Everything is bigger in Texas, as the saying goes–including Texas itself. It’s a huge state full of empty rural plains and vast cities (with roads are so wide that they’re dangerous for pedestrians.) Yet many people struggle to get a true grasp of Texas’ massive size. That’s why it helps to compare it to other places around the world, including entire sovereign countries.
In global terms, Texas isn’t really so much a state as a country. (Indeed, it’s the most independence-minded U.S. state as of today, with a loud but tiny minority of residents clamoring to go back to the days of an independent Republic of Texas.) Still, it’s hard to ignore the sheer size of this state. It’s certainly got the population of a small country with over 24 million people, and their area of 268,596 square miles dwarfs many other countries.
So, just how big is that really? Well, overlaid on the United Kingdom Texas swallows up the entire British Isles with plenty of space left over. It stands at 287% of the United Kingdom’s square mileage. It’s interesting to note that Texas’ population density is much lower, though, as the UK fits 65 million people into 2.5 less space than Texas’ 24 million. Similarly, Texas is bigger than Spain, Iraq, and Japan, though France is fairly comparable in size. So, who needs international travel? Texas is a country of its own!