Interesting Facts about Russia

For a while, as I have been reading, I have jotted down some of the interesting facts and statistics about Russia. Did you know the following about Russia?:

--Russia encompasses nearly 1/5 of all the land on earth (imagine how big the Soviet Union must have been!)
--Russia is estimated to have over 100,000 rivers (of a length of 7 miles or more) and more than a million lakes!
--One of those lakes, Lake Baikal, is the world's deepest (1637 meters), and contains almost 1/5 of all the freshwater in the world, more than all five of the Great Lakes combined.
--The largest museum in the world, the Hermitage, is in St. Petersburg, and is housed in the Winter Palace of the tsars (which has 1057 rooms!), has over 3 million items. The director of the museum estimates that it would take 10 years to view all of them, and if the were placed right next to each other, they would go on for over 25 kilometers!
--Russia is roughly twice the size as the U.S. (including Alaska), with less than half of the population (roughly 140 million).
--Russia spans 11 time zones --Russia has more nuclear warheads than any other country (U.S. is 2nd, with about 40% of Russia's total) --Oymyakon, a town in Siberia, is the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth. Temperatures have been recorded there as low as -96 F.
--Russia is currently experiencing negative population growth, roughly -.7% a year, or half a million people.