Learning about the World,
one country at a time.

Liechtenstein is one of only two doubly landlocked countries, meaning every neighbour is landlocked too. It has no airport and shares its currency with Switzerland.

Luxembourg is the only remaining sovereign grand duchy in the world. It has three official languages, Luxembourgish, French and German, and made public transport free nationwide in 2020.

Ireland shares its island with Northern Ireland, which stays in the United Kingdom. Irish is the first official language of the state, though English is spoken by almost…

Switzerland has four national languages and settles major questions by referendum several times a year. It stayed out of the United Nations until 2002.

Singapore has grown around a quarter larger since independence by reclaiming land from the sea. It has four official languages and no natural fresh water source of its…

Iceland sits on the ridge where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart, so the island widens each year. Its parliament, founded in 930, is among the…

Norway's coastline, counting every fjord and island, is longer than the distance around the equator. The sun does not set north of the Arctic Circle for weeks in…

United States of America spans six time zones in its states alone, from the Atlantic to beyond the date line. Its national park system, begun in 1872, was…

Denmark governs the Faroe Islands and Greenland, giving the kingdom territory in two continents. Its highest natural point rises barely 170 metres above sea level.

Macao is a Chinese special administrative region that was Portuguese until 1999. Its historic centre mixes Catholic churches with Chinese temples in the same streets.

Netherlands has around a quarter of its land below sea level, held back by dikes and pumps. Bicycles outnumber people across the country.

Qatar is a peninsula with a single land border, and it was closed for over three years until 2021. Almost all its drinking water comes from desalination.

Australia is the only country that covers an entire continent. Most of its mammals, including the kangaroo and the koala, live nowhere else on Earth.

San Marino is the oldest surviving republic in the world, founded in 301. It elects two heads of state at once, who serve together for six months.

Austria is a landlocked Alpine republic in central Europe. Vienna has drunk untreated mountain spring water since 1873, carried into the city by gravity through pipelines from the…

Sweden has stayed out of every war since 1814, the longest unbroken peace of any country. Its allemansrätten gives everyone the right to walk and camp on private…

Belgium has three official languages, Dutch, French and German, and each region runs its own government. Brussels holds the headquarters of both the European Union and NATO.

Germany was a patchwork of separate states until unification in 1871. Its constitution places lawmaking in sixteen federal states, each running its own schools and police.

Israel borders the Dead Sea, the lowest land surface on Earth at more than 400 metres below sea level. Hebrew was revived as an everyday spoken language after…

United Kingdom is made of four nations and has no single written constitution. Its rail network, opened in 1825, was the first in the world.

Hong Kong keeps its own currency, legal system and border controls under Chinese sovereignty. More skyscrapers stand here than in any other city on Earth.

Finland holds more lakes than any other country, over 180,000 of them. Public saunas outnumber cars, and the practice is listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage.

Canada has the longest coastline of any country, more than 200,000 kilometres. It holds more lake surface than the rest of the world put together.

Andorra is a Pyrenean microstate with two heads of state, the President of France and a Spanish bishop. It has no airport and no railway, and is reached…

United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven emirates, each with its own ruler. Its population is mostly foreign-born, one of the highest such shares anywhere.

Malta is among the most densely populated countries in the world, on islands smaller than most cities. Its Ħaġar Qim temples predate the Egyptian pyramids.

France holds territory in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Southern oceans, giving it the second largest maritime zone in the world. The metric system was defined here in…

New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote, in 1893. It had no land mammals except bats before people arrived, so birds filled those roles.

Italy surrounds two independent states, San Marino and the Vatican. More UNESCO World Heritage sites stand here than in any other country.

Cyprus is divided by a buffer zone patrolled by the United Nations since 1964. Copper was mined here in antiquity, and the metal takes its name from the…

Aruba is a Dutch Caribbean island lying outside the hurricane belt. Constant trade winds bend its divi-divi trees permanently to the southwest, so every tree leans the same…

The Bahamas spreads some 700 islands across the Atlantic, only around thirty of them inhabited. Dean's Blue Hole is among the deepest known underwater sinkholes.

Puerto Rico is a United States territory whose residents are citizens but cannot vote for president. Its bioluminescent bays glow when the water is disturbed at night.

Taiwan makes most of the world's advanced semiconductors. Its mountains rise above 3,900 metres, giving the island alpine terrain within sight of tropical coast.

Spain has a city inside France, Llívia, and two cities on the African mainland, Ceuta and Melilla. It is the most mountainous country in Europe after Switzerland.

Slovenia is around 60 percent forest, one of the highest shares in Europe. The word karst, used worldwide for limestone cave landscapes, comes from a region here.

South Korea uses Hangul, an alphabet designed deliberately in the 1440s rather than evolved. Around 70 percent of the country is mountain.

Japan is an archipelago of more than 14,000 islands sitting where four tectonic plates meet. Its oldest companies have been trading for over a thousand years.

Czechia is a landlocked country holding more castles per square kilometre than anywhere in Europe. The word robot entered every language from a Czech play written in 1920.

Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the world with no permanent river. The Empty Quarter within it is the biggest continuous sand desert anywhere.

Brunei is a sultanate on Borneo, split in two by Malaysian territory. Kampong Ayer, a village built on stilts over the river, has been lived in for more…

Estonia declared internet access a social right in 2000 and votes online in national elections. More than two thousand islands lie off its Baltic coast.

Lithuania was the last country in Europe to adopt Christianity, in 1387. The Hill of Crosses near Šiauliai carries hundreds of thousands of crosses left by visitors.

Portugal has kept the same borders since 1297, among the oldest in Europe. Its alliance with England, signed in 1386, is the longest-standing treaty still in force anywhere.

Kuwait has almost no natural fresh water and depends on desalination for nearly all of it. Its parliament is among the oldest elected assemblies in the Gulf.

Bahrain is an island kingdom in the Persian Gulf. Its desert holds tens of thousands of Dilmun burial mounds, one of the largest ancient cemeteries anywhere in the…

Slovakia has more castles and castle ruins per head than any other country. Bratislava is the only capital in the world bordering two other countries, Austria and Hungary.

Poland adopted the first written constitution in Europe, in 1791. The Wieliczka salt mine, worked from the thirteenth century, contains chapels carved entirely from salt.

Barbados lies east of the Caribbean island arc and is built from coral rather than volcanic rock. Rum has been distilled here since 1703, longer than anywhere else.

Croatia has more than a thousand islands along its Adriatic coast. The necktie takes its name from Croatian soldiers who wore knotted cloth at the throat in the…

Greece has more inhabited islands than any other country in Europe and a coastline longer than Africa's eastern seaboard. Democracy and the Olympic Games both began here.

Guyana is the only South American country with English as its official language. Kaieteur Falls drops in a single uninterrupted plunge nearly five times the height of Niagara.

Latvia is around half forest, one of the highest shares in Europe. Riga holds the largest collection of Art Nouveau buildings of any city in the world.

Hungary speaks a language unrelated to those of any neighbouring country. Budapest sits on more than a hundred thermal springs and runs public baths fed directly by them.

Uruguay legalised cannabis nationwide in 2013, the first country to do so. Almost all its electricity comes from wind, water and biomass.

Romania holds the largest remaining area of primeval forest in Europe outside Russia. The Danube delta, where the river reaches the Black Sea, is the best preserved delta…

Antigua and Barbuda is a two-island state in the eastern Caribbean. English Harbour holds Nelson's Dockyard, the only Georgian naval dockyard in the world still in working use.

Saint Kitts and Nevis is the smallest country in the Americas by both area and population. It ran the first citizenship-by-investment programme in the world, opened in 1984.

Bulgaria gave the Cyrillic alphabet to the Slavic world in the ninth century. The Varna necropolis holds the oldest worked gold ever found, buried around 4,500 BC.

Oman ruled an empire that reached Zanzibar, and Swahili is still spoken by some families there. Its falaj irrigation channels have carried water since around 500 AD.

Panama runs east to west, so ships transiting the canal to the Pacific move eastward. It is the only place where the sun can be seen rising over…

Palau created the first shark sanctuary in the world, closing its whole exclusive economic zone to shark fishing. Visitors must sign a conservation pledge stamped into their passport.

Costa Rica abolished its army in 1949 and has kept none since. Covering a fraction of a percent of the planet's surface, it holds an outsized share of…

Maldives is the lowest-lying country in the world, averaging around 1.5 metres above sea level. Its 1,200 islands sit on coral atolls spread over 800 kilometres.

Turkey sits on two continents, split by the Bosphorus running through Istanbul. Göbekli Tepe, built around 9500 BC, predates farming and pottery.

Seychelles is the only country made of granite islands in mid-ocean, remnants of a lost continent. Its coco de mer palm produces the largest seed of any plant…

Trinidad and Tobago is where the steelpan was invented, the only acoustic instrument created in the twentieth century. Its Pitch Lake is the largest natural asphalt deposit on…

Russia is the largest country on Earth and spans eleven time zones. Lake Baikal holds around a fifth of all unfrozen fresh water in the world.

Chile runs more than 4,000 kilometres north to south and averages under 180 kilometres wide. The Atacama holds weather stations that have never recorded rain.

Serbia lost its coastline when Montenegro left the union in 2006. Belgrade stands where the Sava meets the Danube and has been destroyed and rebuilt dozens of times.

Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in the world. Every crewed Russian and Soviet spaceflight has launched from Baikonur, on its steppe.

Montenegro means black mountain, named for the dark forest on Mount Lovćen. The Bay of Kotor cuts so deep inland that it was long mistaken for a fjord.

Saint Lucia is the only sovereign country named after a woman. Its twin Pitons rise straight from the sea and are visible from most of the west coast.

Nauru is the smallest island country in the world and has no official capital. Phosphate mining stripped most of its interior to bare limestone pinnacles.

Argentina stretches from subtropical rainforest in the north to sub-Antarctic islands in the south. Aconcagua, at 6,961 metres, is the highest mountain outside Asia.

China spans five geographic time zones but keeps a single official clock set to Beijing. The Grand Canal, begun in the fifth century BC, is the longest artificial…

Malaysia is split in two by the South China Sea, with one half on the mainland and one on Borneo. Its king is elected every five years among…

Mexico holds the largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. Chocolate, maize, tomatoes and vanilla were all domesticated here before reaching anywhere else.

Mauritius was the only home of the dodo, extinct within a century of European arrival. The island had no human inhabitants at all before the 1500s.

Grenada is the only country whose flag shows a food crop, the nutmeg it exports. Underwater off its west coast stands a sculpture park built to regrow damaged…

Dominican Republic shares Hispaniola with Haiti. Santo Domingo was the first permanent European city in the Americas, and Lake Enriquillo lies below sea level with crocodiles in it.

Turkmenistan is around 80 percent desert. The Darvaza gas crater in the Karakum has burned continuously since it was set alight in 1971.

Albania is a Balkan republic with both Adriatic and Ionian coastlines. Around 170,000 concrete bunkers were built across the country under Enver Hoxha, and many still stand in…

Brazil borders every South American country except Chile and Ecuador. It is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas and holds most of the Amazon rainforest.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines strings 32 islands and cays across the eastern Caribbean. La Soufrière, its active volcano, erupted again in 2021.

North Macedonia changed its name in 2019 to settle a long dispute with Greece. Lake Ohrid, on its border, is among the oldest lakes on Earth at some…

Georgia has its own alphabet, used by no other language and listed by UNESCO. Wine has been made here for around 8,000 years, longer than anywhere else known.

Belarus is a landlocked country of forest and marsh in eastern Europe. It shares Białowieża, the last primeval lowland forest in Europe, where wild European bison survive.

Peru holds Machu Picchu, an Inca settlement unknown to outsiders until 1911. The potato was domesticated in its highlands, and thousands of varieties still grow there.

Dominica holds Boiling Lake, a flooded fumarole whose water stays close to boiling point. It is the last Caribbean island where a Kalinago community keeps its own territory.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has a rotating three-member presidency, one Bosniak, one Croat and one Serb. Its coastline runs just 20 kilometres, at the town of Neum.

Armenia is a landlocked republic in the South Caucasus, almost all of it above 1,000 metres. In 301 it became the first state in the world to adopt…

Gabon keeps around a tenth of its land in national parks, created in a single decision in 2002. Loango is one of the few places where forest elephants…

Colombia is the only South American country with coastlines on both the Pacific and the Caribbean. More bird species live here than in any other country.

Moldova holds Mileștii Mici, a wine cellar with 200 kilometres of underground tunnels. Its breakaway region of Transnistria functions separately from the rest of the country.

Marshall Islands hold Bikini Atoll, where nuclear tests were carried out and whose people were displaced. The country uses the United States dollar and has no army.

Jamaica gave the world reggae, ska and dancehall from an island of under three million people. Blue Mountain coffee grows on slopes above 900 metres.

Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia never colonised by a European power. Its name means land of the free, adopted in 1939 in place of Siam.

Belize is the only country in Central America with English as its official language. Offshore lies the Great Blue Hole, a collapsed cave system 300 metres wide.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and is recognised by some states but not others. Its population is among the youngest in Europe by median age.

Paraguay draws nearly all its electricity from the Itaipú dam and exports the surplus. Guaraní is an official language spoken by most of the population, alongside Spanish.

Botswana holds the Okavango, a river that never reaches the sea and instead spreads into a delta inside the Kalahari. Around a fifth of the country is set…

Equatorial Guinea is the only sovereign African state with Spanish as an official language. Its capital sits on an island, separated from the mainland part of the country.

Azerbaijan sits on the Caspian Sea, where the first industrially drilled oil well was sunk near Baku in 1846. Natural gas seeping from the ground still burns openly…

Ecuador takes its name from the equator, which crosses the country north of Quito. The Galápagos, 900 kilometres offshore, shaped Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Suriname is the smallest country in South America and the only one where Dutch is official. Over 90 percent of its territory remains forest.

Mongolia is the least densely populated sovereign country on Earth. A large share of its people still live in gers, felt tents moved with the seasons.

Tonga is the only Pacific island nation never brought under foreign rule. It keeps a hereditary monarchy that has ruled without interruption for over a thousand years.

South Africa is the only country with three capital cities, Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein. Its constitution recognises twelve official languages.

Fiji is made of more than 300 islands, of which around a third are inhabited. The 180th meridian passes through the group, so the date line was bent…

Ukraine is the largest country lying entirely within Europe. Its black soil, chernozem, is among the most fertile farmland in the world.

Guatemala holds Tikal, a Maya city abandoned around a thousand years ago and swallowed by forest. More than twenty Maya languages are still spoken across the country.

Lebanon carries the cedar on its flag, a tree used for ships and temples across the ancient world. Byblos has been continuously inhabited for around seven thousand years.

Samoa moved across the date line in 2011, skipping 30 December entirely to trade more easily with Australia and New Zealand. Fa'a Samoa still governs village life.

Algeria is the largest country in Africa, with more than four-fifths of its territory inside the Sahara. The rock art at Tassili n'Ajjer shows herds and hunters from…

Libya is more than 90 percent desert, with almost the whole population living along the Mediterranean coast. Leptis Magna is among the best preserved Roman cities anywhere.

Cape Verde is an Atlantic archipelago that had no people before Portuguese ships arrived in 1456. Morna, the music Cesária Évora carried worldwide, was born on these islands.

El Salvador is the smallest country in mainland Americas and the only one in Central America without a Caribbean coast. Some twenty volcanoes stand along its territory.

Tuvalu is the fourth smallest country in the world and rises barely four metres at its highest point. It earns a large share of national income from leasing…

Iraq covers the land between the Tigris and Euphrates where the first cities were built. Writing appears here earlier than anywhere else, in Sumerian clay tablets.

Jordan holds Petra, a city carved into rock faces by the Nabataeans more than two thousand years ago. Its share of the Dead Sea shore is the lowest…

Bolivia has two capitals, Sucre for the courts and La Paz for the government. The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat on Earth and is flat…

Indonesia is made of more than 17,000 islands and stretches across three time zones. It holds more active volcanoes than any other country.

Namibia was the first country to write environmental protection into its constitution. The Namib is the oldest desert on Earth, and its dunes meet the Atlantic directly.

Morocco is separated from Europe by 14 kilometres of water at the Strait of Gibraltar. The University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez has taught continuously since 859.

Vietnam holds Sơn Đoòng, the largest cave passage in the world, with its own jungle and river inside. Its coastline runs more than 3,200 kilometres.

Tunisia is the northernmost country in Africa and the smallest in the Maghreb. Carthage, on its coast, fought Rome for control of the Mediterranean.

Sri Lanka has two capitals, one for parliament and one for commerce. Sigiriya, a palace built on a rock column in the fifth century, still carries its original…

Eswatini is one of the last absolute monarchies in the world. It changed its name from Swaziland in 2018, on the fiftieth anniversary of independence.

Bhutan is a Himalayan kingdom that absorbs more carbon than it emits. Its constitution requires at least 60 percent of the land to stay under forest, permanently.

Philippines is made of more than 7,600 islands, fewer than a fifth of them inhabited. The Chocolate Hills on Bohol are over a thousand near-identical limestone mounds.

Iran keeps a calendar that begins at the spring equinox, so its new year falls in March. Persian qanats, underground channels dug thousands of years ago, still carry…

Djibouti holds Lake Assal, the lowest point in Africa and among the saltiest bodies of water anywhere. Its position at the Bab-el-Mandeb strait controls the entrance to the…

São Tomé and Príncipe sits almost exactly on the equator and had no people before Portuguese ships arrived. It is the second smallest country in Africa.

Vanuatu sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is ranked among the most disaster-exposed countries on Earth. Land diving on Pentecost is the origin of the bungee…

Uzbekistan is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. Samarkand and Bukhara were the main halting points on the Silk Road between China and Persia.

Venezuela holds Angel Falls, the highest uninterrupted waterfall on Earth at 979 metres. Lightning strikes almost nightly over Lake Maracaibo, more often than anywhere else.

Angola is a Portuguese-speaking country on Africa's Atlantic coast, with an enclave, Cabinda, separated from the rest by Congolese territory. The Namib desert reaches its southern edge.

Honduras holds Copán, a Maya city whose carved stairway records the longest known text in the Maya script. Its Caribbean coast sits on the second largest barrier reef…

Egypt controls the Suez Canal, which carries a large share of world trade between Europe and Asia. Almost the whole population lives on the narrow strip of land…

Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America and holds its largest lake. Lake Nicaragua contains an island formed by two volcanoes joined at the base.

Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from colonial rule, in 1957. Lake Volta behind the Akosombo dam is the largest reservoir on Earth…

Zimbabwe takes its name from Great Zimbabwe, a stone city built without mortar between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Its ruins gave the country its identity at independence.

Ivory Coast grows more cocoa than any other country, supplying a large share of the world's chocolate. Yamoussoukro holds a basilica larger than St Peter's in Rome.

Kyrgyzstan lies over 90 percent above 1,500 metres, almost entirely mountain. Lake Issyk-Kul sits at 1,600 metres and never freezes, despite the winters around it.

Syria holds Damascus, among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The alphabet used across Europe descends from one developed on this coast at Ugarit.

Cambodia holds Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world. Its flag is the only national flag anywhere that shows a building.

Kiribati is the only country lying in all four hemispheres. It moved the date line east in 1995 so its scattered islands would share a single calendar day.

India recognises twenty-two official languages and prints several of them on its banknotes. Cherrapunji in the northeast is among the wettest inhabited places on Earth.

Mauritania was the last country in the world to abolish slavery in law, in 1981. Its iron ore train runs over two kilometres long across the Sahara.

Bangladesh sits on the largest river delta on Earth, where the Ganges and Brahmaputra reach the sea. Its share of the Sundarbans is the biggest mangrove forest in…

Kenya straddles the equator and holds part of the Great Rift Valley. Fossils found around Lake Turkana are among the oldest human remains ever recovered.

Haiti became the first country in the world founded by formerly enslaved people, after a revolt that ended in 1804. It shares Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

Papua New Guinea has more languages than any other country, over 800 of them. Much of its highland interior stayed unknown to outsiders until the 1930s.

Congo Republic shares a border and a river with its larger neighbour, and their capitals face each other across the water. Brazzaville and Kinshasa are the closest capital…

Laos is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. The Plain of Jars holds thousands of stone vessels whose purpose is still argued over.

Solomon Islands hold Kavachi, an underwater volcano with sharks living inside its active crater. Around a fifth of its thousand islands are inhabited.

Cameroon is called Africa in miniature for holding desert, rainforest, savannah and coast within one country. Both English and French are official languages.

Senegal reaches around The Gambia on three sides, leaving that country as a strip along its river. Gorée Island off Dakar was a departure point of the Atlantic…

Comoros is a volcanic archipelago between Mozambique and Madagascar. It supplies most of the world's ylang-ylang, the flower oil at the base of many perfumes.

Guinea holds the source of the Niger, a river that crosses five countries before reaching the sea. It sits on the largest known bauxite reserves in the world.

Pakistan holds K2, the second highest mountain on Earth and the hardest of the eight-thousanders to climb. The Indus Valley cities of Mohenjo-daro date to around 2500 BC.

Tajikistan is more than 90 percent mountain, with over half its land above 3,000 metres. The Fedchenko glacier is the longest outside the polar regions.

Benin is the birthplace of Vodun, still an official religion with a national holiday each January. The Kingdom of Dahomey fielded an all-female regiment for more than two…

Nepal has the only national flag that is not a rectangle, made of two stacked pennants. Eight of the world's ten highest mountains stand on its territory.

Myanmar switched its capital from Yangon to a purpose-built city, Naypyidaw, in 2005. The plain of Bagan holds more than two thousand surviving Buddhist temples.

Timor Leste was the first new sovereign state of the twenty-first century, independent in 2002. Portuguese and Tetum are its official languages.

Uganda is where the Nile begins, leaving Lake Victoria at Jinja. Around half the world's remaining mountain gorillas live in its forests.

Zambia shares Victoria Falls with Zimbabwe, the largest single sheet of falling water in the world. The Zambezi runs along much of its southern border.

Guinea-Bissau includes the Bijagós, an archipelago of some eighty islands where saltwater hippos swim between them. Fewer than a third of the islands are inhabited.

Tanzania holds Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain on Earth. Olduvai Gorge has yielded some of the oldest human tools known.

Nigeria has the largest population in Africa and more than 500 living languages. Nollywood releases more films each year than almost any other film industry.

Togo is one of the narrowest countries in Africa, around 100 kilometres wide but 500 long. Koutammakou holds fortified mud tower-houses still lived in today.

Lesotho is the only country lying entirely above 1,000 metres. It sits fully surrounded by South Africa and sells water to it from dams in its highlands.

Mali holds Timbuktu, a desert city whose libraries held hundreds of thousands of manuscripts. The Great Mosque of Djenné is the largest mud-brick building in the world.

Chad holds Lake Chad, which has shrunk to a fraction of its former size within living memory. The Ennedi massif in the north preserves rock art from when…

Rwanda banned single-use plastic bags in 2008, before almost anywhere else. Its parliament has held a majority of women members longer than any other in the world.

Burkina Faso means land of upright people, a name adopted in 1984 from two of its languages. Ouagadougou hosts FESPACO, the largest film festival in Africa.

Ethiopia was never colonised and keeps its own calendar of thirteen months, running some seven years behind the Gregorian one. Coffee was first cultivated here.

Liberia was founded in 1847 by freed American slaves and never came under European colonial rule. Its ship registry is among the largest in the world.

The Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, a narrow strip following its river inland. Senegal surrounds it on every side except the coast.

Sierra Leone was founded as a settlement for freed slaves, and its capital is named Freetown. Its harbour is among the largest natural deep-water ports in the world.

Democratic Republic of the Congo holds most of the second largest rainforest on Earth. The Congo is the deepest river in the world, reaching beyond 220 metres.

Sudan holds more pyramids than Egypt, over two hundred built by the kingdom of Kush. The Blue and White Niles meet at Khartoum before flowing north as one…

Somalia has the longest coastline of mainland Africa, over 3,000 kilometres. Its people share one language and one religion, unusual for a country of its size.

Niger is more than three-quarters desert and takes its name from the river crossing its southwest. The Ténéré holds some of the emptiest inhabited land on Earth.

Malawi is named after Lake Malawi, which covers a fifth of the country. The lake holds more fish species than any other lake on Earth, most found nowhere…

Mozambique is the only country whose flag carries a modern rifle. It joined the Commonwealth in 1995 without ever having been a British colony.

Madagascar split from other landmasses so long ago that most of its plants and animals exist nowhere else. All the world's lemur species live here and only here.

Central African Republic sits at the exact centre of the African landmass. Rivers here divide the Congo basin from the Chad basin, sending water to two different seas.

Eritrea holds Asmara, a capital built in the 1930s and listed by UNESCO for its modernist architecture. Its Red Sea coastline runs more than a thousand kilometres.

Burundi is a landlocked country on Lake Tanganyika, the second deepest lake in the world. Its royal drummers perform a ritual listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage.

South Sudan is the newest country in the world, independent since 2011. The Sudd wetland at its centre is one of the largest swamps on Earth.

Afghanistan is a landlocked country split north from south by the Hindu Kush. The Wakhan Corridor, barely 15 km wide in places, was drawn to keep the British…

Yemen holds Socotra, an island whose plants are so isolated that a third grow nowhere else. Shibam's mud-brick towers have stood since the sixteenth century.

Åland Islands are a Swedish-speaking archipelago governed by Finland. Demilitarised by treaty since 1856, the islands keep no army and residents are exempt from Finnish military service.

American Samoa is the only United States territory south of the equator. Land is held communally under Samoan custom, which keeps most of the islands out of private…

Anguilla is a flat coral island in the British Caribbean. Its national sport is sailing, raced in wooden sloops built on the island, and race days are public…

Bermuda lies in the North Atlantic, closer to Canada than to the Caribbean. St George's, founded in 1612, is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New…

Bonaire is a special municipality of the Netherlands in the southern Caribbean. Its salt pans hold one of the few places in the Americas where Caribbean flamingos breed.

Bouvet Island is the most remote island on Earth, more than 1,600 kilometres from any other land. Ice covers almost all of it, and no one has ever…

British Virgin Islands is a British territory that uses the United States dollar as its currency. Its sheltered channels make it one of the busiest sailing grounds in…

The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in southeastern France, discovered on December 18, 1994, contains some of the best-preserved figurative cave paintings, dating back to the Aurignacian period (32,000–30,000 years ago),…

Lascaux is a cave complex in southwestern France, near Montignac, known for its prehistoric paintings, which date back approximately 17,000–22,000 years (early Magdalenian period). Discovered on September 12,…

Cayman Islands levy no income, capital gains or corporation tax. The Cayman Trench beside them drops past 7,000 metres, the deepest point in the Caribbean.

Christmas Island is an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. Each year tens of millions of red crabs walk from the forest to the sea to spawn, closing…

Cocos (Keeling) Islands are two Australian atolls in the Indian Ocean, home to a few hundred people. The Clunies-Ross family ran them as a private estate from 1827…

Cook Islands are self-governing in free association with New Zealand. Fifteen islands are spread across an ocean area larger than western Europe, holding only a small population.

Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean. Its 1960s American cars stayed on the road because imports stopped, and mechanics have kept them running ever since.

Curaçao is a Dutch Caribbean island where the local language, Papiamentu, blends Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and West African speech. Its liqueur takes the island's name.

England is the largest of the four nations of the United Kingdom. The Football League, founded in 1888, was the first of its kind anywhere.

Falkland Islands lie in the South Atlantic, some 500 kilometres from South America. Sheep outnumber people by a wide margin, and several penguin species breed on the coast.

Faroe Islands are eighteen volcanic islands between Norway and Iceland, self-governing under Denmark. No point on any island lies more than five kilometres from the sea.

French Guiana is part of France and of the European Union, on the South American mainland. Europe launches its rockets from Kourou, chosen for its closeness to the…

French Polynesia scatters 118 islands across an ocean area the size of western Europe. Tahitian pearls, grown in its lagoons, are among the few naturally dark pearls in…

French Southern Territories have no permanent residents, only rotating scientific staff. Their waters form one of the largest marine protected areas anywhere.

Gibraltar is a British territory on a limestone ridge at the entrance to the Mediterranean. Its Barbary macaques are the only wild monkeys living in Europe.

Greenland is the largest island on Earth and part of the Kingdom of Denmark, with its own parliament in Nuuk. Its ice sheet is the second largest body…

Guadeloupe is a French department shaped like a butterfly, its two halves split by a narrow sea channel. La Soufrière, still active, is the highest point in the…

Guam is the westernmost territory of the United States, closer to Asia than to America. The Chamorro people have lived on the island for more than 3,500 years.

Guernsey is a Crown dependency, not part of the United Kingdom and not in the European Union. It issues its own banknotes alongside sterling.

Heard Island and McDonald Islands hold Australia's only active volcano and its highest point, both far from the mainland. No one lives there.

Isle of Man is a Crown dependency with its own parliament, Tynwald, running continuously for over a thousand years. Its tailless Manx cat comes from a mutation fixed…

Jersey is a Crown dependency closer to France than to England, with its own parliament and currency. Norman French survives in the island's legal language.

Martinique is a French department in the Caribbean and part of the European Union. Mount Pelée destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre in 1902 in minutes.

Mayotte voted to stay French when the rest of the Comoros became independent. It became a full French department in 2011, the newest in the republic.

Monaco is the second smallest country in the world and the most densely populated. Its Formula One race runs through ordinary public streets, closed for the weekend.

Montserrat lost its capital, Plymouth, to volcanic eruption in the 1990s, and it lies buried under ash. Half the island remains an exclusion zone.

New Caledonia holds the largest enclosed lagoon in the world, ringed by a barrier reef. Around a quarter of global nickel reserves lie under its soil.

Niue is one of the largest raised coral atolls in the world, with no rivers and no beaches of sand. It has fewer than two thousand residents.

Norfolk Island was settled by descendants of the Bounty mutineers moved from Pitcairn in 1856. Their language, Norf'k, is still spoken and taught in schools.

North Korea counts its years from 1912, the birth year of Kim Il-sung, so its calendar runs on a separate numbering. The Demilitarized Zone dividing it from the…

Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom on the island of Ireland. The Giant's Causeway is made of some 40,000 basalt columns formed by cooling lava.

Northern Mariana Islands lie beside the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in any ocean. Their people are United States citizens but cannot vote in presidential elections.

Palestine covers two separated territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Jericho, in the West Bank, is among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements known.

Pitcairn has the smallest population of any territory in the world, a few dozen people. They descend from the Bounty mutineers who settled there in 1790.

Reunion is a French department in the Indian Ocean and part of the European Union. Piton de la Fournaise is among the most frequently erupting volcanoes on Earth.

Saint Helena is one of the most remote inhabited islands on Earth. Napoleon was exiled and died here, and the island had no airport until 2016.

Saint Martin is split between France and the Netherlands, the smallest island in the world shared by two nations. The border has held peacefully since 1648.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is the last French territory in North America, off the coast of Newfoundland. It uses the euro, unlike everything around it.

Scotland keeps its own legal system, separate from the rest of the United Kingdom since 1707. Its courts can return a third verdict, not proven, used nowhere else.

Sint Maarten is the Dutch half of an island shared with France. Its airport runway ends at a public beach, so aircraft pass low over the sand on…

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands have no permanent population, only research staff. King penguin colonies here number in the hundreds of thousands.

Svalbard and Jan Mayen allow citizens of any treaty nation to live and work without a visa. The Global Seed Vault is dug into permafrost above Longyearbyen.

Tokelau has no airport and is reached only by boat from Samoa. Its three atolls rise barely five metres above the sea.

Turks and Caicos Islands sit on a shallow bank with one of the longest coral reefs in the world. Salt raking was the main industry until the 1960s…

U.S. Outlying Islands are nine scattered territories with no permanent civilian population. Together they include one of the largest marine protected areas on Earth.

U.S. Virgin Islands are the only place under the United States flag where traffic drives on the left. They were bought from Denmark in 1917.

Vatican is the smallest sovereign state in the world, covering less than half a square kilometre. Its head of state is elected for life by cardinals.

Wales has more castles per square mile than any country in Europe. Welsh is an official language, taught in every school and used across public life.

Wallis and Futuna is the only French territory that still recognises traditional kingdoms, three of them, alongside the republic. It has no international airport.