Something Interesting about Alaska

One thing that I always liked about Alaska is how it dominates US geography. Through a rather roundabout way, I was reminded of that tonight. I watched "xXx: State of the Union" and it was absolutely horrible. Rather than watch attentively, I ended up looking it up on IMDB while it was still playing. (4.0 out of 10, truly awful.) Then, I submitted a "goof" because they didn't even get the presidential order of succession right in the movie. I had to check my facts somewhere, and ended up on InfoPlease. I clicked around a bit there while I was already on the site and found a page on Extreme Points of the US.

If you check the footnote, you'll see that measuring from the Greenwich Meridian, Alaska is the most western, most eastern, and most northern state. (Maine gets most eastern only if you measure from the geographic center of the US - sure that makes more sense, but I'll stick with the one that makes Alaska even more interesting.) Since Denali, or Mt. McKinley as most people outside of Alaska know it, is the highest mountain in North America, Alaska picks up highest state, too. In fact, the sixteen highest mountains in the US are all in Alaska.

Incidentally, it has the largest land area of any state, more than twice Texas, the second largest (although with only 3% of the population of the Lone Star State.)

And remember, if you find any of these facts about Alaska boring, at least you're not watching "xXx: State of the Union!"