SANTOSH 9702: country

Showing posts with label country. Show all posts

Thursday, January 8, 2026

What are some of the most interesting/surprising facts about any country?

Singapore

•Singapore is 100% urbanised. Singapore has no countryside, apart from the relatively insignificant amount of countryside on other islands (in the country of Singapore) such as in Pulau Ubin.

•Singapore is a city, a capital and a state all at once, making it one of only three City States in the world.

•Singapore imports sand and fresh water from Malaysia. Singapore is literally building into the sea to create more land to enlarge the country.

Ongoing land reclamation projects have increased Singapore’s land area from 581.5km squared in the 1960s to 719.1km squared in 2015, an increase of some 23% (130km squared)

•Singapore has the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, which is 35 meters high! It’s in Gardens by the Bay, which is an indoor garden housing over 500,000 plants from across the world.

•The Great Singapore Duck Race is held every year in order to raise money for charity. In 2002 it broke a world record with more than 123,000 toy ducks racing on the Singapore River.

•Singapore has the fastest walkers on the planet. According to a research by the British Council, Singaporeans have the fastest walking speed. On average, Singaporeans walk a distance of 18 metres in 10.55 seconds. That's approximately 6.15km in an hour!

•Singapore is among the 20 smallest countries in the world. To give you context, USA is about 15,000 times bigger.

•Our local blend of Singlish is actually pretty well-known internationally. We even have two words – lah and sinseh – in the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary.

•The highest natural point in Singapore is Bukit Timah Hill – which is only 164 metres high.

•The Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in Singapore contains more species of trees than the entire North American continent.

Sources

49 Interesting Facts About Singapore We Bet You Didn’t Know!

Our Top Ten - Interesting Facts About Singapore

12 Mind-Blowing Singapore Facts You Never Knew

Monday, January 5, 2026

What are some of the most interesting/surprising facts about any country?

My country is Kenya

Coffee is one of the biggest source of foreign income in Kenya but most Kenyans prefer to take tea.
Kenyan environmentalist Professor Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. She was the first African woman to win that prize.
Kenya was colonized by the British from 1895–1963 when it got independence.
Kenya has an unrivalled wildlife population and breathtaking safari destinations.

5) Kenya was the first country to make a breakthrough in mobile money transfer called Mpesa, where you have complete control of the money in your account by just using your phone even without an internet connection.

6)Before marriage, Kenyans still pay dowry to the brides parents, which starts at 10 cows.

7)Most Kenyans love to know what you think of President Obama, the only US president whose father was a Kenyan.

8)Driving the Kenyan way means fitting 28 people in a 14 seater mini-bus

9) Kenya’s great rift valley was formed 20 million years ago, when the earth’s crust was split

10) Kenya has 42 ethnic tribes with unique & wonderful culture

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

How would India have been if it were never ruled or invaded by any other country?

One thing we have to understand is that invasions are a central part of our history. Throughout our long history, we invaded and we were invaded. Same for most other ancient civilizations. Invasions are like pollination in agriculture. This is how ideas spread and cultures grow.

Let me first disabuse you of the notion that India has never invaded. India has often extended soft power (and sometimes hard power) over rest of Asia.

India's Invasions:

We invaded most of Asia with our religion, Buddhism. Emperor Ashoka and many other emperors tried hard to spread our religion and it worked. At some point, Buddhism covered a big chunk of Asia from Afghanistan to Japan.

When you go to Bali or Cambodia, you might wonder why are Hindu temples all over. Thai emperors are named Rama (Kings of Thailand) and Indonesia's (Sri Vijaya) symbol is Garuda. Ramayana is embedded in various local cultures. Singapore is a Sanskrit word: Singa+Pura (Lion city). From the Isan province of Thailand to the Shaolin school of China (possibly founded by a South Indian monk, Bodhidharma) to Zen of Japan (from the Sanskrit word Dhyan), India has its cultural invasion all over.

India didn't merely invaded culturally. Sri Lanka was often ruled by kings from Tamil Nadu. Chola territories extended all over South East Asia. They had trade routes that go all the way to China.

In the north, Chandragupta Maurya invaded Afghanistan and ruled parts of Iran and Burma.

Under Emperor Kaniska we ruled Uzbekistan, Tajikistan among other parts of Central Asia.

Under Mughals, our territories often included Afghanistan and sometimes as far as Central Asia. Here is the picture of Mughals capturing Kandhahar.

The Sikh empire captured Ladakh (was a part of Tibet until then) to add with Kashmir and had defeated Afghanistan.

In short, Indians invaded quite a bit.

Think about our invaders.

Emperor Kanishka, among India's great emperors, was an invader. He was part-Greek, part-Iranian and part-Afghan. He issued coins in Greek.

If Aryan invasion hypotheses is true, probably most of Indian kings were descendents of invaders. However, we don't really know how, when and if the invasion happened.
And this is a work of an "invader".

History of India is complex. It was not like we were all one people and suddenly the Islamic invaders came and destroyed everything. Throughout our ancient history, India was the center of invasions (both inbound and outbound). These invasions often brought new ideas and substantially enriched our culture. In music, architecture and dance, we got richer with each invasion. From the Tomatoes we eat to Tea we drink to Silk we wear to English we write to Taj Mahal we cherish, it was all work of "invaders".

In summary, if there were no invasions, our culture would have sucked. That said, we would have been better off without some of the invaders (such as Timur the lang, the plunderer of Delhi, Nadir Shah who stole our major treasures, Mahmud of Ghazni - the barbarian who plundered big chunk of India and the Portuguese who destroyed precious Hindu temples such as Konark and Mylapore Kapaleeswarar in Chennai)

Thursday, November 27, 2025

What country is way bigger than what the average person thinks it is?

It's Russia. It's way too big. Let's see some intresting facts.

1. Russia is the only country in the world where you can have 11 consecutive New Year parties, birthdays, or Christmases because it spans 11 time zones! When the sun rises in the west of Russia, at the same time it’s setting in the east.

2. Russia has been the biggest country in the world since the 16th century when Russian Cossacks conquered lands on the other side of the Ural Mountains in Siberia and the Far East. These regions account for 77 percent of Russia’s total area.

3. Russia is not so big as it is often shown on geographical maps. The Mercator projection used to show the surface of the Earth on a flat sheet of paper distorts the size of the land mass as the latitude increases from the Equator to both poles. So Russia is almost twice (53 percent) smaller than shown on maps.

4. People from Kaliningrad can watch the President’s New Year address to the nation on YouTube 9 hours before New Year starts – when the President addresses people of Kamchatka. That’s the span of territory and time zones in Russia.

5. Russia borders more countries than any other country in the world: 18. Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, China, Mongolia, North Korea (water border). Japan (water border), and the U.S.(water border).

6. It takes about six days to travel by Trans Siberian railroad from Moscow to Vladivostok. The current length of this railroad is 9,288 km. Before railroads appeared in Russia, it took approximately six days to travel from Moscow to St. Petersburg (now, it only takes three hours by Sapsan train).

7. Russia is the biggest country in the world, with 17,125,191 km2. Its Asian part makes it the largest country in Asia, and its European portion makes it the largest country in Europe.

8. Russia can accommodate India five times, France - 26 times, Germany - 47 times, England - 70 times. Also, Russia’s area is bigger than the surface of Pluto (which is just 16.6M km2).

9. Russian land makes up 10.995 percent of the world’s landmass.

It's too much big.

Friday, November 21, 2025

Which country has the most unusual capital city?

I nominate this beautiful, planned capital you would never have heard of, yet it has existed for more than 10 years now. Built at a cost of $5 Billion from the ground up, its really beautiful:

An aerial view of the city. Beautiful, planned city.

A city with beautiful golden monuments:

With palaces and perfect gardens to accompany them

A beautiful, no expense spared parliament room:

But…..

Where are the people?

That believe it or not is a 20 lane Boulevard in the city.

May I present to you the capital city of Myanmar? Naypyidaw. No, silly, it is not Yangon or Rangoon for a decade now. Imagine in Phoebe Buffay’s voice: It’s Naypyidaw, Naypyidaw.

The military regime of Myanmar decided to build this capital in the early 2000s in the middle of nowhere spending a vast mount of money without any clear goals of why it was needed.

The city is four times the size of London, has a Penguin habitat, but less than a million people. Most of the recent publications I’ve read seem to be confused as to why this city exists at all.

It’s 300km from the ancient capital of Yangon from where the ministers commute by road. There was even a plan for a metro, thankfully the govt realized they don’t really need it!