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@opencage@en.osm.townThis week in #geoweirdness we turn to South America.
Let's talk about geographic oddities of Brazil 
1/n
2/ First up, Brazil is very big
Brazil's northernmost point is closer to every country in the Americas than to Brazil's southernmost point. #geoweirdness
3/ Brazil's capital is the planned city of Brasília, created in the 1950s and 60s with the goal of having a more central location for government
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia
Moving capital is actually not that uncommon, as we learned in the Oct. 2022 #fridaygeotriva
https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/geotrivia-october-2022
4/ Brazil has a land border with 10 other countries: 
The only South American countries Brazil doesn't border are Ecuador 
and Chile 
Brazil is one of only 6 countries to border 9 or more countries, as covered in the Sept. 2021 #fridaygeotrivia
https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/geotrivia-september-2021
5/ France's longest land border is with Brazil along the border of the Département de la Guyane (French Guiana)
6/ Brazil is also quite wide, spanning four timezones when the various Brazilian Atlantic islands are included 
7/ Originally founded on the coast and a Portuguese 
colony, the territorial configuration of Brazil has grown over the years, with the current borders defined in 1908
8/ With so many borders, it's perhaps not surprising that Brazil has several open (thankfully peaceful) border disputes.
An example is Brazilian Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Island disputed with Uruguay
9/ Another dispute with Uruguay is near the town of Masoller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoller#Uruguayan-Brazilian_border_dispute
Both sides agree the border would be a creek called "Arroyo de la Invernada", but the two countries disagree on which stream that is 
10/ Another island dispute is with Bolivia over the Isla Suárez (Bolivia) or Ilha de Guajará-Mirim (Brazil)
11/ As you have seen from the various screenshots, the OpenStreetMap community in Brazil is quite active.
It was our pleasure to recently sponsor the work of @PlayzinhoAgro and others to add addresses to Brazilian towns
https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/openstreetmap-brazil-update
12/ Brazil is one of five countries to feature the Southern Cross in its flag, the others being: Australia 
, New Zealand 
, Papua New Guinea 
, and Samoa 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_depicting_the_Southern_Cross
13/ We hope you enjoyed our look at the #geoweirdness of Brazil
Thanks for reading (and sharing).
We have many more threads about specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc listed on our blog. Most still on twitter, but over time we are moving them here to mastodon. Enjoy.
https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads
We'll feature more countries in coming weeks and months
