1. Algeria is the largest country by area in Africa. Before 2011, when South Sudan became independent, Sudan was the largest. 

 

2. The Sahara Desert covers 80 per cent of Algeria.

 

3. Over a million Algerians were killed in the fight for independence from France in 1962.

 

4. Algeria has competed at every summer Olympics since 1964, winning five gold medals.

 

5. They twice won each of the men’s and women’s 1500 metres. The other one was for boxing.

 

6. The only people born in Algeria to have won Nobel Prizes were Albert Camus (Literature 1957) and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (Physics, 1997).

 

7. Camus played as goalkeeper in the football team for the University of Algiers, which may therefore be the world’s only university to have had a Nobel Prize-winning goalkeeper in its team.

 

8. In 2007, a court in Algeria had to rule on the ownership of a donkey which had eaten the money brought by a purchaser for its sale.

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9. Then highest temperature ever recorded in Algeria was 51C (123.8F) in August 2011.

 

10. St Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was the most famous Algerian of all. Hippo is now Annaba.

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