Hi everyone,
last Friday (26th of Feb) we ran another twitter-based geo trivia contest. Everyone can join in, we do it every month, the only purpose is to have a bit of fun as the month winds down.
February’s geotrivia question:
“Name countries that have territory on multiple continents”
You might be surprised to learn that reverse geocoding to determine which
continent a point lies in comes up surprisingly often, which is why
our geocoding API returns a continent value
in the components portion of each geocoding result. Specifically we supply one of the following values:
Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America, South America.
Some parts of the world are a bit up for debate, for example is the Caribbean part of North America or South America, or should it be its own “continent”. In other cases we have territories which geologically perhaps belong to one continent but culturally and historically are part of another. A good example is the island of Madeira which is off the coast of Africa, but politically and culturally has always been part of Portugal and thus European.
Still, there are many countries with territories that span multiple continents. Some cases are obvious, like Russia which stretches from Europe to Asia. But in some cases the list is quite surprising, for example Norway which owns Bouvet Island near Antartica.
Big thanks to everyone who played along!
The geotrivia answer:
- AU - Oceania, Asia, Antartica (Heard Island)
- CL - South America and Oceania (Easter Island)
- DK - Europe and North America (Greenland)
- CO - South America and North America (San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina)
- EG - Africa and Asia
- ES - Europe and Africa (Ceuta and Melilla)
- FR - Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Oceania, Antartica (Overseas France)
- GB - Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Oceania, Antartica (British Overseas Territories)
- NL - Europe and North America (Dutch Caribbean)
- NO - Europe and Antartica (Bouvet Island)
- PA - South America and North America (with the Panama Canal as the dividing line)
- RU - Europe and Asia
- TR - Europe and Asia
- US - North America and Oceania (various Pacific islands like Guam, Wake Island, etc)
Happy geocoding,