Trivia

Steve sent me this list. It's all useless, but it is good for maintaining your perspective.

Geography & Natural Resources

• More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.
• Percentage of Africa that is wilderness 28%. Percentage of North America that is wilderness 38%.
• Siberia contains more than 25 percent of the world's forests.
• The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20 percent of the world's oxygen supply.
• The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that more than one hundred miles at sea, off the mouth of the river one can dip fresh water out of the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon River is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined and three times the flow of all rivers in the United States.
• Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country. 90% of the world's ice covers Antarctica. This ice also represents 70% of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds, Antarctica is essentially a desert. The average yearly precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice (all but 0.4 percent of it), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.
• In the Sahara Desert, there is a town named Tidikelt, which did not receive a drop of rain for ten years.
• Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
• There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio, everyone is man-made.
• Istanbul, Turkey is the only city in the world located on two continents.

Names

• Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
• Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."
• The term "The Big Apple" was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930's who used the slang expression "apple" for any town or city. Therefore, to play New York City is to play the big time: The Big Apple.
• St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man named Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant who set up the first business there (bootlegging).

Inhabitants

• Damascus, Syria, was flourishing a couple of thousand years before Rome was founded in 753 BC, making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in existence.
• The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome, Italy in 133 B.C. There is a city called Rome on every continent.
• Next to Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world.
• There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland,
• more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy, and
• more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.
• The smallest sovereign entity in the world is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM). It is located in the city of Rome, Italy, has an area of two tennis courts, and as of 2001 has a population of 80, 20 less people than the Vatican. It is a sovereign entity under international law, as is the Vatican.

Roads

• Woodward Ave. in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M - 1, because it was the first paved road anywhere.
• Chances that a road is unpaved in the USA ~ 1 percent Chances that a road is unpaved in Canada ~ 75 percent.
• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are meant to be usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.