This is Every Country in the World Part 2 By Wendover Productions.
If you haven’t seen part 1, click here to watch that first.
We left off last time in Suriname, our 98th country.
Suriname is the only county other than the Netherlands whose sole primary language is
Dutch, although there are other countries that speak a creole version of Dutch like
Namibia which speaks Afrikaans which is just close enough to Dutch that a Dutch and Namibian
could hold a conversation.
Namibia has this long protrusion which gives them access to the Zambezi river although
they miss out by about 300 feet on bordering Zimbabwe which is the country ferries have
the pass through when making the 600 foot trip from Botswana to Zambia.
This is likely the shortest ferry in the world to cross through three countries.
To the northeast of Zambia is one of the world’s 176 tripoints—triple border crossings.
This one links Zambia to Malawi and Tanzania whose northern border is a very straight line
across Lake Victoria which creates these two tiny
cut off peninsulas.
Uganda is a surprisingly progressive nation with the highest representation of
women in parliament in the world at 63%.
They also became the first country in the world to
outright ban plastic bags in 2007.
The Solomon islands, on the other hand, only has one woman
in their parliament or 2% representation.
The Solomon Islands is home to the West Georgia islands which share a name with Georgia which
kinda shares a name with Georges Plain in Jamaica which is one of two countries in the
world whose flag doesn't share colors with the
American flag—as in, no red, white, or blue.
The other one is Mauritania, but Libya used to be on that list until they changed their
flag from this to this in 2011.
Libya is so large that its northwest point is closer to
to Luxembourg than to its southeast point.
Luxembourg has the second highest per capita income in
the world behind Qatar—a small but mighty country
thats just a bit larger than Lebanon who shares a southern border with the United Nations
Disengagement Observer Force Zone which is an area essentially without sovereignty meant
to serve as a buffer between Israeli controlled
Syria and Syria.
One could call it… a de-militarized zone, although the most famous DMZ is north
of South Korea where, if you dig a hole straight down and through the earth, you’d pop up
just off the coast of Uruguay.
Uruguay was a military dictatorship up until 1985 but Thailand still
is—the only current one.
Bangkok, Thailand is the most visited city in the world at 16 million
yearly visitors which is a ton, especially compared to
Vilnius, Lithuania which only sees 180,000 visitors per year.
Lithuania has a rather straight border though this lake which leads to two
peninsulas with their tops chopped off and an
internationally divided island with Belarus which has a rather straight border in this
lake which leads to another peninsula with its top chopped
off and an internationally divided island with
Latvia.
Latvia’s independence day is May the 4th aka Star Wars day whose scenes on Tatooine
were filmed in Tunisia.
Tunisia’s currency is the Dinar, which is also the name for the currency
in Macedonia.
If you look at Macedonia on a map, it will almost always have FYROM under its
name which stands for Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
When Macedonia became an independent country it picked this name but
Greece wasn’t all too happy about that since their
northern region is also called Macedonia so the solution was to call the country the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in all official capacities, while colloquially its still known
as Macedonia.
Greece is known for having a huge expatriated population around the world and the
39th largest greek population in the world is in Oman in the middle east.
Inside Oman is an exclave of the United Arab Emirates except
this part of Oman is actually an enclave inside the
UAE which makes this the only double enclave in the middle east.
The UAE is one of 18 countries worldwide to not have a river—one
of which is Tonga which actually has an olympic medal from their super heavyweight boxer—Paea
Wolfgramm.
Another country that has one total medal is Gabon whose southern border
is shared with Congo whose southern border is
shared with this rather large exclave of Angola.
Only because of that exclave, Angola borders both Congo and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo.
These are of course two different countries although they’re both named for
the Congo River—the deepest river in the world at
more than 750 feet deep.
Interestingly, despite being both enormous countries, their current
capitals are just on opposite sides of the Congo from each other.
The DRC has this great clean border with Rwanda which causes no problems
at all unlike this one in Austria.
Jungholz is only connected to the rest of Austria by about
15 feet of territory and no roads.
Vienna, Austria used to be the capital of the Austria-Hungarian empire
whose territory included present-day Italy, Poland, Germany, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia,
(all of which we’ve already talked about) and
Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
Ukraine has this southern section which isn’t part of Russia yet, although its only connected
to the rest of Ukraine by two roads, one of which
rather inconveniently passes through Moldova for
only about 3 miles.
Moldova is rated the third least touristy country in the world since only one
tourist visits each year for every 323 citizens although Bangladesh is the number one least
touristy country since for each yearly tourist visit there are 1273 Bangladeshi citizens.
Bahrain, on the other hand, receives 7.7 tourist visits
per citizen per year and also has an internationally divided island, but this one was actually
very purposefully created to serve as the passport
control point between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia on the King Fahd Causeway.
Saudi Arabia is home to Mecca, the birthplace of the central
figure of Islam—the prophet Muhammad.
Mecca has a population of about 1.5 million people
but during the Hajj—the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca
—this triples to almost 5 million people.
Land in Mecca is some of the most expensive in the
world at up to $13,000 per square foot.
Saudi Arabia really isn’t great friends with their southern
neighbor—Yemem, who owns over 200 islands including Socotra Island which is surprisingly
green compared to its mainland neighbors and is the only place in the world where you can
find the Dragons Blood Tree.
Yemen’s national soccer team has played Bhutan three times in the past
few decades all of which Bhutan lost rather horribly.
Bhutan is home to the Gangkhar Puensum mountain which is believed to be the tallest
un-summited mountain in the world since local spiritual beliefs prohibit anyone from climbing
a mountain over 6000 m (19500 feet).
This mountain is in the himalayas range which if
you follow to the west brings you to Nepal which if
of course home to Mount Everest—the tallest mountain in the world.
Everest is 29,029 feet tall —880 times higher than the Marshall Islands’
tallest peak at 33 feet.
If you dig a hole straight down through the earth from the Marshall Islands
you arrive just off the coast of Liberia which is
the country of registration of 11% of the world’s ships.
Of the 2,771 registered ships, though, only 190 are actually owned by Liberians.
Foreigners register their ships there since there are
few regulations and low costs.
Malta also registers many ships for the same reasons with 1,437
foreign owned ships.
Malta is a European Union member which means that we've almost talked
about every EU member.
Our last two are Estonia and Ireland whose northernmost point is
actually farther north than Northern Ireland’s.
Ireland has played Samoa six times in Rugby, and
Samoa actually won once which is quite impressive for a country of less than 200,000.
Samoa’s rugby team did once lose to New Zealand 101-14
though—they’re not that good.
New Zealand has a kinda territory of Niue.
It's recognized as a freely associated state--meaning by choice—but
Niue isn't recognized by the UN as a independent country.
However, Niue is exactly on the opposite side of the world from Niger which
is named for the Niger River.
The Niger River has probably the most bizarre river course in
the world—it starts only 150 miles from the Atlantic
ocean but then takes a 2,600 mile path to reach the ocean.
It starts in Sierra Leone, flows through Guinea, Mali, Niger itself, then Benin before
reaching the ocean in Nigeria.
Nigeria is also named after the Niger river and is by far
the most populous country in Africa at 125 million
people.
The least populous country in Africa is the Seychelles which isn’t on the mainland but
still considered an African country.
They also have what might be the coolest flag in the world
except for maybe Saint Lucia's, but I have to give a solid runners up position to Saint
Vincent and the Grenadines.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines name is rather purposefully similar to that
of its neighboring island—Grenada.
Grenada’s airport wasn't built until 1985 but nowadays you
can fly to places like Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago.
Trinidad is also the name of municipality of 20,000 people in Honduras
which has two capitals—Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela—much like the Cote d’Ivoire
whose capitals are are Yamoussoukro and Abidjan.
Despite having a very easy English translation—the Ivory coast—the Cote d’Ivoire is almost
always referred to by this name since its government refuses to accept any translated
name.
If you draw a straight line south from Cote d’Ivoire
until it crosses Antartica and goes North you’ll
end up intersecting Vanuatu which is one of seven countries worldwide to not be part of
the International Criminal Police Organization
also known as INTERPOL.
Another non- INTERPOL-member country is Tuvalu which is
the second smallest country in the world to have
a commercial international airport.
This is also the second video in a row that I’ve used this
image—watch my last video to find out why.
Nauru is the smallest country outright to have an
airport and it rather controversially has camps for those who attempt to seek asylum
in Australia, many of whom are from Iraq.
Iraq borders Iran, which has 22 ski resorts.
That’s more then the entire South American continent.
Speaking of South America, we haven’t covered Paraguay
which is another one of these landlocked countries with a navy and with that, we’ve touched
on every South American country!
If you dig a hole through the earth from Paraguay and you end
up just north of Philippines which is our seventh to last Asian country.
The other ones are Myanmar which is one of the worlds three countries
not using the metric system; Timor-Leste whose currency is the US dollar despite having
no real connection to the US; Pakistan which is
home to the third-largest non-polar glacier in the world despite being at the same latitude
of South Texas; Jordan which you might think
is landlocked from looking at a map but actually has
a 16 mile coast on the red sea; Syria which is home to Damascus—the oldest continuously
inhabited city on the planet; and Kuwait which has the highest value currency in the world
at 3.3 US dollars to each Kuwaiti Dinar.
With that, we've covered every Asian country.
One of the lowest value currencies in the world is the
Sao Tomé and Principe dobra at 23,000 dobra to the
dollar.
Sao Tomé and Principe speaks Portuguese which means we've covered every Portuguese
speaking country.
The country is also off the coast of Cameroon which became the first African
country to reach the FIFA world cup semi-finals in 1990, although that's since been
accomplished by Ghana where the official and primary language is English and there are
only three more countries like this—Belize, the
only English speaking country in central america; Barbados, who has the third highest human
development index score in the western hemisphere; and Antigua and Barbuda whose native language—Taino—is
the origin of english words like Canoe, Barbecue, Hammock, and Hurricane.
So we’ve covered every English speaking country
but there are two remaining countries that were part of the British empire—Dominica,
where Antillean Creole is the primary language;
and Mauritius which has the highest population density
in Africa at over 1500 per sq/mi.
One of the lowest population densities in Africa is in Central
African Republic at 18 people per sq/mi.
The Central African Republic’s northern neighbor is
Chad whose embassy in Washington DC is only about 200 feet away from that of Burkina Faso
whose capital has perhaps the best name in the world—Ougadougou.
In the southeast of Burkina Faso is this piece of Togo that is only connected
to the main part by a 300 foot wide strip of land.
This area’s roads, however, all come from Burkina Faso which means that, much like Point
Roberts, residents need to cross two international borders to get to their own country.
There are only three African countries left—Comoros,
the second largest vanilla producer in the world;
Burundi, the poorest country in the world to have an olympic medal; and Eritrea, which
has neither an official or majority spoken language.
Drawing a latitude line west from Eritrea brings
you to Nicaragua—home to a lake on an island in a lake.
More than 100,000 nicaraguans live in nearby El Salvador which is the smallest central
American country and only one to not have a
Caribbean coastline.
El Salvador’s northern neighbor is Guatemala whose border with Mexico
was originally defined by the course of the Chixoy river but erosion has changed the course
which created a bunch of enclaves and exclaves like this, this, and this.
And that’s our last country in the western hemisphere!
We're getting close!
Guatemala's embassy in Ottawa is about 900 feet away from Slovenia's which has this
really messed up border with Croatia including this
tiny section that isn't actually claimed by either country making it terra nullis.
The 10th and final country to end in -nia and our final country
is Albania whose capital is one of the only in Europe
to not have a McDonalds.
But wait, if you draw a latitude line from the south of Albania that
brings you to the north of Afghanistan where Albania sent 44 troops to fight in 2005 and
where we started this video so if you’re feeling
like a second round, click here to go to the start again.
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