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834 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 6 of 14.

  1. A 1949 constitution abolished Costa Rica’s army for goodCosta Rica, a Central American republic of about five million, meets Nicaragua, Panama, Caribbean and Pacific waters—and even a maritime line toward Ecuador near Cocos Island. Aft…
  2. Tomislav’s tenth-century kingdom still anchors Adriatic CroatiaCroatia fronts the Adriatic between Central and Southeastern Europe, bordering Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Italy at sea. Croats entered Roma…
  3. The Caribbean’s largest island remains the lone non-Asian communist stateCuba joins one main island to 4,195 lesser keys at the meeting of Caribbean, Gulf, and Atlantic waters east of Yucatán and south of Florida. Taíno and Guanahatabey peoples met Spa…
  4. Copper’s Latin name still remembers this divided Mediterranean islandCyprus, third-largest and third-most populous Mediterranean island, sits off the Levant as a West Asian republic split by a UN buffer between the internationally recognized south …
  5. Czechia’s short English name fought Bohemia for decadesThe Czech Republic—also Czechia, historically Bohemia—is a landlocked Central European state of 78,871 square kilometres between Austria, Germany, Poland, and Slovakia. A ninth-ce…
  6. Russia’s mountain republic speaks fourteen official languagesDagestan, a Russian republic on the Caspian North Caucasus, covers about 50,300 square kilometres with more than 3.1 million people across thirty-plus ethnic groups and eighty-one…
  7. Africa’s second-largest country is still nicknamed the CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo—Congo-Kinshasa, once Zaire—covers Central Africa as the continent’s second-largest country and the world’s eleventh, with roughly 124 million …
  8. Denmark’s kingdom still includes Faroes and icy GreenlandDenmark is the metropolitan heart of the Danish Realm, a unitary state that also embraces autonomous Faroe Islands and Greenland. The kingdom counts roughly 1,400 islands over 100…
  9. Tiny Djibouti guards one of the planet’s busiest sea gatesDjibouti covers just 23,200 square kilometres on the Horn between Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. The May 2024 census counted 1,066,809 people—mainl…
  10. Columbus named Dominica for Sunday—Kalinago still say WaitukubuliDominica, a Windward Commonwealth isle with capital Roseau, is the youngest Lesser Antilles volcanic island, still geothermal enough to host Boiling Lake, the world’s second-large…
  11. Hispaniola’s east holds the Caribbean’s tallest peak and biggest lakeThe Dominican Republic occupies the eastern five-eighths of Hispaniola, sharing the island with Haiti and a sea border toward Puerto Rico. Taíno chiefdoms met Columbus in 1492; Sa…
  12. East Africa’s Rift still anchors debates on human originsEast Africa names the continent’s eastern edge—eighteen UN-listed states and four territories in one scheme, or a narrower Kenya–Tanzania–Uganda core shaped by British administrat…
  13. East Asia houses a fifth of humanity around a Chinese coreEast Asia as a geocultural block usually lists China, Japan, Mongolia, the Koreas, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau—economies among the world’s largest. About 1.648 billion people mak…
  14. “Bahrain” once meant two seas along the whole Gulf shoreEastern Arabia—historically Al-Baḥrayn—names the Gulf coast from Basra toward Khasab, overlapping parts of today’s Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. U…
  15. “Eastern Europe” is a moving cultural border, not a mountain lineEastern Europe is an ambiguous subregion whose east hits the Urals while its west shifts with politics, religion, and stereotype. Slavic traditions and Eastern Orthodox Christiani…
  16. A Paleolithic homeland that unified under Qin in 221 BCEChina, the People's Republic, has 33 province-level divisions and trails only India in population. First unified under the Qin in 221 BCE, it went on to give the world gunpowder, …
  17. Andean silver and Tiwanaku ghosts still shape plurinational BoliviaBolivia, officially the Plurinational State, is South America's fifth-largest country at 1,098,581 square kilometres and one of only two landlocked nations in the Americas. Andean…
  18. A Balkan state of three peoples on a twenty-kilometre coastBosnia and Herzegovina sits on the Balkan Peninsula between Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia, touching the Adriatic along just 20 kilometres of shore. About 3.4 million people live …
  19. Kalahari democracy that mines more diamonds than almost anyoneBotswana is a flat, landlocked country in Southern Africa, about 70 per cent of it Kalahari Desert, spread over 581,730 square kilometres around its capital Gaborone. Only Russia …
  20. Half of South America in one federation of 214 millionBrazil covers about half of South America and borders every country on the continent except Chile and Ecuador. With over 214 million people it ranks seventh in the world by popula…
  21. Little Britain still keeps Europe’s oldest stone monumentsBrittany, the peninsula at France's north-western tip, was once an independent kingdom and then a duchy before joining the French crown in 1532. One of six Celtic nations, it guar…
  22. A Borneo sultanate once claimed most of the islandBrunei is the only sovereign state lying wholly on Borneo, a small sultanate on the island's northern coast hemmed in by Malaysia's Sarawak, which even splits it in two. With 466,…
  23. From Karanovo farmers to a Black Sea EU republicBulgaria lies on the eastern Balkans between the Danube and the Black Sea, covering 110,994 square kilometres with Sofia as its capital. Its soil holds some of Europe's deepest hu…
  24. Mossi kingdoms became a gold-rich, still struggling Sahel stateBurkina Faso, a landlocked West African state of about 23 million people with Ouagadougou as its capital, took its name in 1984 from two local languages: Burkina, upright in Mooré…
  25. A dense Great Lakes kingdom that outlived German then Belgian ruleBurundi, a landlocked country of over 14 million people in the Great Rift Valley, is one of the few African states that directly continues a precolonial kingdom. Lake Tanganyika f…
  26. If California were a country, its economy would top most nationsCalifornia, on the Pacific coast of the United States, is home to over 39 million people, more than any other state. Its economy, worth about $4.3 trillion in 2025, is the largest…
  27. Kamerun’s mandate split still shapes a bilingual African hingeCameroon owes its name to Portuguese sailors who reached the Wouri River in 1472 and, seeing it teem with ghost shrimp, called it the river of shrimps. Today nearly 31 million peo…
  28. Ten provinces and three territories span three oceansCanada stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and north into the Arctic, making it the second-largest country by area, with the longest coastline on Earth and the longest land…
  29. Uninhabited Atlantic isles became Africa’s stable island republicCape Verde is a horseshoe of ten volcanic islands in the Atlantic, some 600 to 850 kilometres west of Dakar, that nobody lived on until the Portuguese arrived in the fifteenth cen…
  30. A plate of thousands of islands between two American mainlandsThe Caribbean is a region of thousands of islands, islets, reefs and cays wrapped around the Caribbean Sea, sitting mostly on the Caribbean tectonic plate between North and South …
  31. A Pyrenean nationality that once powered the Crown of AragonCatalonia, the autonomous community in Spain's north-east beneath the Pyrenees, is legally designated a nationality. From 1137 it was the engine of the Crown of Aragon's Mediterra…
  32. Snow-shimmer mountains between the Black and Caspian seasThe Caucasus is the mountainous land bridge between the Black and Caspian seas, taking in southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Pliny the Elder claimed its name came f…
  33. Central Africa is a label that moves with each institutionCentral Africa has no single agreed map. The UN's Middle Africa counts nine countries from Chad to Angola, the African Development Bank lists seven, and the 1953–1963 Central Afri…
  34. A resource-rich basin state among the world’s poorestThe Central African Republic holds uranium, oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, timber and vast farmland, yet in 2017 it had the world's lowest income per head at purchasing power parity…
  35. Seven isthmian states between Mexico and ColombiaCentral America is the narrow bridge of land between Mexico and Colombia, usually counted as seven countries from Guatemala and Belize to Panama. It took shape over 3 million year…
  36. Five -stans where Silk Roads taught continents to meetCentral Asia usually means five countries, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, nicknamed the -stans after a Persian suffix meaning land. Silk Road car…
  37. A Sahel crossroads of two hundred languages between Sahara and savannaChad, Africa's fifth-largest country, is named after Lake Chad, from a Kanuri word for lake. Seven thousand years ago that lake spread over 330,000 square kilometres of the basin.…
  38. The world’s southernmost country is a Pacific Andean ribbonChile is the southernmost country on Earth and the nearest to Antarctica, a slender strip pressed between the Andes and the Pacific. Its 2024 census counted 18.5 million people ac…
  39. Spain’s Basque autonomy has a capital in practice, not lawSpain's Basque Autonomous Community, Euskadi, joins Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa into one of the most decentralised regions anywhere. It has no official capital: Vitoria-Gasteiz hos…
  40. Germany’s Free State mixes Celts, Catholicism, and conservatismBavaria, officially a Free State, is Germany's largest state at 70,550 square kilometres and its second most populous, with 13.08 million people. Celts, Romans and a Frankish duch…
  41. A landlocked republic between EU neighbours and RussiaBelarus is a landlocked Eastern European country of 9.1 million people spread over 207,600 square kilometres between Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Independent sin…
  42. A Low Country that industrialised Europe’s mainland firstBelgium packs more than 11.8 million people into 30,689 square kilometres of the Low Countries, between the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, France and the North Sea. Independent…
  43. Central America’s least crowded country guards a coral corridorBelize, on Central America's northeastern coast between Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean, is the region's least populated country, with 397,483 people on 22,970 square kilometr…
  44. Dahomey renamed itself Benin after a Marxist turn in 1975Benin, called Dahomey until 1975, stretches north from the Bight of Benin between Togo and Nigeria across 112,622 square kilometres. Porto-Novo is the capital but government sits …
  45. Himalayan Bhutan still guards the world’s highest unclimbed peakBhutan, a Himalayan kingdom of about 800,871 people on 38,394 square kilometres between Tibet and India, calls itself Druk Yul, Land of the Thunder Dragon. Its peaks top 7,000 met…
  46. A state named for monasteries where the Buddha wokeBihar, in eastern India, is the country's second most populous state, split west to east by the Ganges between Nepal and Jharkhand. Its name comes from vihāra, a Buddhist monaster…
  47. Atropates's satrapy became a Turkic Caspian republicThe Republic of Azerbaijan sits landlocked between Western Asia and Eastern Europe on the Caspian, bordering Russia, Georgia, Turkey's exclave link, Armenia, and Iran. Russo-Persi…
  48. Bahrain means two seas on a thirty-three-island kingdomThe Kingdom of Bahrain is a Persian Gulf archipelago of 33 natural and about 50 artificial islands near Arabia's eastern shore. Ancient Dilmun land and famed pearl banks preceded …
  49. Pakistan's largest province is mostly desert, not farmlandBalochistan covers about 44% of Pakistan's land yet holds the fewest people, with only around 5% of the ground arable under an extremely dry climate. Agriculture and livestock sti…
  50. Bangladesh packs nearly 178 million into delta flatlandsThe People's Republic of Bangladesh holds almost 177.8 million people on about 148,461 km²—the world's eighth-most populous country. Hindu and Buddhist dynasties, the 1204 Muslim …
  51. Bearded Barbados swapped Crown for republic in 2021Easternmost and southernmost of the Caribbean's main island chain, Barbados sits on a tectonic plate boundary with Bridgetown as capital. English settlers claimed it in 1625 and c…
  52. Bashkortostan was Russia's first autonomous soviet republicBetween Volga and Urals, the Republic of Bashkortostan—Bashkiria—borders several Russian regions. Declared 28 November 1917, it became the Bashkir ASSR on 20 March 1919, the Russi…
  53. Antigua and Barbuda packs two names into 440 square kilometresThis Caribbean archipelago of Antigua, Barbuda, and many islets covers only 440 km², among the region's smallest states. Hunter-gatherers arrived around 3700 BC; Columbus surveyed…
  54. The Arab world spans nineteen plurality-Arab states—or twenty-twoUsually defined as nineteen states where Arabs form at least a plurality—or, maximally, all twenty-two Arab League members including Comoros, Somalia, and Djibouti—the Arab world …
  55. Arctic means near the Bear—and less than fifty centimetres of snowEarth's north polar region above the Arctic Circle takes its name from Greek arktos, bear, via the prominent northern constellations. Tundra, permafrost, and seasonal sea ice domi…
  56. Argentina means silver land on a Venetian 1536 mapThe Argentine Republic covers about 2,780,085 km²—South America's second-largest country after Brazil and the world's eighth. Paleolithic humans, Inca northwest edges, and sixteen…
  57. Hayastan remembers Hayk while maps say ArmeniaLandlocked in the Armenian highlands of the South Caucasus, the Republic of Armenia borders Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Iran, with Yerevan as capital. Urartu formed by 860 BC…
  58. Terra Australis became a federation on the flattest continentThe Commonwealth of Australia covers about 7,688,287 km²—sixth-largest country and Earth's flattest continent—plus Tasmania and lesser islands. Aboriginal ancestors arrived 50,000…
  59. Österreich began as an eastern realm in a 996 charterThe Republic of Austria is a landlocked Eastern Alps federation of nine states with Vienna as capital and largest city. Celts lived here around 400 BC before Roman annexation. The…
  60. Grand Tunis wraps a medina between lake and gulfTunisia's capital and largest city anchors Grand Tunis at roughly 2.7 million people and ranked as the Maghreb's leading agglomeration by 2020 counts. Behind Lake Tunis and La Gou…

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