Which country is the only nation in the world with territory in all four hemispheres — northern, southern, eastern, and western?
- Maldives
- Kiribati
- Indonesia
- Ecuador
Why B? And why not the others?
Correct answer: B. Kiribati
Kiribati's 33 coral atolls are scattered so widely across the central Pacific that its territory straddles both the Equator (putting islands in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres) and the 180th meridian (putting islands on both sides of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres), making it the only sovereign state present in all four. To stop its own territory from technically spanning two different calendar dates, Kiribati redrew the International Date Line in 1995 so that it bulges far to the east around the country's Line Islands, letting the whole nation share one date — incidentally making those islands among the very first places on Earth to greet each new day. Ecuador (whose name literally means 'equator') and Indonesia both straddle the Equator too, and the Maldives sits close to it as well, but none of the three extends across the date line into both the eastern and western hemispheres.
Source: CIA World Factbook: Kiribati (geography notes); Britannica: Kiribati