Geography Facts for Kids
Cool facts about our planet
The Suez Canal in Egypt connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, cutting the sea journey between Europe and Asia by thousands of kilometres. Before it opened in 1869, ships had to sail around all of Africa.
Despite being the largest river by volume, the Amazon has no true delta where it meets the ocean. Instead, its enormous flow simply blasts directly into the Atlantic, creating an estuary over 300 km wide.
Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country, covering about 2.7 million square kilometres in Central Asia. It is the ninth-largest country in the world overall.
Dust from the Sahara Desert is blown all the way across the Atlantic Ocean by trade winds and fertilises the Amazon Rainforest. The nutrients in that dust help sustain millions of square kilometres of forest.
The Philippines is an archipelago made up of more than 7,600 islands. Of these, only about 2,000 are inhabited, and many of the smallest islands don't even have names.
If measured from its base on the ocean floor, Hawaii's Mauna Kea is actually taller than Mount Everest by more than 1,000 metres. Most of the mountain is hidden beneath the Pacific Ocean.
Dubai built the Palm Jumeirah, a series of artificial islands shaped like a palm tree, by dredging millions of tonnes of sand from the Persian Gulf. It added 78 km of new beachfront to the city.
About 100 million years ago, the Great Plains of North America were covered by a vast inland sea called the Western Interior Seaway. Fossils of ancient sea creatures are still found in Kansas and Nebraska.
The River Thames in London used to freeze solid enough in winter for people to hold 'Frost Fairs' on the ice. The last one was in 1814, and the river hasn't frozen over since due to warmer temperatures and a wider channel.
Russia and the United States are separated by only about 4 kilometres at their closest point, between Big Diomede Island (Russia) and Little Diomede Island (Alaska). You can sometimes see one island from the other.