California is approximately 403,882 sq km, while Canada is approximately 9,984,670 sq km, making Canada 2,372% larger than California. Meanwhile, the population of California is ~37.3 million people (440,129 more people live in Canada).

Migration predated the period of US control notably when Spain sent soldiers and missionaries into the area they named California. It accelerated after the United States seized the Mexican province and immediately profited from the 1848 discovery of gold in the Sierra foothills.

After the Mexican–American War of 1846–48, Mexico was forced to relinquish any claim to California to the United States. The California Gold Rush of 1848–1855 attracted hundreds of thousands of ambitious young people from around the world.

Land that had been inhabited by Native Americans was being taken over by those searching for fortunes in gold. New laws were being enacted to dictate what the prospectors could and could not do to mine the gold. It is the gold rush that spawned the population growth and led to California becoming a State.

The vast majority of California’s immigrants were born in Latin America (50%) or Asia (39%). California has sizable populations of immigrants from dozens of countries; the leading countries of origin are Mexico (3.9 million), the Philippines (859,000), China (796,000), Vietnam (539,000), and India (513,000).

California is the state with the highest GDP in the country. The GDP of Texas ($1.78 trillion) is equivalent to the economy of Canada ($1.73 trillion), while New York’s GDP ($1.70 trillion) matches up to South Korea ($1.66 trillion). Even the smaller U.S. states can hold their own.

Every country’s total area is split into land area and water area, and that’s where you can see that Canada is behind the USA in land area, with 9.094 million square kilometers to the USA’s 9.148 million square kilometers.

China has a land area of 9.3 million square kilometers (3.6 million square miles), which is 2.2% larger than the US land area of 9.1 million square kilometers (3.5 million square miles).

China set to be world’s largest economy The Chinese economy — in nominal U.S. dollar terms — is projected to overtake the U.S. around 2032 and become the world’s largest, said Baptist. It became the only major economy to grow last year, after posting GDP growth of 2.3%.

Click here to license this visualization….Mapped: The 25 Richest Countries in the World.