A dozen things you probably never knew

1.  The Eisenhower Interstate system required that a mile in every five be straight for emergency runway use.  (When flying a light plane I always liked to have an Interstate nearby.)

2.  All but one percent of the public roads in the USA are paved, while in Canada only 25% are paved.

3.  Nobody owns Antarctica, and although it’s covered in ancient ice up to three miles thick, locking up 90 percent of the world’s fresh water supply, it’s the driest continent on the planet.  It’s also the coldest, windiest, and highest.

4.  The flow of the Amazon is greater than the next eight largest rivers on our planet combined, and is three times the total flow of all United States rivers.

5.  Canada has more lakes than all the rest of the world combined.

6.  Ohio has NO natural lakes.  Those they do have are man-made.

7.  Damascus, Syria, is the oldest existing continuously inhabited city on Earth.

8.  Istanbul, Turkey, is located on two continents, Europe and Asia, separated by the Bosporus Straits.

9.  Pitcairn is the smallest island country at just 1.75 square miles.  (Not a lot to do there.)

10.  Siberia has more than a quarter of the world’s forests.

11.  In New York City there are more Irish than in Dublin, more Jews than in Tel Aviv, and more Italians than in Rome.

12.  No matter where you are on our planet, no matter how clear and dark the night sky, every star you see with the naked eye lies only within our own Milky Way Galaxy.  The nearest of those, Alpha Centauri (actually a triple star), is some 24 trillion miles away.  And there are billions of other galaxies--other swirling star cities--out there flung across the universe.

Phil