Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa and the second-largest freshwater lake in the world, covering an area of 26,830 square miles (69,490 square kilometers).

The Nile River, which drains into the Mediterranean Sea at the northeastern edge of Africa, is the longest river in the world with a total length of 4,132 miles (6,650 kilometers). It is formed from the juncture of two smaller rivers: the White Nile and the Blue Nile.

Africa contains the world’s largest desert, the Sahara, which makes up an area greater in size than the entire continental U.S.

While Egypt is most well known for its pyramids, the Republic of Sudan actually has 223 of its own pyramids, double the number of pyramids in Egypt. Smaller and steeper than their Egyptian counterparts, the pyramids of Sudan are not nearly as famous.

Africa is home to the world’s largest living land animal, the African elephant, which can weigh between 6 and 7 tons.

The novel Tarzan of the Apes, set in Africa and published by American author Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912, created such a compelling image of Africa and the book’s title character that a New Orleans newspaper writer only half-jokingly suggested that if Tarzan were to run for president in 1929, he would receive as many votes as incumbent president Herbert Hoover.

The deserts of Tunisia housed the original Star Wars movie sets for the film’s planet Tatooine. More than 30 years after the premier of the first movie in the series, the sets are still very well preserved and visitors to Tunisia can even stay in Luke Skywalker’s home.

Scientists believe Africa was once joined with Earth’s other continents in a super-continent called Pangaea. While Asia and South America split from Africa in the late Cretaceous epoch (roughly 80 million years ago), the African continent remained relatively stable and has not moved much throughout time. Geologists believe the large island of Madagascar split from the African continent as early as 160 millions years ago.

Central eastern Africa is believed by most scientists to be the origin place of both humans and great apes. The earliest remains of the modern human species Homo sapiens have been found in Ethiopia and date to roughly 200,000 years ago.

The scientist Charles Darwin was the first to suggest that the ancestors of human beings may have originated in Africa. However, prejudicial attitudes toward the continent made many people in the Western world highly resistant to the idea until well into the twentieth century.

In 1974, the skeleton of “Lucy,” a hominid who lived approximately 3.2 million years ago and has been considered a common ancestor to the human family, was discovered in Hadar, Ethiopia. In 1979, a 165-foot trail of the earliest hominid footprints was discovered in the Kibish region of Tanzania. The two discoveries indisputably marked northeastern Africa as the birthplace of humanity.

Throughout human prehistory, Africa contained no major nation-states and was inhabited primarily by small groups of hunter-gatherers. Scientists believe that cattle were domesticated by hunter-gatherers in Africa as early as 6000 B.C., long before the advent of agriculture on the continent.

The oldest literate civilization in Africa is the Pharaonic civilization of ancient Egypt. Historical records date the rise of the Egyptian state to about 3300 B.C. and the fall from influence at 343 B.C., making it one of the world’s oldest and longest-lasting civilizations.d

Europeans first began exploring the northern coast of Africa around 332 B.C., when Alexander the Great came into Egypt and established the city of Alexandria. The Roman Empire soon after began to integrate much of North Africa’s Mediterranean coastline into the Roman system. (source: Random History)