Auckland has more Polynesians than any Pacific nation

Good morning

On 6 October 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Egyptian troops crossed the Suez Canal and Syrian troops moved into the Golan Heights. The surprise assault reshaped alliances across the Middle East for years afterwards.

Today's issue looks at borders and capitals from a quieter angle. A lake holds more water than its size suggests, a capital once moved across an ocean, and a city became home to more Polynesian people than any Pacific nation.

In today's edition

Auckland · Fact of the day

Auckland has more Polynesians than any Polynesian nation

Ask where most Polynesian people live, and most people would name a Pacific island nation such as Samoa or Tonga. The true answer is a city in New Zealand. Auckland's Pacific peoples community numbered 275,079 in the 2023 census. That is more than the entire population of Samoa, which stood at 225,681 that year and is the most populous independent Polynesian country.

The reason is migration, not decline at home. From the 1950s to the 1970s, New Zealand ran guest-worker schemes that drew large numbers of Samoans, Tongans and Cook Islanders to Auckland for jobs. Their descendants stayed, and the diaspora city grew larger than any of the home islands it drew from.

22.91° S, 43.17° W · Place of the day

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro is a city on Brazil's south-eastern coast, on the Atlantic Ocean. For 13 years it was also the capital of Portugal, a country on the far side of that ocean.

In November 1807, Napoleon's army was two days from Lisbon. The Portuguese royal family and a court of roughly 10,000 to 15,000 people boarded ships and fled across the Atlantic to Brazil, then a Portuguese colony. From 1808 until King John VI sailed home in 1821, Rio de Janeiro was the seat of the entire Portuguese empire.

It remains the only time in history that the capital of a European state has sat in the Americas.

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↻ Also on the map

Between issues

Fancy a different kind of challenge before tomorrow's issue? GeoGrid gives you a 3 by 3 grid where each row and column sets its own rule. You fill every square with a country that fits both, which makes you think about the map from new angles each time.

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57.31° N, 4.48° W · By the numbers

Loch Ness holds nearly three times the water of Loch Lomond

Loch Lomond, in western Scotland, actually covers more surface area than Loch Ness: 71 square kilometres against 56. But Loch Ness holds far more water. It plunges to 230 metres, deep enough to hide a 60-storey building. That depth gives it about 7.45 cubic kilometres of fresh water. This is roughly 2.8 times Loch Lomond's volume, and more than every lake and reservoir in England and Wales combined. Depth, not surface area, decides which lake truly holds the most water.