The Geografile

Lhasa, capital of Tibet, means “place of the gods.”

Iceland gained its independence from Denmark on June 17, 1944.

Due to the end of colonialism, Africa spawned 17 new nations in 1960 alone.

The capital of the Caribbean British Overseas Territory of Montserrat is Plymouth, a ghost town that was abandoned in 1997 due to volcanic eruptions. Construction of a new capital, Little Bay, began in 2019.

Israel’s flag design is based on the tallit, a shawl worn by Jewish men during prayers.

Thirty-eight countries are islands that border no other country.

In New Zealand, North Island’s Ninety-Mile Beach is only 55 miles long, while Victory, Australia’s, Ninety-Mile Beach is 94 miles long.

Alphabetically, Abidjan, capital of Côte d’Ivoire, is first, and Zagreb, Croatia, last.

In Norway, hydropower meets more than 95% of the country’s electricity demand.

Switzerland has maintained armed neutrality since 1515.

India is the world’s largest producer of mangoes, its national fruit.

African penguins, also known as jackass penguins, are Africa’s only endemic penguins. Breeding populations are found only on 28 islands in Namibia and South Africa.

Monaco is so small that it could fit inside New York's Central Park.

About 20% of all marine life in the Galápagos Islands is endemic to the archipelago. 17% of the fish are found nowhere else in the world.

In China, more than 92 million people share the family name Li, but those with the family name Wang number 92.8 million, or about 6.6% of the population.

British subjects, even those outside of the UK, who celebrate a 100th birthday or 60th wedding anniversary get a personalized card from the ruling monarch, a tradition dating to 1917.

Lake Nicaragua contains about 400 islands, some of which are active volcanoes. Since the lake was severed from the Pacific Ocean by a belt of volcanic cones, unique freshwater species of swordfish have evolved.

The world’s smallest lizard — it could curl up on a dime — was discovered in 2001 in a cave on an island off the coast of the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean.

Sahara is from the Arabic word sahra, meaning “desert.” So saying Sahara Desert is redundant.

Borneo is the world's only island divided between three countries: Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Azerbaijan was the first Muslim country to extend suffrage to women, in 1918.

China spans more than 60 degrees of longitude but has only one time zone.

Brazil is the only country that crosses both the equator and a tropic (Tropic of Capricorn). Uruguay is the only South American country completely outside the tropic latitudes.

Monaco has been ruled by the Grimaldi family since the 14th century.

New Zealand was named by the Dutch after Zeeland, a region in the Netherlands.

Brazil’s Santa Catarina guinea pigs live on a 10-acre stretch of land on a small island and may have the smallest range of any mammal.

Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire from AD 330 until 1453, when it was captured by the Turks, made the capital of the Ottoman Empire and renamed Istanbul.

Hashima, an island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, is shaped like a battleship and is nicknamed Battleship Island.

Borneo is the world’s only island divided between three countries: Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Colombia is named after Christopher Columbus. Bolivia is named after independence fighter Simón Bolívar.

The infamous mutiny of the HMS Bounty occurred off the coast of Tofua, now part of Tonga, in 1789.

Chile was named by natives who once lived on its long and narrow strip of coast. Chile means “end of the land.”

Hungary’s capital, Budapest, until 1873 was two separate cities, Buda and Pest, that lay on opposite banks of the Danube River.

The British Commonwealth of Nations is an association of 52 sovereign states, formerly British colonies.

Denmark, with about 131 Danes per square mile, is Scandinavia’s most densely populated country, but if you include its territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, it is the world’s most sparsely populated country, with an average of 0.15 people per square mile. Otherwise, Mongolia is the most sparsely populated, with four people per square mile.

In 1991, South Africa became the first country to make the great white shark a protected species.

The site of Canberra was chosen as the place to build a new Australian capital in 1908, to replace Melbourne, but that was delayed by World War I and it didn’t become the official national government seat until 1927.

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, in 1999, became the first three former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO.

Though it has long been stated that the Great Wall of China is visible from the moon, this myth was debunked in 1969 by American astronaut Alan Bean, who reported that when his spacecraft was only a few thousand miles from Earth (the moon is about 230,000 miles distant), no trace of human building was visible. The Great Wall is not even visible from the International Space Station, orbiting 205 to 270 miles out, though the pyramids at Giza can be discerned.

Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, was founded in 1890 as Fort Salisbury (later Salisbury), named after the British prime minister Lord Salisbury. Its name was changed to Harare in 1982.

Brazil borders on 10 other countries. On the South American continent, only Chile and Ecuador don’t share a border with Brazil.

Mount Logan, Canada’s highest mountain, located in Yukon territory’s southwest, was named for Sir William Logan, founder of the Geological Survey of Canada.

Fraser Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site off the coast of Queensland, Australia, is the world’s largest sand island, at 74 miles long and 18 miles wide. It’s the only known place on Earth where rainforests thrive on top of sand dunes.

Namibia was originally a German colony and called, from 1884 to 1915, South-West Africa. From 1915 until independence in 1990, it was governed by South Africa.

The Great Pyramid at Giza, at its original height of 481 feet, was the tallest man-made structure in the world for thousands of years until the 14th century, when it was overtaken by the central spire of England’s Lincoln Cathedral, which collapsed in 1549, although, by then, other churches had eclipsed the pyramid’s height.

The world’s least-salty seawater is found in the Bay of Bothnia, where Sweden meets Finland.