Whether the Empire State Building, the Grand Canyon or the maple forests:countless North American monuments, landscapes and cities are world famous. But the US and Canada are as diverse as they are large, and therefore have many surprises in store. We have found 10 curious facts about North America that will also surprise those who know the two countries.
The world is home to more than 3 trillion trees. A full ten percent of them are in Canada. The second largest country in the world has an area of 979 million hectares, of which 40 percent is forested. That's about 300 billion trees in the country. Calculated per capita, there are nearly 9,000 trees for every Canadian.
The design of the American flag is known all over the world. The iconic stars and stripes consist of 7 red and 6 white stripes, which represent the 13 founding states, and a blue flag, whose currently 50 white stars symbolize the 50 states of the US. The famous design dates back to 1958 and was created by 17-year-old Robert Heft, an Ohio student. He submitted his draft to Congress, where it was finally passed in 1959.
Parts of Canada can get extremely cold in the winter. The low temperature record was held in the Yukon Territory on February 3, 1947:an icy -63 degrees Celsius was measured here. In comparison, the average temperature of the planet Mars is -55 degrees. But if you want to spend a warm summer holiday in Canada, don't let that deter you:in summer temperatures in many parts of the country reach 30 degrees Celsius.
Kentucky is the birthplace of the world famous bourbon whiskey. A full 95 percent of the bourbon drunk worldwide comes from the state. So perhaps it's not surprising that there are more barrels of whiskey in Kentucky than the state has a population. In total there are 4.7 million barrels of the caramel-colored spirit for a population of 4.3 million people.
Strictly speaking, the United States does not have an official or national language because it has simply never been established at the federal level. However, English is the official language in 32 states. In Hawaii, both English and Hawaiian are documented as the official language, in Alaska as many as 20 native languages are officially recognized in addition to English.
Americans are pizza fans:they consume about 100 acres of pizza every day. Each year they come to a total of about 3 billion pizzas sold. By far the most popular pizza topping is pepperoni, which makes up 36% of all orders. The US has a total of about 61,300 pizzerias.
In 1535, French explorer Jacques Cartier asked residents of the region around what is now Québec for directions to the village of Stadacona. They replied with the word "Kanata," which in the language of the Saint Lawrence Iroquois meant "village" or "settlement." Cartier probably misunderstood this and called the entire area ruled by Chief Donnacona, who lived in Stadacona, "Canada" henceforth. A name that stuck.
The nine US states of Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming have one thing in common:They each have more cows than residents. While in Oklahoma there is only about 1.1 cows per person, in South Dakota the animals are in the clear majority:with 859,000 inhabitants and 4 million cows there are almost five times more cattle than people.
There are two small islands between the Siberian Central Plateau and the state of Alaska in the Bering Strait in the Pacific Ocean. The International Date Line runs right into the 3.8 kilometers of seawater that lies between the islands. The larger one, Big Diomedes, is the easternmost point of Russia. The smaller one is known as Little Diomedes and belongs to the United States. Since the date line runs between the two islands, they are also known as "Tomorrow Island" and "Yesterday Isle". On Big Diomedes, the clocks run 21 hours earlier than those on Little Diomedes.
Canada is the second largest country in the world and has the longest coastline in the world. In general, the coast of Canada stretches for a length of 243,042 kilometers. So if a hiker traveled 20 kilometers every day, he would be on the road for 33 years. Even without breaks, it would take four and a half years to complete the route.
