Britain in perspective
At approximately 93,000 square miles, Britain is roughly the size of Michigan; slightly smaller than Oregon; or a little less than one-third the size of Texas.
With almost 61 million people, Britain has a higher population than the two most populous states in the US - California and Texas.
In 2000, four million Americans visited Britain and spent more than $5 billion, about a fifth of the UK tourist industry's total revenue.
In 2004, 2.8 million Americans visited London.
London Heathrow Airport holds the crown as Britain's busiest airport, Europe's busiest airport for total passenger traffic and the airport with the highest international passenger traffic in the world. Heathrow sees about 67 million passengers a year.
Blackpool Pleasure Beach is the most visited tourist spot in the UK, with roughly 6 million visitors. The second most visited is the British Museum with about 4.5 million. The Tate Modern, London Eye, Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and World Museum in Liverpool are also top spots.
Scotland's most visited tourist spot is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow with 1.9 million visitors in 2006. Edinburgh Castle, the longtime former top spot until just last year, comes in second with 1.2 million visitors.
The average length of time it takes to fly to the UK from New York is seven hours. In contrast, it takes on average six hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles. On average, it takes only 30 minutes more to fly from New York to London than to fly from New York to Los Angeles.
England has 47 boroughs, 36 counties, 29 London boroughs, 12 cities and boroughs, 10 districts, 12 cities, and three royal boroughs.
As of 2006, there are 471 airports in the UK. 334 have paved runways. There are 11 heliports in the UK.
Residents of the USA made the largest number of visits to the UK in 2005 - - 3.4 million.
Tourism is one of Britain's largest industries: 3.5% of the UK economy and worth approximately £85 billion in 2005.
Britain has a fairly temperate climate and can sometimes be overcast. But Britain enjoys long, hot summer evenings due to its northern latitude.
London's population is about seven million.
London's average annual rainfall is only about 23 inches, far less than New York (about 47 inches), Chicago (about 33 inches), Washington, D.C. (about 39 inches), Seattle (about 37 inches), Miami (about 60 inches), Paris (about 82 inches), Rome (about 31 inches), and even Dallas, Texas (about 36 inches)!
Sources:
www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html
www.statistics.gov.uk