Little Snippets From Places Around The World!

He/she, depositing mostly random facts about different countries, or geography facts in general. A bit of armchair tourism too. From South Africa!

[fun-geography-facts]

Hello 🌍

I don’t know how long I’ll keep this up, but every now and then I’ll dump geography facts I learn.

I plan to have a tagging system, where you can find facts limited to specific continents or regions.

The areas I have considered as continents (although, in actuality, I view Eurasia as one continent, but regardless):

Africa

Asia (including some of Melanesia and all of SEA)

North America (which, for simplicity’s sake, also includes Central America and the Caribbean)

South America

Europe

Oceania (including ALL of Polynesia, again, for simplicity)

Antarctica

I shall also not be limiting my fun facts to just UN recognised nations. Oh and you can find additional region dividers like “south east Asia” or “east Africa” or “the balkans”.

(This is a side blog. My main is mercuryferns, which I almost never use anymore so don’t bother)

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Uganda 🇺🇬 & United Kingdom 🇬🇧

Deo Kato, a Ugandan-British coach and athlete, spent 518 days running 13000 kilometres from Cape Town to London. He arrived at his destination on the 22 December 2024.

“I am campaigning to end racism and show the world that all humans migrated from Africa,” he said.

Kato is the first person to accomplish that.

He was even arrested in South Sudan on his way up!

You can find him on Instagram and read more about his story @/deoruns

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Democratic Republic of Congo 🇨🇩

It was a Congolese doctor who actually discovered the Ebola virus, but his work is often forgotten and miscredited, as is the work of many other African doctors. His name is Jean-Jacques Muyembe, and you can read about him here

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The United Kingdom 🇬🇧 (specifically England)

In 1963, the Parliament of the United Kingdom sought to reduce the number of boroughs in London from about 80 to 32 in order to better organise local authorities.

The names of many boroughs were chosen by the Greater London Council, but when the former boroughs of East Ham and West Ham were ordered to merge, the name of the new borough was put to a vote.

However, they made a bit of a mistake: the residents were absolutely incapable of choosing a serious name.

The most popular suggestions were: Ham Sandwich, Hamsweetham, and Hamstrung.

The council decided to cancel the vote and chose the boring, brand-friendly option of “Newham” instead!

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Peru 🇵🇪

Peru is a land of dozens of glorious mountains and peaks. But one of my personal favourites from what I’ve researched is Vinicunca, or Montaña de Siete Colores.

Unsurprisingly, the beautiful stripes of colour are due to its unique mineral composition. The pink part comes from red clay dialuted with mud and sand; the white comes from a mix of quartz and sandstone (full of calcium deposits); the red is from the presence of iron oxide in the clay from the Upper Tertiary period; the green comes from phyllites; and the ochre yellow is a product of calcareous sandstones rich in sulphur.

Oh! And there’s occasionally alpacas 🦙

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The Bahamas 🇧🇸

The Bahamas is a gorgeous and vibrant Caribbean country, and there are many things to do there.

One of their most famous tourist attractions is the island of swimming pigs, where you can see the little pink animals take to the seas 🌊

But Bahamians are probably sick of hearing about the pigs, when they have so many wonderful cultural events to offer too. For example, like their Caribbean cousins (Belize, Jamaica and others), every year the “Junkanoo” event happens.

It’s sort of like a huge festival. In the weeks leading up to it, Bahamians participating will craft spectacular costumes, sometimes themed after animals or colours... or just to be as elaborately decorated as possible!

With roots in West African traditions, this amazing staple of Caribbean culture is a fascinating one. Here, you will also hear some wonderful local musicians performing and dancers taking to the streets!

(Don’t worry Jamaica, I’ll make a separate post about your Junkanoo event and what makes it unique!)

Finally, the biggest underwater sculpture can also be found in this colourful country.

Clearly, the Bahamas is so much more than a simple island paradise 🌴

[fun-geography-facts]

Rwanda 🇷🇼

Rwanda has the highest percentage of women in parliament, at 61.3%. There are only two other countries where women hold a majority of the power over men. The other two are Cuba (53%) and Bolivia (53%).

Mexico and Grenada almost made it onto the list, with 48% and 46% respectively.

[fun-geography-facts]

Indonesia 🇮🇩

There is a belief held by some Indonesian cultures that Orangetangs can understand human language, but simply choose not to show it out of fear that they would be forced to get jobs and work!

[intersectionalpraxis]

Thai parliament passes same-sex marriage bill

Pending final approval, bill will cement Thai credentials among Asia’s most liberal societies on LGBTQ issues.

It still needs approval from the Senate and royal endorsement to become law, but experts are saying that by the end of 2024 Thailand will officially become the first South East Asian country to recognize 'same-sex unions.'

400 of the 415 lawmakers present approved this bill, and will give couples equals rights for marital tax savings, inheriting property to giving medical consent for partners during treatments if someone is unconscious/etc.

This is a historic moment and I'm sure many couples will be registering their marriages soon. This is wonderful news 🇹🇭🌈

[erkhyan]

I still like bringing up the fact that the Malagasy words for “bee” and “honey” are one and the same. You can try to tell which one it is through context, but it is absolutely NOT made easy by the fact that the language doesn’t really have a concept of plurals.

Anyway, here’s a bottle full of tantely. Enjoy!

[fun-geography-facts]

Malaysia 🇲🇾

Like Iran, Malaysia too has its very own Barbie mosque! What a beautiful and tranquil place, it almost blends into that strawberry milkshake sunset 🕌

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Senegal 🇸🇳

There is a naturally bright pink lake in Senegal! How sweet is this?

[cooler-zuxxu]

This is not sweet at all! Instead, it's extremely salty.

The pink colour is from a type of microorganism that thrives in very saline environments. They produce chemicals called carotenes, which turn the lake pink.

[fun-geography-facts]

Right you are! Many delicious looking bodies of water are either salty, disgusting, or biohazard! I hate spreading this fact because it reminds me that I cannot in fact pack a straw in my suitcase and sip sip sip because I’ll probably get sick sick sick

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Madagascar 🇲🇬

Over 90% of the wildlife on Madagascar is not found ANYWHERE else on the entire planet! They have some absolutely bonkers bugs especially, but their other animal kingdoms deserve a bit of love too. Here’s some particularly weird Malagasy animals, and I’ll forever be slightly bemused that DreamWorks didn’t include any of these unique creatures!

Madagascar is also home to more than HALF the world’s species of chameleon! (Including the biggest one)

Oh, and quick shout out to the Baobab tree. It’s not unique to Madagascar - theyre found in my country too, as well as some other southern African nations - but they’re definitely still strange and beautiful.

[fun-geography-facts]

Brazil 🇧🇷

In 2009, while traversing through a cornfield, a Brazilian farmer was driving his tractor when it suddenly shuddered, and got stuck in a small hole in the ground. Thinking it was a simple mud puddle, the farmer climbed through the door to push the vehicle out, and to his amazement, uncovered a 10000 year old cave system most likely made by the now extinct Giant Sloth!

The south of Brazil in particular has dozens of these things, and nobody seems to know why or how this creature dug such elaborate tunnel systems. Giant sloths likely looked quite different to their stinky, cute, slow extanct cousins we are familiar with, with some evidence to suggest a degree of bipedalism present in the gentle giants.

Some scientists speculate they were about the size of elephants!

[fun-geography-facts]

Antarctica 🇦🇶

Fun fact! A total of eleven babies have been born in Antarctica, and none of them died. This means Antarctica has the lowest infant mortality rate out of anywhere in the world!

There are also two very small schools for the kids who live in Antarctica to attend. Since nobody lives in Antarctica permanently, these children are the offspring of scientists stationed at those two bases respectively.

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Morocco 🇲🇦

Established in the year 859, the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Morocco is, by some definitions, the oldest continuously used higher learning institution in the world! (Although... a university of Mali would technically be considered the oldest, but let’s not get into that).

It’s also quite pretty 💚🌱

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Pakistan 🇵🇰

Pakistan has six different national animals: Markhor, Indus River Dolphin, Chukar, Indus Crocodile, the Snow Leopard, and my personal favourite, the adorable Shaheen Falcon. Here they all are, in order.