Today’s random Texas statistic: this is the 26th-largest subnational governing body, as measured by area, in the world.

Alaska clocks in at #7, and I doubt anyone is ever going to overtake the winner, Russia’s Sakha Republic, which takes up a large percentage (about 24%) of Siberia. You could fit roughly 4½ Texases in the Sakha Republic. On the other hand, the greater Austin area has more people than the Sakha Republic, so we might be evenly matched in a game of pick-up basketball.

In terms of population, Texas’ 25 million people rank 5th in the world among subnational units, behind China’s Sichuan and Heilongjiang Provinces, the state of California, and Gansu Province in China. Canada’s Nunavut, which ranks fifth in land area, ranks last in population with just over 33,000 people.

Photo credit: By TUBS [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.