Facts about Russia (1)

In total now, I decided I've spent at least one year living in Russia in spans anywhere from a few weeks through going on three months now. As you might expect, after being so close to a country, I've read and learned a thing here and there that I thought might be interesting to share. I'm choosing facts I would have probably not have known had it not been for my personal interest in Russia. I hope and expect at least a couple of my fellow American comrades to find a thing or two listed here interesting.

• The actual country name is Russian Federation. [2]
  
• Russia is the largest country in the world by land mass (by far). [1]
  
• Russia occupies nearly twice as much land area (17,098,242 km² vs 9,629,091 km²) as the USA and has about half of the population (142m vs ~300m). [1]
  
• Russia Occupies 11.5% of world's land area.  [1]
  
• The next closest is Canada with 6.7%. [1]
  
• The population of Russia is 142 million. [3], [5]
  
• The Russian language is the largest native language in Europe. [6]
  
• Russian scientist Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (Дмитрий Иванович Менделеев) created the periodic table of the elements. [4]
  
• Most Russian's (even university graduates) won't know what a "Periodic Table of the Elements" is. They refer to it only as it's official name: "Mendeleev's Table".
  
• Some of my colleagues were shocked (and maybe a bit offended) that we were not taught it as "Mendeleev's Table".
  

• 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_outlying_territories_by_total_area
  
• 2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia
  
• 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev
  
• 4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
  
• 5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Russia
  
• 6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language
  

I'll post a more in the next couple days.