5 North American Geography Facts
Published in
3 min readSep 29, 2016
- California extends both north of parts of Canada and south of parts of Mexico. The southern border of Mexico isn’t perfectly straight so there are parts that are just barely south of Mexico, and there are islands in the Great Lakes that belong to Canada and are south of the 42nd parallel (the California — Oregon border).
- More than half of Canada’s population live south of Milan. We think of Canada as so northern, but if you look at the places people actually live, it’s not really the case. Ottowa, Montreal, and Quebec city are about as far north as Minneapolis which is well north of Toronto. Even Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg are within a stone’s throw. Edmonton is the northernmost city with over 500K people and it is about the same latitude as Dublin, Manchester, and Hamburg, and is south of about 15% of the European population.
- Alaska is the Northern most, Western most, and Eastern most state in the US because it crosses the date line
- Venus Fly Traps are native to only one place in the world. A 60 mile radius around Wilmington, NC.
- Fargo, Atlanta, San Diego, Chicago, almost all of Mexico, parts of Cuba, and almost Durham are closer to part of Texas than the part they are closest to is to the furthest point in Texas from that same point. In other words, there is a part of Texas that is closer to Cuba than it is to the furthest point away that is still in Texas.
