What I already knew: I thought that the earth only had 4 oceans: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian and Arctic. I also knew that the Pacific was the largest of the oceans.
What I learned: The earth actually has 5 oceans, as the Southern Ocean was recognized by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) only as recently as 2000. The name is used to describe the waters surrounding Antarctica. But many still dispute the existence of a 5th ocean, preferring to use "South Pacific" or "South Atlantic" or whatever to describe those waters.
The largest ocean is indeed the Pacific, followed by the Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic Oceans (in that order.)
This material is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses some information from the Wikipedia article "Ocean". Its list of authors can be found here.
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