1. Brazil is the world's fifth biggest country. It covers an area much larger than Western Europe and is slightly bigger than the United States excluding Alaska.

2. Brazil shares a border with every other country in South America apart from Ecuador and Chile – ten in total – and has lived in peace with all of them for almost 140 years. (The last South American war involving Brazil was the conflict between the 'Triple Alliance' and Paraguay in the 1860s.)

3. It is estimated that Brazil contains greater biodiversity than any other country on Earth. The rivers of the Amazon region, for example, are home to more than 1,500 different species of fish.

4. The Amazon river, most of which lies inside Brazil, could be the longest in the world. Some scientists argue that the true source of the Amazon is a place in southern Peru, not in the north as previously thought, in which case it would have a total length of 4,225 miles, about 90 miles longer than the Nile.

5. With more than 187 million people, Brazil is the world's 5th most populous country after China, India, the United States and Indonesia. The population is growing by approximately 1% per year, a lower rate than in most other developing countries. According to current projections, Pakistan will overtake Brazil as the 5th most populous country by 2015.

6. Brazil has the world's second biggest black population after Nigeria, the largest number of people of Japanese ancestry outside Japan, and more people of Lebanese or Syrian extraction than the combined populations of Lebanon and Syria.

7. Brazil has an indigenous Indian population of around 450,000, comprising more than 200 peoples who speak more than 180 different languages. According to the National Foundation for the Indian (FUNAI) the indigenous population has been growing at a rate of more than 3.5% per year and is now four times greater than in 1950. FUNAI also estimates that in the Brazilian Amazon there are more than 60 'uncontacted' Indian groups living in complete isolation from the outside world. Government policy is to avoid contact with such groups unless they are in extreme danger.

8. More than 80% of Brazilians live in urban areas. São Paulo, in the south-east of the country, is the biggest and most populous city in South America. The population of the city proper is 11 million, and the adjacent metropolitan area has a total population of around 18 million. According to the UN World Urbanization Prospects report (2007) the São Paulo metropolitan area is the fifth most populous urban agglomeration in the world, after Tokyo, New York, Mexico City and Mumbai.

9. Brazil has the 9th biggest economy in the world in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) derived from purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations.

10. The Brazilian company Embraer is the world's third biggest aircraft-producer and exporter after Boeing and Airbus. It specialises in 'regional' jets, which is to say medium-sized planes that seat up to 110 passengers.

11. Brazil is the world's largest exporter of sugar, coffee, orange juice, soya, beef, tobacco and chicken. In terms of agriculture the Financial Times describes the country as "a powerhouse whose size and efficiency few competitors can match".

12. Against a backdrop of rising concerns about climate change and declining oil reserves, Brazil has become a pioneer in the production of ethanol (produced from sugarcane) and other biofuels. More than three-quarters of the automobiles sold in Brazil have flex-fuel engines, capable of running on petrol, ethanol, or a mixture of the two.

13. Brazil is participating in the biggest ever scientific project entailing cooperation between different countries – the International Space Station (ISS). In March 2006 the astronaut Marcos Pontes became the first Brazilian (and the first native Portuguese speaker) to go into space when he embarked on a mission to the ISS. He stayed there for a week, performing experiments involving nanotechnology and biotechnology.

14. Brazil has the only source of synchrotron light, which permits the study of atoms and molecules, in the Southern Hemisphere. The equipment – developed, built and operated entirely by Brazilians – belongs to the National Synchrotron Light Laboratory in Campinas, São Paulo state.

15. Brazil has become the world’s leading source of satellite images, due to the government's policy of providing users in Brazil and neighbouring countries with free access to the images produced by the Sino-Brazilian Earth Resources Satellite.

16. In 2000, a team of scientists based in São Paulo achieved the first ever sequencing or 'decoding' of the genome of a plant pathogen. The bacterium in question was the insect-borne Xylella fastidiosa, which infects citrus fruit and other commercially important produce.

17. Brazil's Aids programme is widely seen as a model for other developing countries. In the early 1990s the World Bank predicted that in 2000 the number of Brazilians with HIV would be 1.2 million and rising. The current number, however, is around 630,000. The government puts great emphasis on prevention, with education and publicity campaigns actively and openly promoting safe sex among high-risk and vulnerable groups. Brazil was also the first developing country to commit to providing free anti-retroviral medicines to people with HIV, and the government has put pressure on international pharmaceutical companies in order to reduce the prices at which it buys anti-retroviral drugs.

18. The Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer is universally considered one of the most important figures in international modern architecture. As well as being the major influence on the construction of Brasília, Brazil's new capital, in the late 1950s, he has also designed numerous important buildings in other countries – including the United Nations headquarters in New York.

19. Since 2003, in the colonial town of Parati in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil has been hosting an annual international literary festival that attracts a large number of famous participants. Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, Toni Morrisson and Eric Hobsbawm are among those who have attended.

20. The most famous of the gentle bossa nova melodies of the 1950s and 60s, The Girl from Ipanema by Antonio Carlos ('Tom') Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes is generally thought to be among the five most-played pieces of music (either live or on the radio) in the world.

21. The annual carnival in Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia, is the world's biggest street party, attracting around 2 million people (including an average of 800,000 Brazilian and foreign tourists). The music is provided by mobile sound systems (trios elétricos) and over a hundred parade groups (blocos).

22. The first person to make an 'unassisted' flight in an aircraft (i.e. a heavier-than-air machine, not a balloon) was the Brazilian Albert Santos-Dumont, who piloted the 14 Bis over a distance of about 60 metres, at the modest altitude of 2-3 metres, in Paris on 23 October 1906. The Wright brothers had flown a similar distance in the United States in December 1903, but in order to become airborne their machine required launch rails and a catapult.

23. The city of Rio de Janeiro throws a New Year's Eve party that is probably the biggest – and arguably the most spectacular – in the world. Around two million people, all of them dressed at least partly in white (a popular tradition adopted from Afro-Brazilian religion), congregate on the huge crescent-shaped expanse of Copacabana beach to watch a midnight firework display.

24. Rio also gets into the record books with its Christmas festivities: the city's 82-metre high artificial Christmas tree (a conical metal framework covered in lights), which floats in the middle of Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon near Ipanema beach, is the biggest of its kind in the world.

Population

Brazil is the sixth most populous country in the world after China, India, the United States, Indonesia and the Russian Federation. Its poulation is approximately 185 million, and is predominantly young: 62% of Brazilians are under 29 years of age. Brazil's rate of population growth, high throughout the early and mid-20th century, has decreased significantly since 1970, due largely to economic modernisation and a dramatic urbanisation process.

Brazil's average population density is low compared to that of many other countries. Most people live on or near the Atlantic coast of the south-eastern and north-eastern states. Since about 1970 there has been intense migration from the north-east to the south-east, as well as from rural to urban areas. Recently the population flow has also turned towards the less inhabited central-western and northern regions.

Brazil is a racially mixed country in which the majority of people have ancestors in more than one of the three main groups: white Europeans (mostly Portuguese); black Africans (mainly from the west of the continent); and the original indigenous Indian population. In the first half of the 20th century, as a consequence of war and economic pressures, sizeable contingents of immigrants came to Brazil from various parts of western, central and eastern Europe. The first 500 or so immigrants from Japan arrived in Brazil in 1908, to be followed by another quarter of a million over the the next sixty years. It is a little-known fact that today Brazil contains the largest number of people of Japanese ancestry outside Japan, most of whom live in São Paulo state or the south of the country.