793 US counties do not have a single McDonald's.

About 90% of the old-growth forest that stood in the contiguous United States in the 1600s has been cleared.

The Shipping Forecast divides the waters around the British Isles into 31 named sea areas.

Amtrak carried 34.5 million passengers in fiscal year 2025, an all-time record for the railway.

Australia's national sheep flock numbered about 180 million in the late 1980s, its peak.

When Amtrak took over in 1971 it kept only about half of America's intercity passenger train routes.

Land around America's biggest cities is estimated at $1 million or more per hectare.

The longest road in the world stops at this 100 km stretch of jungle, and the reason it was never finished isn't the jungle. Satellite imagery: EOxCloudless by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016). Terrain: AWS Terrain Tiles.

The lowest point in America's Basin and Range is Badwater Basin in Death Valley, 86 m below sea level.

Scotland has the highest proportion of red-haired people in the world, at around 13% of the population.

About 2.4 million people lived in the thirteen American colonies in 1775.

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 added 827,192 square miles to the United States in a single deal.

On his fourth voyage Christopher Columbus was shipwrecked on Jamaica and stranded there for about a year.

St Augustine in Florida, founded by Spain in 1565, is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the contiguous US.

The name Tex-Mex began as shorthand for the Texas Mexican Railway, chartered in 1875.

In 1931 Norway occupied part of East Greenland and named it Erik the Red's Land.

Rain on Minnesota's Hill of Three Waters can reach Hudson Bay, the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico.

The United States has the second-largest Spanish-speaking population in the world, after Mexico.

Human noise doubles background sound levels in 63% of US protected areas.