Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Where In The World?

This afternoon I was doing a puzzle where all of the answers were names of countries. There was a list of county names, and the goal was to fit them together on a crossword puzzle grid. Reading down the list most of the countries were familiar, but down near the bottom of the list I saw Tuvalu, which I had never heard of.

A quick internet search told me that Tuvalu is an island country in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. I started wondering how many other countries I didn't know.

According to the United Nations there are 195 recognized countries in the world. (Two of them are non-members-Vatican City and the State of Palestine.) To find out the country names I scrolled down the list on the World Countries List and found 11 that were new to me.

  • Comoros, Djibouti, Mayotte, and Reunion Island are in the Eastern Africa region.
  • Guadaloupe is in the Lesser Antiles/Caribbean region
  • Kiribati and the Northern Mariana Islands are in the Micronesia/Oceania region
  • Pitcairn Island and Wallis and Futuna Islands are in the Polynesia/Oceania region
  • Tokelau is in the Oceania/Australia region
  • And the Faroe Islands, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark in Northern Europe
Five years ago: The Wearing Of The Green

24 comments:

  1. My husband said he’s sailed by it several times on his way to Australia and Antarctic in his 20 years but they never stopped.

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  2. I've heard of about half of them. Djibouti, Reunion Island, Guadeloupe, Mariana Islands, and the Faroe Islands. Some of these I know from watching WWII films. I'll have to look up the others. Or what I'll have to do is review the list of 195 and see how many I don't know.

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    1. Report back after you've done your review :-)

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  3. Wow never heard of most of these countries.

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  4. I have heard of Tuvalu! My boss once went to a legal conference there. It was the first any of us had heard of the place. I've heard of Djibouti and Guadaloupe but don't ask me to find them on a map! Pitcairn Island is where the mutinous sailors from Mutiny on the Bounty fame went to escape British justice. Their descendants still live there. And the Faroe Islands are full of vikings. I heard of that place simply because some famous Viking Death Metal rock group or another is from there. Small world, eh?

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    1. You certainly have a wide-ranging knowledge!

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  5. Sounds like you had fun and learned ya' some new things. Groovy.

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  6. That's some nice new info for me; I knew a few of those but am now copying and grabbing my reference book. Although, Wikipedia, I love you. What a word, Tuvalu. I did know Pitcairn and the Faroes, but Debra is ahead of me on Tuvalu. I bet you got some that I didn't, too. Neat.

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    1. I like how we learn from each other in cyberspace.

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  7. Very interesting Kathy.
    I don't know many of these countries,
    I'll try to find them on the map!

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  8. I've been reading detective books about the Faroe Islands and Pitcairn Island, didn't The Bounty end up there and crew members who survived interbred with islanders.

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    1. I don't know that I've ever read Mutiny on the Bounty. Shame on me!

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  9. I'm reminded of how little I know of the world when the teams parade at the beginning of the Olympic Games.

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    1. That's about the only time I'm exposed to the greater world.

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  10. Always something new to learn.

    God bless.

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  11. I have never heard of these countries. Who knew? thanks for sharing.. interesting to know these countries are out there .

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  12. I like the mini-puzzle in the NYT app. I try to solve it under 1 minute and guess what? Ha, I've not been successful yet!

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  13. We are apt to lament from time to time that it is a small world, then you decide to learn more about it and find that it isn't so small after all!

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    1. I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're right!

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  14. I would have done pretty awful if I were to be working that puzzle. Did you get it done?

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    1. Actually I went down a rabbit hole of figuring out the information for this post and never got back to it :-)

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  15. Interesting! Geography was never really my thing!

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