Collection of Insane and Fun Facts
Tété-Michel Kpomassie, a Togolese writer, fell in love with Greenland as a child because of the absence of snakes in the country, his biggest fear. Due to this, he ran away from home and after 12 years he finally reached Greenland. He then wrote a book about it called: “An African in Greenland”.
200-1200s AD, Inuit and Vikings colonized Greenland multiple times, but they often missed the other and found the ruins of the other’s attempt. First Contact finally happened in the 1200s, with Inuits colonizing the Vikings.
Camp Century, a top-secret US military base, was built under the ice sheets of Greenland in 1960 to house missiles. Built under the cover of climate research, it housed 200 people and was powered by the world’s first portable nuclear reactor. Denmark didn’t uncover the base’s existence until 1995.
Greenland got its name because the Viking who discovered it was banished from Iceland and felt lonely in his new homeland, so he named and advertised it as the lush ‘Greenland’ to attract settlers, despite the fact that it was actually a completely barren and largely uninhabitable land.
Prisoners on Greenland are allowed to leave their cells between 06.30am-09.30pm, work, visit relatives, have their own cell key, and use firearms.
Greenland has a university, with 14 staff and 150 students. It is so small because the Government pays for students to have a free university education anywhere in Europe or North America.
Some inmates in Greenland hold the keys of their own cells, may leave the premises during the day to go to work/school and are even allowed to go hunting with rifles to shoot birds and seals.
Approximately 1% of Greenland’s total population lives in one residential building.
Greenland can’t join FIFA because not enough grass grows there for a soccer field.
The US tried to purchase Greenland for $100 million in 1946.