By 1922, more than 458 million people lived in the British Empire, which was more than one fifth of the world's population at that time. The empire was larger than , almost a quarter of the Earth's total land area. Since it was so large, the British Empire has left a large legal, linguistic and cultural heritage. Like the Spanish Empire before it, the British Empire was often said to be "the empire on which the sun never sets" because it was so large that the sun was always shining somewhere in the empire. The Empire controlled land on every inhabited continent.