50 Fun Facts About Continent

Which continent is the second-smallest by area after Australia?

Europe, at about 10.2 million km², is the second-smallest continent; Antarctica is about 14 million km² and South America about 17.8 million km².

Roughly what share of the world's population lives in Asia?

About 60%: Asia's roughly 4.7 billion people are three-fifths of a world population near 8 billion, with China and India each above 1.4 billion.

How many fully recognised sovereign states does Africa contain, more than any other continent?

54: every African state from Algeria to Zimbabwe is a UN member, more than any other continent; Western Sahara and Somaliland have only limited recognition.

Africa is the only continent to straddle both the equator and which other line of reference?

The two lines cross in the Gulf of Guinea, just off the coast; South America is crossed by the equator but not the prime meridian.

Besides the Urals, Caucasus, Black Sea and Turkish straits, which sea divides Europe and Asia?

The Caspian Sea: the conventional line runs down the Urals and Ural River, across the Caspian, along the Caucasus and through the Black Sea and Turkish straits.

Which country spans about 39 percent of Europe, making it the continent's largest and most populous?

Europe itself covers only about 2 percent of Earth's surface, so Russia's European portion alone dwarfs every other state on the continent.

Which continent is the coldest, driest and windiest, with the highest average elevation?

Antarctica: its ice sheet averages about 1.9 km thick, its interior is a desert receiving only a few centimetres of precipitation a year, and katabatic winds pour off the high plateau.

The lowest air temperature ever recorded on Earth, -89.2 °C, was measured in 1983 at which Antarctic station?

Vostok, the Russian (then Soviet) station on the East Antarctic plateau, logged -89.2 °C on 21 July 1983; it sits above subglacial Lake Vostok.

Roughly what proportion of the world's fresh water is frozen in the southern polar ice sheet?

About 70%: the Antarctic ice sheet, averaging 1.9 km thick, locks up roughly 70 percent of Earth's fresh water; melting it all would raise seas by almost 60 metres.

Vinson Massif, Antarctica's highest peak at 4,892 metres, stands in which mountain range?

The Ellsworth Mountains: Vinson Massif rises in their Sentinel Range; it was first sighted from the air in 1958 and first climbed in 1966.

In which year was the Antarctic Treaty opened for signature?

1959: twelve nations active in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year signed the treaty in Washington on 1 December 1959; it entered into force in 1961.

Which country holds almost half of South America's population?

Brazil: its roughly 215 million people are close to half of South America's 430-plus million; it is the continent's only Portuguese-speaking country, a legacy of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.

Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas and the highest outside Asia, stands in which country?

Argentina: Aconcagua rises to 6,961 metres in Mendoza Province, about 15 km from the Chilean border, the highest peak in the Western and Southern Hemispheres.

Which mountain is Africa's highest and the world's tallest free-standing peak?

Kilimanjaro, a dormant volcano in Tanzania, rises 5,895 metres straight from the plains with no surrounding range, making it the tallest free-standing mountain on Earth.

North America's highest peak, in Alaska, was officially known by what name from 1917 until 2015?

Mount McKinley, named for President William McKinley, was the federal name from 1917 until 2015, when it became Denali; a January 2025 executive order restored McKinley. The summit is 6,190 metres.

The generally accepted highest summit in Europe, a dormant volcano in the Caucasus, is which mountain?

Mount Elbrus, a twin-summited dormant volcano in Russia's Caucasus, tops Mont Blanc by more than 800 metres, but only if the Caucasus is counted as European.

Which Andean peak's summit is the point on Earth's surface farthest from the planet's centre?

Chimborazo, a 6,263-metre volcano in Ecuador, sits almost on the equator, where Earth's bulge pushes its summit about 2 km farther from the centre than Everest's.

Mount Everest's summit marks part of the border between Nepal and which other country?

China and Nepal jointly surveyed it in 2020 and put the height at 8,848.86 metres; Nepalis call it Sagarmatha and Tibetans Qomolangma.

Which peak replaces Kosciuszko on the Messner version of the Seven Summits?

Puncak Jaya, also called Carstensz Pyramid, is a 4,884-metre peak in Indonesia's Papua highlands; Messner counted it as Australasia's top, since Kosciuszko is only 2,228 metres.

Who became the first person to climb the highest mountain on every continent, finishing on 30 April 1985?

Bass, a Texas businessman, used the mainland-Australia version of the list; the peaks range from Everest at 8,849 metres to Kosciuszko at 2,228.

The supercontinent Pangaea began to break apart roughly how many years ago?

200 million years ago, at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, Pangaea began rifting apart; the C-shaped landmass had been surrounded by the superocean Panthalassa.

The southern supercontinent Gondwana was named by Eduard Suess after a region of which modern country?

The name comes from Sanskrit for 'forest of the Gonds'; Gondwana's remnants make up about two-thirds of today's continental area, including Antarctica and Australia.

Gondwana fused with which northern landmass during the Carboniferous to form Pangaea?

Laurasia later split into North America and Eurasia, while Gondwana's pieces drifted off to become the southern continents and India.

Roughly what fraction of Zealandia, argued in 2017 to be a continent, is underwater?

About 94%: only New Zealand, New Caledonia and a few small islands break the surface of Zealandia's roughly 4.9 million square kilometres.

The Americas take their name from which Italian explorer, thanks to German cartographers?

Amerigo Vespucci: Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 map labelled the southern landmass 'America' in his honour, while Columbus died insisting he had reached Asia.

What is the world's largest island, a self-governing part of Denmark that sits on the North American plate?

Greenland looks to Copenhagen politically but belongs with Canada geographically; Iceland, by contrast, straddles the North American and Eurasian plates.

The Australian continent, or Sahul, includes mainland Australia, Tasmania and which large island?

New Guinea shares the Sahul shelf with mainland Australia and Tasmania, and the three were joined by dry land during the last ice age; New Zealand belongs to Zealandia instead.

Which of these is one of Oceania's four sub-regions, along with Australasia, Melanesia and Micronesia?

Polynesia, the eastern triangle from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island, is the fourth sub-region; Oceania as a whole counts 14 sovereign states.

Which headland is the southern tip of Africa and the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian oceans?

Cape Agulhas, Portuguese for 'Cape of Needles', is Africa's southernmost point and the official Atlantic-Indian divide; the Cape of Good Hope lies about 150 km to the north-west.

Which artificial waterway, opened in 1869, links the Mediterranean and the Red Sea?

The Suez Canal, opened in November 1869 after ten years of digging, is a lockless sea-level channel; it technically puts Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in Asia.

The Bering Strait, which separates Asia from North America, is how wide at its narrowest point?

About 82 km separate Cape Dezhnev in Russia from Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska at the narrowest; the strait is named for the Danish-born Russian explorer Vitus Bering.

In which year was the waterway letting ships avoid Cape Horn between the Americas formally opened?

The SS Ancon made the first official transit of the Panama Canal on 15 August 1914; the United States ran it until handing control to Panama in 1999.

Which 2,500 km mountain range, old and worn with no peak over 1,900 metres, forms part of the conventional Europe–Asia boundary?

The Ural Mountains run about 2,500 km from the Kara Sea to the Kazakh Steppe, yet their highest point, Mount Narodnaya, is under 1,900 metres, lower than many Alpine passes.

Which city, once Byzantium and then Constantinople, sits on two continents?

Istanbul straddles the Bosphorus, with its historic core in Europe and districts such as Kadıköy and Üsküdar in Asia; the strait links the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea.

The Sahara, the largest hot desert on Earth, covers roughly what share of the African continent?

About 31%: the Sahara's roughly 9.2 million km² cover almost a third of Africa's 30.3 million; only the polar deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic are bigger.

Earth's lowest land elevation is on the shores of which body of water bordered by Jordan and Israel?

The Dead Sea's shore lies more than 430 metres below sea level, the lowest land on Earth; its water is roughly ten times as salty as the ocean, so swimmers float.

Which California location holds North America's lowest point and Earth's highest recorded air temperature?

Death Valley's Badwater Basin lies 86 metres below sea level in the Mojave Desert, and the 134 °F (56.7 °C) record was set at Furnace Creek.

Which part of Asia holds the world's deepest and oldest lake?

Siberia: Lake Baikal, in southern Siberia near Irkutsk, is a rift lake 1,642 metres deep and 25-30 million years old, holding 22-23% of Earth's fresh surface water.

The world's smallest sovereign state by area and population is an enclave inside which European capital?

Rome: Vatican City, about 44 hectares with fewer than a thousand residents, lies entirely within the Italian capital and is ruled by the pope.

'Continent' entered English in the 16th century as a translation of which Latin phrase for continuous land?

Terra continens, 'continuous land', gave English 'continent' in the 1500s; terra incognita meant 'unknown land' on old maps and terra nullius 'nobody's land' in colonial law.

How many continents does the model used in most English-speaking countries recognise?

Seven: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America, the model taught in the United States, Britain and most English-speaking countries.

Roughly what share of Earth's total land area does Asia cover?

About 30%: Asia's 44.6 million km² are close to three-tenths of Earth's 149 million km² of land, or about 8.7 percent of the planet's whole surface.

Counting Antarctica but treating the Americas as one continent, how many continents are there?

Six: Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Europe and Oceania, the model taught in Greece and much of Latin America; the five Olympic rings are its inhabited continents.

Ancient Greek geographers generally took which river as the boundary between Asia and Africa?

The Nile was the usual line, though Herodotus objected to splitting Egypt in two and instead placed the border at Egypt's western frontier.

In antiquity, Africa was known to Greek thinkers by what name?

Libya was the Greek name; they debated whether it was part of Asia or a third part of the world, and the three-way division eventually won out.

The Don River, once used as the Europe-Asia boundary, was known to the ancients by what name?

Tanais was the Greek name for the Don, which Herodotus and later geographers used as the Europe-Asia line; an earlier boundary followed the Rioni in Georgia, then called the Phasis.

Which nearly submerged, largely volcanic feature of the southern Indian Ocean is considered a microcontinent?

The Kerguelen Plateau is linked to the breakup of Gondwana, which is why it counts as a microcontinent while volcanic Iceland and Hawaii do not.

Which large island off Africa is a continental fragment, usually classed as a microcontinent rather than part of the continent geologically?

Madagascar is geologically a microcontinent but culturally grouped with Africa, just as Iceland is treated as part of Europe despite lying off the shelf.

Apart from Antarctica, which continent lies entirely in the Southern Hemisphere?

Australia: the whole continent sits south of the equator, its northernmost point being Cape York at about 10° S; South America, Africa and Asia all cross the equator.

Whose mid-17th-century Cosmographie defined a continent as land 'not separated by any Sea'?

Peter Heylin's Cosmographie (1652) defined a continent as 'a great quantity of Land, not separated by any Sea from the rest of the World'; Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopædia later split the world into Old and New.