The country measures about 4000 km in length, which is similar to the distance between New York and Los Angeles.
However, on average Chile is just 177 km wide, which is half the distance between New York and Washington, DC.
But why does the country have this unusual shape?
There are two reasons for this, the first one being natural borders. The country is sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, the longest mountain range in the world.
The second reason is conquest: when Chile gained independence from Spain in 1818, it did not yet have the shape it has today, receiving its current appearance in the 1880s, when Chile conquered the resource-rich areas to the north from Bolivia and Peru during the War of the Pacific, turning Bolivia into a landlocked country - a fact about which Bolivia is still upset today. The southern areas, inhabited by the Mapuche people, were conquered by Chile around the same time.
