This week's collection of whimsical and curious stories is giving politics a wide berth to talk about something generally less controversial: lakes. As usual, we will avoid any useful knowledge and instead focus on factoids that are equally interesting and curious.
A lake like a country - amongst the many things Finland is famous for (saunas, reindeer, a fiendishly hard language, a great education system, Moomins, etc.,) none are physically more ubiquitous than its lakes. In fact, Finland has around 188,000 lakes (or 3.6 lakes per 100 Finns). With so many lakes, it might come as little surprise that there is even a lake shaped like Finland itself.
The lake is called "Neitokainen" (even though "Finlake" was right there for the taking). Rumor has it that there is another Finland at the bottom of the lake (and from there it is Finlands all the way down).
A lot of lakes - a country with even more lakes than Finland is of course Canada. This is actually not very surprising given that Canada is the 2nd largest country on the surface of the Earth (which is where our lakes are generally located). What is more interesting, are the kinds of lake-related records Canada is setting:
Largest lake on an island (Nettilling Lake on Baffin Island), and the largest island on a lake (Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron)
Largest lake on an island in a lake (Lake Manitou on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron), and the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake (Treasure Island in Mindemoya Lake on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron)
And finally, the largest recursive lake-island iteration (a lake with an island with a lake with an island with a lake with an island)*. However, with around 3M lakes in total, Canadians have not yet bothered to name it so I will just leave you with a link to the coordinates on google maps - Link.
A lot of consonants - even though Wales seems like a natural contender for coming up with the longest name for a lake, the title goes in fact to the Nipmuc First Nations in today's Massachusetts:
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*For our lake-enthusiastic readers, there is a helpful wikipedia article on recursive island-lake combinations - Link