If you’re a map nerd or a history buff or someone who likes to travel or just a person who enjoys learning new things, the latest video from Wendover Productions is an absolute delight to watch. It’s a quick tour of all the countries in the world (this is the first part, so exactly half the countries show up) filled with totally random but fun facts about each country.
The video jumps around the entire map and loosely links countries together that you’d never thought could be linked together. Here’s a smattering of fun tidbits from the video:
- Liechtenstein had only 80 soldiers go off to their last military engagement (which was in 1886) but came back with 81 because they made a new Italian friend
- People in Bulgaria move their heads up and down to say no and shake their heads side to side to say yes
- North Korea and Norway are separated by just one country: Russia
- The UK has the shortest regularly scheduled commercial flight, which is Westray to Papa Westray. It’s in air for 53 seconds and travels only 1.7 miles
- The Panama Canal has the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the Pacific Ocean on the east
- It’s impossible to drive between North and South America
- Winter and Summer happen at the same time in Ecuador
There’s so much more good stuff in this Wendover Productions video, I can feel my brain scrunching up more wrinkles as I watch it:
Update: And here’s part 2, which includes facts about the rest of the countries in the world. Here are a few fun ones:
- There are only two countries in the world that don’t have red, white, or blue on their flag: Jamaica and Mauritania
- 18 countries in the world don’t have a river in them
- The Kuwaiti Dinar is the highest-valued currency in the world