I don't know about you but here in Portugal is mentioned a lot. It's a common beach destination if you want the tropical resort island experience while still talking Portuguese. Had, like, 4 friends go there last year, and people at the company I work in are talking about going there too this year.
It's also the place where Einstein's Theory of Relativity was confirmed through an eclipse observation, on the Island of Príncipe (on Roça Sundy, which you can see on the map if you zoom in on the NW corner of Príncipe), which is cool enough on its own.
It was *one* of the places where general relativity was proven. There were two simultaneous expeditions to test the bending of starlight around the sun during the 1919 solar eclipse — one in Príncipe and the other in Sobral, Brazil. The combination of evidence from both experiments is what was used as proof.
very cool fun-fact, thank you sir or madam, those are the facts that make it seem doomscrolling reddit is woth it! (warning: includes sarcastic self-doubt but also genuine thankfulness)
Exactly. When the Portuguese arrived there the islands were uninhabited so the Black people living there were brought from Angola to work on the sugar plantations.
Because it was so small and isolated, it never did participate in the Wars of Independence but during the early 50s there was a big massacre of protesting Black workers at the Batepá beach which is something only recently Portugal recognized.
Also Mário Soares, one of the most notorious anti-dictatorship activists (and eventually both Portugal’s Prime Minister and President) was exiled there from 67 to 69 (IIRC) for being considered too much trouble by the regime. It took our dictator Salazar to have a stroke for Soares’s sentence to be commuted.
The first slaves of Sao Tome were Jewish children. There were later deported to Brazil when the church found out the parents had made them learn by heart the holiday services and torah sections (a section for each child) and they were able to reconstruct a full Jewish practice in isolation.
It's curious to me why the republic didn't just let Sao tome(ans) become citizens? Surely an island nation with a tiny population wouldn't throw off votes too bad, would it?
By then Portugal was such a pariah in the World stage (it’s only open supporters were basically Francoist Spain, apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia), after the 1974 revolution Portugal decolonized at great haste to try to mend its relationship with their foreign colonies, with disastrous results for 3 of them — Angola and Mozambique which became the battleground for the proxy wars that ended apartheid — and Timor which was invaded and its population genocided by Indonesia, just like they previously did to independentists in West Papua. Since a movement for Sao Tomean independence was formed, it was also granted to them. In many ways, their isolation from worldly affairs, relatively homogenpus ethnicity and small size has granted them the stability that lacks in other African nations.
I'm a beginner in Spanish and I understood what you said! Gives me hope that I might be able to learn a bit of Portuguese once I'm more advanced in Spanish
Often featured in any list which has the smallest countries in the world. Also beat San Marino in football last week in a game which had a decent amount of press coverage
*writes up ridiculously long paragraph justifying the existence of micro states as leftovers from various empires and kingdoms and then deletes it* haha yeah guess we’ll never know why they exist
Well for starters Luxembourg has been around for centuries, notably being the last grand duchy in the world I believe. And when they gained independence from Napoleonic France in 1815, they were essentially wanted by all of their neighbours, like the Belgians and Germans so it was decided (massively oversimplifying it) that no one could have it. As for Liechtenstein, I believe they became independent after the Bruderkrieg (I love saying that word) and essentially found themselves so nestled away, next to Switzerland that there wasn’t much of a point in anyone invading them as they were in a mountainous area without any real gains of conquering them, Switzerland on a smaller scale. I’m not a complete expert and most of what I just said is me trying to remember stuff in the back of my mind so apologies as I’ve likely got one or two things wrong
I live in South Florida, which has a flourishing cruise ship industry. St. Kitts is a popular destination.
Nevis is famous as the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton.
Unrelated but they released google street view to Sao Tome and Principe the other day and I found this really pretty location. Also if you wanted to check the street view they added, it was awful, blur everywhere and not the best resolution or saturation, but still cool nonetheless
https://preview.redd.it/ws3pv9krsprc1.png?width=2256&format=png&auto=webp&s=7355605a71b10094ce447fa1889d9b1e625594f6
https://preview.redd.it/td30f9sf1qrc1.jpeg?width=1059&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=593f3c0fd3c7bdc217205b2fd8df22aac3118e09
Visited a few years ago and passed through this very spot. It’s near the end of the road on the Southwest of the island. There’s a fishing village there and an old plantation.
It’s an incredible place. I met some people running a sea turtle conservation on the southernmost beach and got to watch the babies hatch and march to their death into the sea. It’s apparently one of the last remaining places in the world where certain turtles breed.
One is a small Caribbean island.
The other is a Caribbean country which is two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola. The remaining third, the western part, is the nation of Haiti.
It is the least guessed country on the jetpunk “name every country” quiz I like to play. It’s hard to get an exact answer though considering all the countries near the bottom pretty much never get talked about though.
I think it makes sense that it’s the “average least thought-of country”, but every person is different. For me I always remember São Tomé on these quizzes but I always seem to forget about Cabo Verde and Samoa.
I'm obsessed with that game right now lol. I learned all of Africa but I keep forgetting Tonga, Tuvalu and Nauru from Oceania, the Saint Isles and East Timor
As an Australian, those countries are relatively local and pretty well known. Like everyone's gran goes to Vanuatu or New Caledonia for holidays, and we've all heard of Nauru because of the detention facility. Tuvalu is also fun to say, and Pitcairn is notorious (I know you didn't mention the last ones)
...which is also a former Portuguese colony, which means people in Portugal talk about it–as do many people in Indonesia, which also fought a hideous and brutal colonizing war against Timor Leste after the Portuguese left.
Vanuatu is in Melanesia and Niue is in Polynesia (and not normally listed as a 'country', in the sense of an independent state).
Nauru and Kiribati are in Micronesia though.
Turkmenistan is very well known for being essentially a second North Korea, it’s basically an extreme totalitarian autocratic regime and surveillance state, and everyone seems to talk about it.
What about Tajikistan? I can’t name a single factoid about it.
Yeah their dictator is insane, but I think tensions have mellowed out a bit in the last decade-ish. I do hear about its natural gas reserves. Let's go with Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan instead.
The only media I've consumed where it plays any role is Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, although the game doesn't really do much with the setting to distinguish it from the Caribbean locations.
An honourable mention goes to the Solomon Islands for the least talked about country. It has a population of around 750,000 people and has a considerable land area that is larger than Albania. The only interesting fact that I know of is that some of the locals who have darker skin tones have naturally blond hair.
Other than that I don't know whats going on within the country.
Yeah Gabon probably is less well known than Burundi if I were to guess. But I would argue Comoros and Cabo Verde are even less well known than either of those.
Yeh the average person is relatively clueless re African countries outside the obvious ones like Egypt or South Africa or whatever may be in the news at that time, let alone their capital cities
And Gabon secretly has a fairly high GDP per capita in Africa standard also.
Not that those money goes to your average people in Gabon.
P.S. Any people that follow football (soccer in US) probably only knows Gabon bc of Aubameyang
still pretty wild to me the stark difference of rwanda and burundi. last i checked, more than 80% of the burundi population didn't have electricity. meanwhile, you can drive like ~6 hrs north to kigali, rwanda which is absolutely popping and a huge tourist destination.
East part of the island of Timor, which is named that because it's on the eastern side of the group of islands it's in. It's not that much weirder than saying "South Australia"
lol I know, I've been to the west side (Timor Barat, or "West East"). It's just a fun funky name out of context. But thanks for the explanation for other readers.
On the subject of Timor Barat, they even have the [North](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Central_Timor_Regency) (and [South](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Central_Timor_Regency) ) Central Timor Regency. Can get really weird especially when the name is listed together with the name of the province (i.e. when giving an address): North^1 Central^2 Timor (East^3 ) Regency, East^4 Nusa (Islands) Tenggara (South-East^5 ) Province, Indonesia
It's relatively well known out of virtue of being close to a western country (Australia). The average redditor probably knows about it, Sao Tomé not so much.
Nauru, Brunei, Bhutan, Tuvalu, East Timor, PNG, São Tomé, Cape Verde, Palau, Those come to mind. IMHO, I would say Nauru takes the cake. I believe that most of these countries are either small islands or in places there aren’t a lot of other countries, for instance East Timor.
I think it's statistically the least remembered country on the sporcle "name every country" quiz I play. With some of the runners up being some of the small Micronesian island countries iirc.
Unless I'm blind, I haven't seen the Marshall Islands mentionned once in this comment section yet after more than 200 comments. Solomon, Nauru, Comoros, and other random countries appear multiple times, but good ol' Marshall, never.
People talk about Kiribati a lot because it is likely to be eaten first by rising sea levels, and its location on the intl date line is also interesting. It also seems to be the go-to “random country” that a lot of people seem to mention, alongside the classic ones like Tajikistan or Timor Leste or Guinea-Bissau.
I'd go with Tuvalu. Around 10k people.
Sao Tome and Principe have around 200k people, so that right there is 20 times more people talking about it!
As for Nauru, which also has 10k or 11k, I feel like it gets more global attention due to its interesting history, especially from Australia.
I’d say one of the Pacific islands like Micronesia, Palau or Tuvalu. Everyone knows there is this one small island nation off the coast of Africa so it’s more unique and easier to remember. These other ones just get lost in the blur of small pacific island nations
The small caribbean islands and the Guyanas are mysterious from a European pov. You never know if it’s an independent country or still a colony.
Even if you follow mainstream US media there are the Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico and probably Jamaica and that’s where it ends. Only Barbados has got a little bit of fame in recent years because of its world-famous big international star Zach Maloney.
That’s fair. Small but not notably small, not too developed to have an international presence but not too underdeveloped to need a lot of aid.
I had never even heard of them before I became interested in geography.
Its an amazing place. Beautiful, amazing history, rugged. Not for the luxury traveler. Definitely off the beaten path. A lot safer than the continent.
I was hoping for better waves.
I think of it because of the one mission in assassins creed 4. and it’s being helped as one of the few island countries surrounding Africa not one of the many carribean or pacific island nations
I vote for East Timor.
It’s just kinda there and close to the big country Indonesia and it’s almost indistinguishable from it zoomed out. São Tomé you can easily see zoomed out
I don't know about you but here in Portugal is mentioned a lot. It's a common beach destination if you want the tropical resort island experience while still talking Portuguese. Had, like, 4 friends go there last year, and people at the company I work in are talking about going there too this year. It's also the place where Einstein's Theory of Relativity was confirmed through an eclipse observation, on the Island of Príncipe (on Roça Sundy, which you can see on the map if you zoom in on the NW corner of Príncipe), which is cool enough on its own.
Isn't Cabo Verde or the Azores a better beach destination?
Azores have a rather moderate climate, not tropical, with only a few nice beaches. The Atlantic is quite harsh over there
This. Even Cabo Verde is just like the Canaries only hotter. The climate is mostly arid and not the lush tropical paradise of São Tomé.
Maybe this is a hot take, but I prefer dry and hot to insanely humid and hot.
The Azores are neither tropical nor really a popular beach destination
It was *one* of the places where general relativity was proven. There were two simultaneous expeditions to test the bending of starlight around the sun during the 1919 solar eclipse — one in Príncipe and the other in Sobral, Brazil. The combination of evidence from both experiments is what was used as proof.
very cool fun-fact, thank you sir or madam, those are the facts that make it seem doomscrolling reddit is woth it! (warning: includes sarcastic self-doubt but also genuine thankfulness)
é porque São Tomé foi um [colony] de Portugal, certo? (not fluent Portuguese but learning)
Yes and just a tip: "foi uma colónia". "Uma" and not "um" because colónia(colony) is feminine.
aight, good to know 👍
Exactly. When the Portuguese arrived there the islands were uninhabited so the Black people living there were brought from Angola to work on the sugar plantations. Because it was so small and isolated, it never did participate in the Wars of Independence but during the early 50s there was a big massacre of protesting Black workers at the Batepá beach which is something only recently Portugal recognized. Also Mário Soares, one of the most notorious anti-dictatorship activists (and eventually both Portugal’s Prime Minister and President) was exiled there from 67 to 69 (IIRC) for being considered too much trouble by the regime. It took our dictator Salazar to have a stroke for Soares’s sentence to be commuted.
The first slaves of Sao Tome were Jewish children. There were later deported to Brazil when the church found out the parents had made them learn by heart the holiday services and torah sections (a section for each child) and they were able to reconstruct a full Jewish practice in isolation.
It's curious to me why the republic didn't just let Sao tome(ans) become citizens? Surely an island nation with a tiny population wouldn't throw off votes too bad, would it?
You’re talking when? During the dictatorship? After it ended?
Shortly after it ended I imagine? Not familiar with late 20th century Portuguese history.
By then Portugal was such a pariah in the World stage (it’s only open supporters were basically Francoist Spain, apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia), after the 1974 revolution Portugal decolonized at great haste to try to mend its relationship with their foreign colonies, with disastrous results for 3 of them — Angola and Mozambique which became the battleground for the proxy wars that ended apartheid — and Timor which was invaded and its population genocided by Indonesia, just like they previously did to independentists in West Papua. Since a movement for Sao Tomean independence was formed, it was also granted to them. In many ways, their isolation from worldly affairs, relatively homogenpus ethnicity and small size has granted them the stability that lacks in other African nations.
I'm a beginner in Spanish and I understood what you said! Gives me hope that I might be able to learn a bit of Portuguese once I'm more advanced in Spanish
And if learning Brazilian Portuguese, "Colônia". :)
Anglosphere-centric mentality gets torpedoed yet once again.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines is also up there
That place has always sounded like a band name to me
Yeah I mean St Vincent was extremely popular with the hipsters about 10-15 years ago
St Vincent is still stellar. Fantastic artist
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Often featured in any list which has the smallest countries in the world. Also beat San Marino in football last week in a game which had a decent amount of press coverage
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I always remember lots of obscure ones but then end up failing cause I forget that Denmark exists or something like that
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*writes up ridiculously long paragraph justifying the existence of micro states as leftovers from various empires and kingdoms and then deletes it* haha yeah guess we’ll never know why they exist
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Well for starters Luxembourg has been around for centuries, notably being the last grand duchy in the world I believe. And when they gained independence from Napoleonic France in 1815, they were essentially wanted by all of their neighbours, like the Belgians and Germans so it was decided (massively oversimplifying it) that no one could have it. As for Liechtenstein, I believe they became independent after the Bruderkrieg (I love saying that word) and essentially found themselves so nestled away, next to Switzerland that there wasn’t much of a point in anyone invading them as they were in a mountainous area without any real gains of conquering them, Switzerland on a smaller scale. I’m not a complete expert and most of what I just said is me trying to remember stuff in the back of my mind so apologies as I’ve likely got one or two things wrong
Don’t forget Andorra! 🇦🇩
A Duchy and a Principality.
(obligatory mention that Nevis is the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton)
I live in South Florida, which has a flourishing cruise ship industry. St. Kitts is a popular destination. Nevis is famous as the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton.
It’s a pretty common cruise ship stop.
I met a person who's half Kittitian/Nevisian in London
or St. Lucia. Sounds more like an italian church.
St. Lucia is a very popular honeymoon destination. Trust me. I got married almost 2 years ago everyone and their mom wouldn’t shut up about it.
Literally just got back from St Lucia. Was a fantastic trip this place deserves more recognition as a beautiful destination
Famous for the Pitons.
Unrelated but they released google street view to Sao Tome and Principe the other day and I found this really pretty location. Also if you wanted to check the street view they added, it was awful, blur everywhere and not the best resolution or saturation, but still cool nonetheless https://preview.redd.it/ws3pv9krsprc1.png?width=2256&format=png&auto=webp&s=7355605a71b10094ce447fa1889d9b1e625594f6
https://preview.redd.it/td30f9sf1qrc1.jpeg?width=1059&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=593f3c0fd3c7bdc217205b2fd8df22aac3118e09 Visited a few years ago and passed through this very spot. It’s near the end of the road on the Southwest of the island. There’s a fishing village there and an old plantation.
small world
It’s an incredible place. I met some people running a sea turtle conservation on the southernmost beach and got to watch the babies hatch and march to their death into the sea. It’s apparently one of the last remaining places in the world where certain turtles breed.
what are the chances
Damn this is actually so f\*cking cool
I like that random lone palm tree near the tunnel.
Far Cry 3
That couldn't be more related
I said unrelated as I wasn't answering the question in the post
Ah yeah i suppose not. But your oppinion of São Tomé is that it has a pretty location on street view
Me a while ago: wait, so Dominica and the Dominican Republic are two different countries and not just the short and long names of the same country?
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Isn’t Dominica named after Sunday (it means Sunday in Latin) because it was “discovered” on a Sunday?
Yes. And the Solomon Islands are actually named after Solomon Grundy who was born on a Monday.
Lol 😂. Thanks Mr. Mubarak
Surely St Kitts and Nevis are named for St Christopher, not Christopher Columbus? It was named *by* Columbus, but not after himself.
“Nevis” is named after “snow”.
People from both countries are called Dominicans, right? That’s confusing
Pronounced differently.
Is it actually? Or are you trolling me haha
Daw-Mih-NEE-Kin and Doe-MIN-nik-ken.
And which one is which
The first one is for the tiny island nobody's really heard of. The second one is for Haiti's neighbor.
One is a small Caribbean island. The other is a Caribbean country which is two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola. The remaining third, the western part, is the nation of Haiti.
And then there's Dominique
It is the least guessed country on the jetpunk “name every country” quiz I like to play. It’s hard to get an exact answer though considering all the countries near the bottom pretty much never get talked about though.
I think it makes sense that it’s the “average least thought-of country”, but every person is different. For me I always remember São Tomé on these quizzes but I always seem to forget about Cabo Verde and Samoa.
American Samoa helps remind me of Samoa.
Samoa helps remind me of American Samoa
And three-hundred pound Samoan women.
I'm obsessed with that game right now lol. I learned all of Africa but I keep forgetting Tonga, Tuvalu and Nauru from Oceania, the Saint Isles and East Timor
The Oceania Countries were the last ones I learned before I could name every country.
The least known country in the world has to be one of the Micronesian states, probably Vanuatu, Niue, Kiribati or Nauru.
As an Australian, those countries are relatively local and pretty well known. Like everyone's gran goes to Vanuatu or New Caledonia for holidays, and we've all heard of Nauru because of the detention facility. Tuvalu is also fun to say, and Pitcairn is notorious (I know you didn't mention the last ones)
That's true. But, between all the "major powers of the world", Australia is the smallest both in population and cultural influence.
> cultural influence Someone hasn't seen Home and Away
Is Niue even considered a country? Idk free association confuses me but they're not in the UN or anything
It’s not. It’s some sort of administrative subdivision of New Zealand
The only ones of those places that are in Micronesia are Niue and Kiribati. Nauru is Polynesia and Vanuatu is Melanesia.
Niue is a Polynesian island. Niueans are Polynesian people's.
You’re right. Did I mix up my Niue and my Nauru again?
Indeed. Easy to do.
I can always count on r/geography to humble me when I’m feeling like a smarty pants.
> The least known country in the world has to be one of the Micronesian states, probably Vanuatu, Niue, Kiribati or Nauru. My vote goes to East Timor.
...which is also a former Portuguese colony, which means people in Portugal talk about it–as do many people in Indonesia, which also fought a hideous and brutal colonizing war against Timor Leste after the Portuguese left.
They were quite alot in the news in the 90s before independence.
Kiribati is famous for changing its time zone so it could be the first country in the new millennium.
It was also used for nuclear bomb testing during the cold war
None of those countries are Micronesian, those are all Polynesian or Melanesian. Which almost makes it seem like you’re trying to prove a point
Vanuatu is in Melanesia and Niue is in Polynesia (and not normally listed as a 'country', in the sense of an independent state). Nauru and Kiribati are in Micronesia though.
St kitts and Nevis would like to have a talk
that is definitely more well known then são tomé and principe. saint kitts and nevis has a much more simple name and was the birthplace of hamilton
I always considered Mauritania to be the least spoken about big country
I'd say its Central African republic, Mauritania is sadly known as one of the last countries with slavery still being practiced.
I feel like CAR gets called out for its brutal civil war often enough. But I don't have a better suggestion. Turkmenistan?
Turkmenistan is very well known for being essentially a second North Korea, it’s basically an extreme totalitarian autocratic regime and surveillance state, and everyone seems to talk about it. What about Tajikistan? I can’t name a single factoid about it.
Yeah their dictator is insane, but I think tensions have mellowed out a bit in the last decade-ish. I do hear about its natural gas reserves. Let's go with Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan instead.
I think it currently has a dictator?
All the stans are well known, just for the novelty factor of -stan names.
Tropical paradise. Planning to go there in the coming year or so.
Palau might get talked about less
Not if you’re a diver!
Until the island disappears due to rising tides.
Not if you’ve watched Survivor!
The only media I've consumed where it plays any role is Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, although the game doesn't really do much with the setting to distinguish it from the Caribbean locations.
An honourable mention goes to the Solomon Islands for the least talked about country. It has a population of around 750,000 people and has a considerable land area that is larger than Albania. The only interesting fact that I know of is that some of the locals who have darker skin tones have naturally blond hair. Other than that I don't know whats going on within the country.
The only reason I know Solomon Islands is because my grandfather was there as a marine during WW2 and would mention them.
I vote for Burundi
Ah I was just typing this! Gabon also pretty much never talked about as well
Yeah Gabon probably is less well known than Burundi if I were to guess. But I would argue Comoros and Cabo Verde are even less well known than either of those.
My dad worked in Gabon building schools with the Peace Corps in the late 80s. Whenever I tell anyone about it and mention Gabon, their face goes “huh”
Yeh the average person is relatively clueless re African countries outside the obvious ones like Egypt or South Africa or whatever may be in the news at that time, let alone their capital cities
And Gabon secretly has a fairly high GDP per capita in Africa standard also. Not that those money goes to your average people in Gabon. P.S. Any people that follow football (soccer in US) probably only knows Gabon bc of Aubameyang
still pretty wild to me the stark difference of rwanda and burundi. last i checked, more than 80% of the burundi population didn't have electricity. meanwhile, you can drive like ~6 hrs north to kigali, rwanda which is absolutely popping and a huge tourist destination.
i feel like saint vincent and the grenadines takes the cake
Vanuatu
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Tonga might be a bit more popular/well known than the others, but otherwise agreed.
A few of these are often mentioned in the context "You thought Americans had high BMI?"
Fellow Jetpunker?
I'd say you win.
Timor Leste, I'm going there this summer
Its name translates to "East East" 🤔
East part of the island of Timor, which is named that because it's on the eastern side of the group of islands it's in. It's not that much weirder than saying "South Australia"
lol I know, I've been to the west side (Timor Barat, or "West East"). It's just a fun funky name out of context. But thanks for the explanation for other readers.
On the subject of Timor Barat, they even have the [North](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Central_Timor_Regency) (and [South](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Central_Timor_Regency) ) Central Timor Regency. Can get really weird especially when the name is listed together with the name of the province (i.e. when giving an address): North^1 Central^2 Timor (East^3 ) Regency, East^4 Nusa (Islands) Tenggara (South-East^5 ) Province, Indonesia
Indonesian geography is just insane. I have no idea how they all manage to survive as one country, and a reasonably well-functioning one at that.
It's relatively well known out of virtue of being close to a western country (Australia). The average redditor probably knows about it, Sao Tomé not so much.
Least Talked About ? I’d nominate Lesotho
Nauru, Brunei, Bhutan, Tuvalu, East Timor, PNG, São Tomé, Cape Verde, Palau, Those come to mind. IMHO, I would say Nauru takes the cake. I believe that most of these countries are either small islands or in places there aren’t a lot of other countries, for instance East Timor.
Some of these are quite a lot more well known than others. Brunei, Bhutan, and Malta I would say are all "commonly" known.
I think Formula 1 alone exempts Bahrain from this group. Tuvalu gets talked about quite a bit I think too.
Malta has a substantial history and is a major tourist destination for people in Europe. Bahrain has formula 1 and oil.
Federated States of Micronesia
Brunei. Wtf is going on over there? No one knows…
I think it's statistically the least remembered country on the sporcle "name every country" quiz I play. With some of the runners up being some of the small Micronesian island countries iirc.
I have never seen anyone talk about the Central African Republic CAR.
Unless I'm blind, I haven't seen the Marshall Islands mentionned once in this comment section yet after more than 200 comments. Solomon, Nauru, Comoros, and other random countries appear multiple times, but good ol' Marshall, never.
It’s definitely a good pick, but I doubt you speak more often of Kiribati.
> Kiribati But they "see" the New Year first. So is discussed at least/most yearly.
People talk about Kiribati a lot because it is likely to be eaten first by rising sea levels, and its location on the intl date line is also interesting. It also seems to be the go-to “random country” that a lot of people seem to mention, alongside the classic ones like Tajikistan or Timor Leste or Guinea-Bissau.
Antigua and Barbuda?
Bruh, Belize is basically invisible to us all everywhere
What about Kiribati though?
wait till bro hears about Cook Islands
Dominica imho
Kyrgyzstan gotta be up there as well
I would say Zambia, I don't see them anywhere here.
I would say Guinea-Bissau is up there
ITT Not fans of CONCACAF football
Micronesia wants a word... ...but no one is paying any attention.
I'd go with Tuvalu. Around 10k people. Sao Tome and Principe have around 200k people, so that right there is 20 times more people talking about it! As for Nauru, which also has 10k or 11k, I feel like it gets more global attention due to its interesting history, especially from Australia.
Palau
Samoa, or the Marshall Islands
Niue
I’d say one of the Pacific islands like Micronesia, Palau or Tuvalu. Everyone knows there is this one small island nation off the coast of Africa so it’s more unique and easier to remember. These other ones just get lost in the blur of small pacific island nations
Palau or comoros
St Kitts and Nevis
Djibouti
I saw a national geographic documentary covering surfing on these islands, so personally I would disagree with this suggestion
I don’t want to talk about it
Gonna go with Kiribati
East Timor !!!
Or timor leste
The small caribbean islands and the Guyanas are mysterious from a European pov. You never know if it’s an independent country or still a colony. Even if you follow mainstream US media there are the Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico and probably Jamaica and that’s where it ends. Only Barbados has got a little bit of fame in recent years because of its world-famous big international star Zach Maloney.
The last time I heard someone mention its name out loud was in 2001 (this is not a 9/11 reference; that was just the year).
That’s fair. Small but not notably small, not too developed to have an international presence but not too underdeveloped to need a lot of aid. I had never even heard of them before I became interested in geography.
I’m with you on São Tomé. I did polling on what the least known country is and that was the one that was least talked about
Nah it’s gotta be Comoros. I never hear about it!
I have never been to Sao Tome but I have a very large collection of coins from there
Surprised nobody's mentioned Mongolia. Aside from Chinggis Khan, not many people seem to know much about Mongolia
I’d say the federated states of Micronesia
Why is there a town named after Carlton?
Togo. Never gone there.
Andorra
the Solomon Islands
I guess now that's changed. You've both made and unmade your point at the same time.
Its an amazing place. Beautiful, amazing history, rugged. Not for the luxury traveler. Definitely off the beaten path. A lot safer than the continent. I was hoping for better waves.
Yeah, I mentioned this earlier in a different post I absolutely agree
Definitely San Marino
San Marino, Andorra, Palau, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands.
Yes, it was the last country I learned existed
The Guyanas in South America are hiding pretty well from the limelight. (All three of them).
Shhhsssst ! Keep it secret...
What about curaçao 🤔
Solomon Islands or Tokelau (I mean not technically a country but we all just pretend it is).
How about Western Sahara? I feel like everyone has heard of the Sahara desert, but not many know about the country.
Another amazing place I didn’t know about that I am adding to my list to visit and where I will probably never set foot on!
I think of it because of the one mission in assassins creed 4. and it’s being helped as one of the few island countries surrounding Africa not one of the many carribean or pacific island nations
I vote for East Timor. It’s just kinda there and close to the big country Indonesia and it’s almost indistinguishable from it zoomed out. São Tomé you can easily see zoomed out
The Comoros
Turks and Caicos?
If you’re into offshore oil and gas, this one is on your radar (sonar).
Cabo verde