Enormously spread apart over thousands of Km of ocean, but tiny land surface, former parts of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.
Truk was site of WW2 naval battle, making it a big wreck-diving location.
Is a recognized sovereign nation with its own UN seat but has a “Compact of Free Association” with the USA that outsources to the US things like defense, posts, aviation and telecom regs, the weather service, and use of Kwajalein for missile tests, in exchange for economic aid and free transit of workers into the US.
Phew ! Glad you saved me from the Federated States of Micronesia, about which I knew basically zilch.
Jersey:
Biggest island of the British Channel Islands archipelago, located a little way off the coast of Normandy, France – said Islands are a British Crown Dependency, not part of the UK.
Jersey, like the other Channel Islands, has more liberal finance-and-tax-related laws than the UK: which circumstance many affluent individuals and undertakings, make use of.
Jersey has a superb zoo, founded by Gerald Durrell: specialises in harbouring and breeding of endangered species. #186: Seychelles:
Low-lying archipelago in the Indian Ocean: British territory before independence.
Capital, I believe, Mahé.
Reputed tropical-marine paradise in all ways, for visitors; including great scuba diving. #187: Antigua and Barbuda
Attempt to move things on a bit – trying to do what I can, with #187 Antigua and Barbuda.
Islands in the West Indies’ “Leeward / Windward” small-islands chain: British territory before independence.
I don’t know whether standard accepted pronunciation of Antigua is as the original Spanish, “An-TEE-ga”; or a British butchering of it, “An-TIG-you-a”.
Antigua features by name in a comic novel by Robert Graves, Antigua Penny Puce: none of the book’s action, however, involves the island itself – it’s about cut-throat rivalry between stamp-collectors.
Next –
Non-numbered: Isle of Man (UK) #188: Andorra
#188: Andorra
European micro-nation, in the Pyrenees between France and Spain.
Goods cheap there, thanks to independent status: visitors have described the place as a bit disappointing – a huge shopping mall up in the mountains.
Commemorated in a song with general “war = bad” theme: Andorra complimented on its annual defence budget of less than $5 (for ceremonial salutes). #189: Dominica
Trying to move stuff along: #189 Dominica
Yet another, formerly British, West Indian island in the long “Leeward / Windward” small-islands chain.
Pronounced “Dom-in-EE-ca” – as opposed to the not-very-far-off Dom-IN-i-can Republic.
Features – like a fair number of places in this stretch of this game – in the recent (started 11-27-2015) IMHO thread “The 25 least visited countries in the world. Been to any? Want to?”
Now, before the next numbered country, five “non-numbereds”:
Guernsey (UK)
Bermuda (UK)
Cayman Islands (UK)
Greenland (Denmark)
American Samoa (US)
then:
#190: Marshall Islands
I’ll indulge myself by doing Guernsey – special acquaintance therewith (family connection).
Like neighbouring Jersey, part of the British Crown Dependency of the Channel Islands: Guernsey the second-largest island therein.
Guernsey’s capital: St. Peter Port.
With the rest of the Channel Islands, German-occupied 1940 – 1945: the only British territory to fall under German occupation in World War II.
Pink sand beaches
Shorts worn with blazers are considered formal attire
British territory
Shakespeare mentions it in The Tempest but spells it “Bermoothes”
Greenland
Danish dependency
Sea borders dispute with Canada
Original Viking settlement abandoned due to “little ice age”
American Samoa
(Accidentaly included earlier in the Samoa entry): Home of many NFL players; place where Margaret Meade did her research.
Additional: Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke was fictionally its last Anglo governor
190: Marshall Islands
Capital: Majuro
Another Associated (to the US) Republic in the former Pacific Trust Territory
Site of Bikini and Eniwetok nuke tests in the 50s
Next oddballs:
South Ossetia
Faroe Islands
Sint Maarten (the one that is written that way)
Next full status: 191 St. Kitts & Nevis
A section of Georgia (the one in the Caucasus) which section is apparently making a bid for independence.
It has been suggested that Josef Stalin was from Ossetia rather than Georgia proper; but IIRC, that isn’t so – it comes from a poem lampooning Stalin, in which this “origin” was shoehorned-in to make the metre and rhyme work. (Unsurprisingly, things did not go well for the poem’s author.)
(That’s all I know about this place,)
Faroe Islands
Island group in the North Atlantic, between the Shetland Islands and Iceland.
Another “Country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands” in the Caribbean
Shares the island with Saint Martin
Approach threshold to the airport runway over the beach is an attraction in itself for planespotters and people who somehow enjoy being thrown around by sand-laden jetblast.
#191: Saint Kitts & Nevis
Once again, small Caribbean islands – close to each other – in the long chain thereof. Former British possessions.
At time of gaining independence – 1960s I think – this territory also included the nearby island of Anguilla (a bit further down the Wiki list). Local tensions caused Anguilla’s breaking away a few years later, and choosing to revert to direct British rule: which situation still obtains.
St. Kitts has the only remaining operational railway, I believe, in any of the small Caribbean islands: a narrow-gauge former sugar-cane line, now running for the benefit of tourists. #192: Monaco
#192 Monaco
Microprincipality in the Mediterranean coast of France
Legendary high-class casino location
Best known to Americans for the late Princess Grace and the tabloid-fodder younger Grimaldis.
#193: Liechtenstein
Tiny state sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria – a duchy? (Something in the aristocratically-ruled ballpark, anyway.)
Much of Liechtenstein’s earnings have long come from its issuing varied and creative postage stamps, valued by philatelists.
As recently discussed on the Dope: Liechtenstein is one of the world’s two doubly-landlocked countries (the other is Uzbekistan) – to get to the sea, you have first to go through another landlocked country, then through another country again.
Next: two “oddballs” – Saint-Martin (France), and Gibraltar (UK); then #194 San Marino.
(Liechtenstein: a principality - close enough)
This far down the tail end of the list we begin hitting some that are or recently were dependencies OF dependencies, as well as two that are not numbered but are apparently considered sovereign enough to not get italics, and some arbitrary polities created because something had to govern that space but you’re hard pressed to call it a “country”.
Saint Martin
Shares island with Dutch Sint Maarten
Less populated/urbanized northern half of the island
Until recently a municipality of the Overseas Departement of Guadaloupe, was divested to form an “overseas collectivity” of its own.
Agreed – this far down in the “pecking order”, things are starting to get pretty wildly abstruse. Best way to go, I’d feel: have dealing with any non-numbered “oddballs”, completely optional.
Anyway, Gibraltar – as I’m a Brit…
Tiny promontory off the south coast of Spain, including a mountain.
British territory since early 18th century, strategically important as being at narrow meeting-point of Mediterranean and Atlantic (British ownership has, from time to time, incurred Spanish wrath).
In classical times Gibraltar, and a matching eminence on the African side of the strait, were known as the Pillars of Hercules.
I don’t want to be greedy – San Marino, anybody?
Unless I’ve gone mad – as of today, 19th Jan., the Wiki list has changed things: retrospectively, every country / territory – no matter how marginal / strange – has been assigned a number: no more non-numbered “weird ones”. Whereby San Marino, until recently #194, is now #226. ???
That’s the virtue AND the problem with Wiki – dynamic editing. Someone from one of the nonsovereigns/nonrecognizeds must have triggered an editors’ argument on what is or is not a country so they must have said OK, it’s a list of organized polities.
My call: if it has an “(Insert Mother Country Here)” or a [note] qualifier we make it optional as we have done de-facto so far.
Tiny little republic entirely enclaved inside Italy
Claims to be the oldest continuously standing republic
Remained neutral even through the Italiand Fascist/Axis regime and WW2
Upcoming dependencies:
227 Turks and Caicos Islands
228 Aland Islands
229 British Virgin Islands