Nationmaster.com is my kind of website. You can potentially spend hours - many hours if you're at work - looking at the wonderful nuggets of information contained within. There's serious newsworthy stuff like the latest info on Bird Flu - I'm sure you didn't know that Zimbabwe has recorded two cases in Ostriches - and the current FIFA football rankings - Brazil being first; American Samoa 198th and last. There are ten countries with a 'Global Terrorism Indicator' of 5 - meaning over 1000 deaths from terrorism in that country. Sri Lanka, Algeria, Burundi, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Sudan, Rwanda, Liberia and the DR Congo. There's no Iraq there because the data come from the year 2002. The UK has an indicator of 2 - meaning between 20 and 100 deaths from terrorism.
It's a useful tool for students, or those interested in history or current affairs. There are articles - like this one, about the role of each country affected by World War II, from Afghanistan to Yugoslavia. For example, Haiti declared war on Japan the day after Pearl Harbour was attacked, but could only offer food aid to Allied soldiers. Other sobering topics on Nationmaster include numbers of people killed on 9/11, listed by country (after the United States, the UK lost the most number of people in the attacks, with 67), and the numbers of endangered species for each nation. The top three are the US (854), Australia (483), and Indonesia (340). The UK has 17 endangered species, with Iceland at the bottom of the table, with just 1.
But it's not all doom and gloom - the website also has country profiles from all kinds of places you never knew existed. What about a holiday on Baker Island? Sounds as if it could be a delightful Nantucket-style New England resort - but the potential holidaymakers who check Nationmaster would find that it's really an ex-guano mine midway between Hawaii and Australia, which was abandoned as uninhabitable in 1935. It's entry under 'Climate' reads "...scant rainfall, constant wind, burning sun". Send us a postcard!
Other interesting things you never knew about include Ireland leading the world in beer consumption (although you could probably have guessed at that one). What about the wettest country in the world? The UK? Hoho, no that would be ranked 48th. If you said Guinea at 3,784mm as a mean of the years 1931-1960 then you clearly cheated. Go and sit in the corner and think about what you did. The rest of us are going to continue with the nation who are least proud of their country - the Japanese, at 36%. They make up for it by having the highest rate of fax machine ownership, at 93/1000 people. Maybe they send eachother faxes about how ashamed they are. Japan only comes 5th in the much sought-after TV ownership per capita category, falling a long way behind Bermuda, with 1009 TV's for every 1000 people. But who gets the remote?
In fact, there are so many things that the Nationmaster people think you need to know they have helpfully set up lists of 'Factoids'. As I'm sure you're aware by now, I'm a sucker for a good factoid. So here are a few to keep you going...
- The average person in the UK drinks as much tea as 23 Italians Link
- Antarctica is 98% ice, 2% 'barren rock'
- Nauru, Tokelau and Western Sahara are the only three countries not to have an official capital city
- Mexican women spend 15.3% of their lives in ill health
- In 2002, every 1000 Swedes made a bus. Link
- In Switzerland, the average person has to work for 102 minutes to buy a kilogram of beef Link
- 62% of Bulgarians describe themselves as 'not very happy' Link
- Malaysia has the lowest rate of cinema attendance in the world. Link
- Thimpu, Bhutan is the only world capital without traffic lights.
