A Hooters Video, maybe?

Thought I'd perk you up a little with a Hooters video (wouldn't you guys like that, huh?) but tough luck, just couldn't get it to load. Let me put in a little more tweaking, maybe you'll get to see it. In the meantime, a little geography lesson, instead?

An email on the Five Smallest Countries in the World got me interested enough to check up on these nations in Wikipedia. Who says Geography is not interesting!

Nauru and Tuvalu brought back memories of English Literature back in school which also reminds me of Fiji and Pandabonium somehow. Sister Dorothy, our Irish English Lit teacher, knew everything by heart, and more. She also taught us English and History. I'm grateful we had foreign teachers back then; which reminde me of you, Moody Minstrel. Someday, your students will look back with fondness and appreciation of what you've done for them.

San Marino is near you, LB, isn't it? A hop, skip, and a jump away. No?

Here are the Five Smallest Countries in the World in case you didn't already know.

1. Vatican City

Size: 0.17 sq. mi. (0.44 km²)
Population: 783 (2005 census)
Location: Rome, Italy

Vatican City, the size of a golf course, is the smallest country in the world. It's basically a walled enclave inside of Rome, Italy. It's so small that the entire country does not have a single street address.

Vatican City is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.



2. Monaco

Size: 0.8 sq. mi. (1.96 km²)
Population: 35,657 (2006 estimate)
Location: French Riviera on the Mediterranean
Monaco is the second smallest independent nation in the world, (roughly the size of New York's Central Park), yet it's the most densely populated (just 32,410). Actually, Monaco used to be much smaller than it is now - about 100 acres were reclaimed from the sea and added to its land size. At the narrowest, Monaco is only 382 yards wide!



3. Nauru

Size: 8 sq. mi (21 km²)
Population: 13,005 (2005 estimate)
Location: Western Pacific Ocean

From Wikipedia, Nauru is a phosphate rock island, and its primary economic activity since 1907 has been the export of phosphate mined from the island.[2] With the exhaustion of phosphate reserves, its environment severely degraded by mining, and the trust established to manage the island's wealth significantly reduced in value, the government of Nauru has resorted to unusual measures to obtain income. In the 1990s, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and money laundering center. Since 2001, it has accepted aid from the Australian government; in exchange for this aid, Nauru houses an offshore detention centre that holds and processes asylum seekers trying to enter Australia. It just takes 20 minutes to drive around the island.



4. Tuvalu

Size: 9 sq. mi. (26 km²)
Population: 10,441 (2005 estimate)
Location: South Pacific

Tuvalu is basically a chain of low-lying coral islands. As low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the island communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and storm patterns that hit the island undissipated. It is estimated that a sea level rise of 20-40 centimetres (8-16 inches) in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable

Tuvalu has almost no natural resources, and its main form of income consists of foreign aid. Virtually the only jobs in the islands that pay a steady wage or salary are with the government.

Today, Tuvalu also derives income from renting out its Internet country code top-level domain .tv, as it is the abbreviation of the word 'television'. This scheme got off to a rocky start (the original company who tried to do it failed to raise the necessary funds), but finally proved to be the largest source of income for the country.



5. San Marino

Size: 24 sq. mi. (61 km²)
Population: 28,117 (2005 estimate)
Location: North-central Italy near the Adriatic coast.

With the formal name of The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, it's not surprising that San Marino has got lots of charms. Founded in AD 301 by a Christian stonecutter named (what else) Marino (or Marinus, depending on who you ask), who along with a small group of Christians, was seeking escape from religious persecution, San Marino claims to be the world's oldest republic.



Source: Wikipedia and an unknown source