CHILE: Worst Shake

Precariously perched between the towering Andes and the Pacific, the elongated Republic of Chile runs like a rind along the western coast of South America from the tropics to Cape Horn. Averaging only about 125 miles in width, the country is so long (2,661 miles) that, if draped across Europe, it would stretch from Moscow to Madrid. To compensate for its unwieldy shape, nature has given it a variety of riches: underneath its parched yellow soil in the desolate northern region lie the world's most valuable deposits of nitrate and the second...

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