Covering more than 42,000 square miles, Cuba is easily the largest island in the Caribbean Sea. Coming in second place at over 29,000 square miles is Hispaniola, which contains the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Despite its size, Cuba's 11 million residents make it only the second-most populous country in the region, just behind Haiti and just ahead of the Dominican Republic.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the second-largest country on the African continent. It is landlocked on all sides except for the 25-mile coastline on the Atlantic Ocean. Thanks to that, the DRC borders the most nations in Africa, amounting to nine total countries.

Lake Huron is the second-largest Great Lake (after Lake Superior, of course), but it is home to approximately 30,000 of the 35,000 islands in the Great Lakes. Most notable among them is Manitoulin Island, the largest freshwater lake island in the world, measuring 1,068 square miles.

In 2019, the Yangsigang Yangtze River Bridge was completed in Wuhan, China. Spanning 5,577 feet, the double-decker bridge is now the second-longest suspension bridge in the world. It took five years to construct and was built to expedite traffic across the river. Japan’s Akashi Kaikyō Bridge is the world’s longest suspension bridge, spanning 6,532 feet.

Nicknamed the “Big Lap” for its circuitous route around the Australian coastline, Highway 1 is the second-longest road in the world, after the Pan-American Highway (which extends from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina). At 9,009 miles in length, Highway 1 connects almost all of Australia’s major cities, including Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, and Brisbane.

Excluding palaces from the category of private residences, the Biltmore in Asheville, NC earns the title of the largest house in the U.S. and the second-largest house in the world. (At an astonishing 400,000 square feet, Antilia in India is the largest.) Covering 175,000 square feet, the Biltmore contains 250 rooms, 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. It was commissioned by George Vanderbilt and opened in 1895 after six years of construction.

Occupying more than 15% of Canada's total area, Québec is the country's largest province. The French-Canadian province covers more than 500,000 square miles of land and an additional 70,000 square miles of water. In second place comes Ontario with about 350,000 square miles of Canadian land. The smallest province is Prince Edward Island, which accounts for just 2,185 square miles of the country.

After the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the world's largest coral reef is found on the other side of the world, off the coast of Central America. The Belize Barrier Reef, as the collection of coral reefs is known, runs for about 190 miles off Belize's east coast, and includes the famous Great Blue Hole, a giant marine sinkhole, enclosed in the reef's coral structures.

The largest country by far on the South American continent is Brazil, covering a massive 3.3 million square miles. Argentina is the second-largest in South America and the eighth-largest in the world. It has an area of 1.1 million square miles and a population of 46.7 million.

For 10 years, the Spring Temple Buddha in Lushan, China, was the world’s tallest statue, but in 2018, India’s 597-foot Statue of Unity demoted it to second place. Still, the 502-foot-tall Buddha statue, completed in 2008, is undeniably colossal. Made of copper, gold, and steel, it cost roughly $18 million to construct. Visitors can climb hundreds of steps to touch the Buddha’s massive toes for good luck.

Discounting polar deserts, the Arabian Desert is the second-largest desert in the world, behind the Sahara Desert in North Africa. The non-polar desert covers almost the entirety of the Arabian Peninsula and extends into seven countries, including Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates over 900,000 square miles.

Lake Superior holds two significant titles: the second-largest lake in the world (behind only the Caspian Sea) and the largest freshwater lake in the world. Formed approximately 1.2 billion years ago, this Great Lake measures 160 miles wide and 350 miles long, and has a surface area of 31,700 square miles. The lake is shared by Canada and the United States.

New Guinea is the second-largest island in the world, after Greenland. At 317,150 square miles, the South Pacific island is also one of the least densely populated places on the planet. The island is divided into two nations, with the western half being a province of Indonesia and the eastern half comprising a large part of the nation of Papua New Guinea.

Although it's 643 feet shorter than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, China’s Shanghai Tower still soars above most buildings in the world. Standing at 2,073 feet high, this incredible feat of modern engineering contains 128 floors and was completed in 2015. Even though it’s not the world's tallest skyscraper, it boasts the highest observation deck on the planet at 1,843 feet.

At 4,000 miles in length — roughly the distance between New York City and Rome — the Amazon River is considered to be the second-longest river in the world after the Nile. The massive body of water crosses nearly the entirety of South America, starting in the high Andes of Peru and flowing through Ecuador, Guyana, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil before ending at the Atlantic Ocean.

Covering 1.2 billion acres, the Amazon is by far the world’s largest rainforest. But the world’s second-largest rainforest is nothing to sneeze at — at more than 500 million acres, the Congo Rainforest is bigger than the entire state of Alaska. The African rainforest spans six countries — Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.

Commonly known as K2 because it was the second mountain in the Karakoram Range to be surveyed, Earth’s second-tallest peak is also known as Mount Godwin Austen, after the English geographer who surveyed the mountain in the 19th century. Mountaineers consider K2 or Mount Godwin Austen to be one of the world's most challenging climbs. The first successful ascent of the peak (straddling the China-Pakistan border) was not until 1954.

Named for the Greek god Atlas, the Atlantic Ocean is certainly massive in its own right. At 41 million square miles, it covers roughly 20% of the Earth’s surface. Despite its enormity, however, the Atlantic Ocean is significantly smaller than the Pacific Ocean, which covers 63 million square miles. The Indian Ocean ranks third, followed by the Southern Ocean, and, finally, the Arctic Ocean.

Russia is, by far, the largest country on Earth, covering an area of 6.6 million square miles. Coming in second place is Canada, which covers 3.9 million square miles. Despite that, Canada’s population is 38.3 million — less than the state of California. Next on the list are China, the United States, and Brazil.

Asia is the planet’s largest continent, spanning over 17 million square miles and making up more than 30% of the world’s land area. Following Asia, Africa is the second-largest continent on Earth, both by land area (11.7 million square miles) and population (1.3 billion). The continent is made up of 54 sovereign countries.