after all), then perhaps it's more surprising to learn that less than 1% of these submerged crafts have been explored. Why such a small percentage? Well, the world's oceans are enormous, reaching an average depth of more than 12,000 feet, and only 19% of the ocean floor has been charted in detail. There's also the matter of the money needed to launch expeditions to find these vessels. But times are changing in the realm of wreckage discovery: The digitization of archives has made records more accessible, and the development of technologies such as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) has rendered the searching process less treacherous for explorers.

So what becomes of most shipwrecks? Some of them are looted for profit, despite legal efforts to preserve the historical value of their artifacts. Some are turned into underwater museums. But most others become reefs — playgrounds for fish and other varieties of marine life. They may not receive the fanfare showered on the wreck of Titanic, but they nevertheless take on new and important functions far below the waves.

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Compared to other planets in our solar system, Earth is filled with impressive landscapes, including snow-capped peaks, lush rainforests, and vast oceans. But some places on our planet are so extreme, they’re otherworldly — like Venus otherworldly. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the driest places in the world, so it makes sense that such a parched ecosystem would get its fair share of sun. But in the summer of 2023, scientists discovered that some parts of this immense plateau in fact get far more sunlight than any other place on Earth. While taking measurements of solar irradiance (light energy from the sun) on the Chajnantor plateau, researchers discovered — via a complex meteorological process known as “forward scattering” — that this area was nearly as sunny in summer as the surface of Venus.

Venus is the only planet that spins clockwise.

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While most planets spin counter-clockwise, Venus flouts the trend and spins clockwise. Astronomers theorize that a huge celestial collision involving Venus in the early solar system flipped the planet upside down. A similar process may have happened to Uranus, which spins on its side.

Despite some key differences between the two planets, scientists often call Venus Earth’s twin. Venus is roughly the same size as Earth, formed in the same area of the inner solar system, and is composed of much the same material — scientists even theorize that Venus was just like Earth some 3 billion years ago. But it is definitely not Earthlike now; it’s a sweltering hell planet thanks to an atmosphere of thick carbon dioxide that traps all greenhouse gases. If you somehow found yourself on Venus, high levels of solar irradiance would be the least of your immediate worries, considering its surface temperatures of 900 degrees Fahrenheit and sulfuric acid-filled clouds. 

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The Grand Canyon attracts millions of visitors to northern Arizona each year, all hoping to snap an amazing photo of the canyon’s vast landscape. The mile-deep gorge is the centerpiece of such an expansive view that it can’t all be seen at once; at 277 miles long and up to 18 miles wide, the Grand Canyon is so large, it creates its own weather. In fact, getting a view from its two most popular rims (aka tops) requires nearly five hours of travel time. 

The Grand Canyon is under the care of the National Park Service, yet the park boundaries don’t contain it entirely; the portion protected by Grand Canyon National Park totals 1,904 square miles, a span larger than the smallest U.S. state. In comparison, the tiny East Coast state of Rhode Island contains just 1,214 square miles.

Dinosaur bones have been discovered in the Grand Canyon.

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Despite the fact that the Grand Canyon formed millions of years ago, evidence of dinosaurs has never been found there. While the canyon’s rock walls are about a billion years older than dinosaurs, scientists believe its depths had yet to form when dinosaurs were walking the Earth.

Today, the Grand Canyon is the second-most-visited national park (bested only by the Great Smoky Mountains in 2022). Until the mid-1800s, however, little was known about the area, thanks to its remoteness. Spanish conquistadors who explored the region in 1540 had little to note of its magnificence, and an 1857 report from an American expedition through the canyon described the 6 million-year-old area as “altogether valueless,” with “nothing to do but leave.” Such declarations impeded progress in turning the natural wonder into a national park when President Benjamin Harrison first moved to protect the area in 1893 as a forest reserve; President Theodore Roosevelt designated it a national monument in 1908. It would take a third president — Woodrow Wilson — and 11 more years for the Grand Canyon to become the awe-inspiring national park it is today.

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Seeing as Russia is the largest country in the world by land area, you may suppose it also contains the most time zones. And while it does have a lot (11, to be precise), it actually has fewer than France, which contains 12 time zones. France’s main landmass, France métropolitaine, keeps Central European Time, while its many dependencies observe 11 others. Those other regions include French Polynesia (Tahiti Time), Martinique (Atlantic Standard Time), and Mayotte (Eastern Africa Time), to name just a few, and when Saint-Pierre and Miquelon observes daylight saving time, the total number of time zones goes up to 13.

North America used to have more than 144 local times.

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Before official time zones were established by the railroads, keeping track of time was a ramshackle, decentralized affair that occasionally resulted in trains arriving in their destination earlier than they’d departed.

Russia might technically be more impressive in this regard, however, as 10 of its 11 time zones are contiguous; the only exception is Kaliningrad, which is situated between Poland and Lithuania. The United States has nine official time zones, four of which are contiguous — the rest are kept by the likes of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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While Washington, D.C., is the U.S. capital we’re most familiar with today, it’s far from the country’s first. In fact, it came at the end of a long road. When the Second Continental Congress declared the independence of the United States of America in 1776, its home base at the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) made Philadelphia the first capital of the brand-new nation. But arriving waves of British soldiers made life dangerous in the major coastal cities of the former colonies, and congressional delegates often found themselves on the move during the Revolutionary War years. Following a two-month stay in Baltimore, the Continental Congress returned to Philadelphia for six months before reconvening for one September 1777 day in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Next, they moved the capital a little farther west to York for nine months, before going back to Philadelphia again.

Congressional representatives from Washington, D.C., cannot vote on bills.

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The district’s lone member of the House of Representatives can sit on committees and introduce legislation, but cannot vote on final bills. The district also has a “shadow delegation” of two senators and one representative, who primarily advocate for D.C.’s statehood.

While the American Revolution was effectively over by summer 1783, a domestic threat from Continental Army soldiers seeking overdue wages again sent congressional delegates scurrying, this time to the campus of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). From there, it was on to Annapolis, Maryland, and then to the future New Jersey capital of Trenton through late 1784, before the government began to stabilize with the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and the election of President George Washington during its nearly six-year tenure in New York City.

Following the passage of the Residence Act in 1790, the seat of government again temporarily returned to Philadelphia, as a new federal city was built on land appropriated from Maryland and Virginia around the Potomac River. Although Philadelphians attempted to convince President Washington to stay with the offer of a lavish mansion, political horse trading had already ensured that the capital would be set in a more southern location. When Congress met for the first time in the brand-new U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., in November 1800, shortly after President John Adams moved into what eventually became known as the White House, the government’s days as a peripatetic entity were officially over.

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