Under a tenth of England's land is built on

Good morning

On 1 November 1755, a huge earthquake struck Lisbon, Portugal's capital, during morning mass on All Saints' Day. The quake, the fires and the tsunami that followed killed tens of thousands of people and flattened much of the city. It also prompted some of the first systematic studies of earthquakes, as officials surveyed survivors to find out what had happened.

Today's issue looks at Europe's oldest border, its most forested country and a capital that grows its own wine.

In today's edition

England · Fact of the day

Under a tenth of England's land is built on

Most people picture England as a crowded island with little space left. When Ipsos asked people in 2023 how much of England is covered by homes, roads and other buildings, the average guess was 47%, nearly half the country.

The true figure, from official land-use data for April 2022, is 8.7%, under a tenth. That is roughly the area of Wales. The rest of England is fields, woods, water and open land.

The gap comes from where people spend their time. Homes, shops and offices sit inside that small 8.7%, so daily life gives a skewed picture. Farmland alone covers 63% of England, more than six times the built-up share.

64.03° N, 21.13° W · Place of the day

Þingvellir, Iceland

Þingvellir is a valley in southwest Iceland. It sits inside a wide rift, where two tectonic plates meet: the North American and the Eurasian. Around 930, Icelanders gathered there to found the Althing, their national parliament. It is recognised as the world's oldest surviving parliament.

The plates beneath Þingvellir are slowly pulling apart, at roughly 2 centimetres a year. That is about as fast as a fingernail grows. Since the assembly first met there, the valley floor has sunk by 3 to 4 metres. That is close to the height of a single-decker bus.

The Althing kept meeting at Þingvellir for almost 870 years, until 1798. It then moved to Reykjavík, Iceland's capital. UNESCO added the 9,270 hectare site to its World Heritage List in 2004. That area is roughly the size of Liechtenstein.

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Today's mystery shape · 1 November 2026

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40.50° N, 6.80° W · By the numbers

Length of the longest land border inside the EU

The border between Portugal and Spain runs 1,234 kilometres. That makes it the longest continuous land border between two European Union countries. The runner-up, between the Czech Republic and Germany, runs 815 kilometres. The gap between them is more than 400 kilometres, roughly the distance from London to Edinburgh. The Portugal-Spain border is also Europe's oldest. A treaty fixed its line in 1297, and the border has barely changed since. One short stretch, near the town of Olivenza, was never formally marked and remains officially undefined. A boundary drawn more than seven centuries ago still holding firm shows how rarely borders change in Western Europe.