this video is made possible by curiosity
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also get access to nebula the streaming
video platform that real life lore is a
part of most people's perception of the
actual size of countries across the
world are wrong and most of the reason
is because we're used to seeing this
world map all the time like literally
all the time Google Maps Apple maps and
classrooms all across the world use this
map and it's not entirely representative
of the true size of actual countries I
already made a whole video nearly four
years ago explaining why and how this
map distorts the shape of countries but
there's a lot of things that I didn't
mention back in that video so consider
this one a long-overdue part two so
let's get started first with Islands I
think it's fascinating to look at an
actual size comparison side-by-side of
the world's 15 largest islands which in
order are Greenland New Guinea Borneo
Madagascar Baffin Sumatra Honshu
Victoria great Burton Ellis Muir
Sulawesi the South Island of New Zealand
Java the North Island of New Zealand and
Newfoundland now there's a lot of
interesting stuff to unpack here first
off let's look at the populations on all
of these islands
some of them like bath in Victoria and
Ellis Muir despite being huge are almost
uninhabited while Java Honshu and Great
Britain are all incredibly crowded in
comparison the relatively small island
of Java has more people living on it
than the entire population of Russia but
their size differences well pretty
drastic Great Britain is a lot smaller
than both the islands of New Zealand
when they're combined
despite Great Britain being home to over
60 million people and New Zealand not
even being home to 5 million but that's
nothing when compared to Japan New
Zealand is roughly the same size but
Japan is home to almost 127 million
people 25 times more than the number of
people in New Zealand and Japan itself
is pretty huge here's what it looks like
just off the east coast of the United
States where you can see that it
stretches from Maine all the way down to
Cuba or for a European perspective Japan
stretches from st. Petersburg in the
north to below Sardinia in the south but
Japan is actually quite small when
to the size of Indonesia which will
probably be bigger than you thoughts for
starters here's Indonesia's actual size
placed over the United States and the
distance from one side over to the other
is actually greater than the distance
across the entire continental US and for
a European perspective the distance
across Indonesia is greater than the
distance of Ireland from Uzbekistan or
for another perspective here is
Indonesia when compared to Russia
Indonesia is really really big
but there's other weird unexpected
Island geographies out there too for
example let's take the Republic of
Ireland and South Korea you may think
that finding a similarity between them
would be really difficult but you might
change your mind when we overlap their
borders with one another
Ireland and South Korea have very
similar shapes and sizes
despite Ireland having a population of
only 4.8 million and South Korea having
a population of over 51 million so while
they may be similar in size they aren't
in named to places that are though are
Georgia and Georgia Georgia the state is
more than twice as big as Georgia the
country and with almost three times the
population as well with that in mind I
think if Georgia ever got into a fight
with Georgia I think that Georgia would
most likely win out now in my last video
I talked about how much bigger Africa is
than most people seem to think it is but
I didn't talk about individual African
countries and their sizes Somalia
immediately jumps to mind first because
well it's really big placed over the US
in actual size Somalia stretches up from
Detroit in the north down to Florida in
the south and spans basically the entire
East Coast for the European perspective
Somalia stretches from London through
Germany and France before finally
hitting Valencia in Spain but there are
other big African countries too Kenya is
almost the same size as Texas in the
United States or weirdly similar in
shape to the old borders of the Holy
Roman Empire when placed over Europe but
none of these compared to the Jupiter of
Africa the Democratic Republic of the
Congo which really is massive in every
sense of the word
placed over America the DRC stretches
from Miami in the south juts out past
Dallas in the West and all the way up
above
ha go and getting even into Canada up in
the north placed over Europe instead the
DRC stretches from the south of Greece
to Spain in the West and up to Belarus
Lithuania and Denmark up in the north
the DRC in Africa alone takes up a
significant part of an entire continent
in land area but we're still not done
next up we have to spend some time
talking about Chile Chile is well it's
long very long so long in fact if you
flipped it on its side you could nearly
span the entire length of the
us-canadian border with it and if you
moved it over a bit you could also span
the entire Atlantic Ocean from Canada to
Paris if you place Chile back to normal
but kept it in Europe it would stretch
from the top of the continent in Norway
all the way down beneath Crete and near
Libya in the south Chile is therefore
taller than Europe is an entire
continent which is kind of one of the
main points that I'm trying to make in
this video
Europe is a lot smaller than most people
think it is traveling across Europe can
take you through multiple languages and
cultures in a short amount of time which
can give the illusion of a bigger size
but don't be fooled to put into
perspective just how much bigger the
lands were that European empires went
out and conquered and subjugated in the
centuries past
here's a few examples the Indian
subcontinent once ruled entirely by
Britain is almost as big as Europe is
itself and takes up almost every country
west of Ukraine and Romania and that
wasn't even the only massive British
possession let's take Australia a
genuine continent in its own right that
pretty much does cover all of Europe
from Portugal to Moscow and from Turkey
to the Norwegian Sea the continental US
over here up to is basically also the
same size as the continent stretching
from Portugal in the West to a little
beyond Moscow in the East but we're not
done yet making Europe feel like a tiny
place let's take Brazil next which like
the others before this basically spans
most of the entire continent as well
seriously just stop and look at this for
a moment
you can fit practically all of Europe
inside of Brazil and it was ruled for
centuries by just this tiny little nub
here at the end and this is why
Brazilian Portuguese is more widespread
than Portuguese Portuguese anyway none
of these really compare to what in my
opinion is the biggest shocker in this
list which is China when placed over
Europe
China's gargantuan size is truly
understood by most of us in the West for
the first time China pretty much is the
size of Europe except it's all ruled by
a single government its population is
roughly double the size and it's over 91
percent made up by the same cultural and
ethnic group in short from a European /
Western perspective the world is
sometimes shown to us from our point of
view which makes our countries or our
continents seem much bigger than they
actually are the fact is the world is a
huge place and the West is just a small
part of it if you want to go on from
here and learn more things about our
planet that will blow your mind
curiosity stream has a fantastic short
documentary on the lost 8th continent of
our planet that was only recently
discovered Zealandia there's plenty in
there you'll learn about how an entire
continent could remain undiscovered for
so long and this is just one of
thousands of top-quality nonfiction
shows and documentaries that you can
watch on curiosity stream of course the
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stream subscription is now much larger
thanks to their bundle deal with nebula
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myself and a ton of other educational
creators we main emulate to be the home
of our bigger and more ambitious
upcoming projects my next original on
the site which is coming soon is going
to be a 20 minute plus documentary
examining the mystery of the DB Cooper
case and will release exclusively unnhhh
emulous soon so to make sure that you
get to see that along with all of the
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creators sign up for the curiosity
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you for watching
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