Curated category
Former Spanish colonies
- Federated States of MicronesiaThe Federated States of Micronesia spreads across the western Pacific just north of the equator, its 607 islands strung over almost 2700 km.
- GuamGuam's de facto motto is "Where America's Day Begins," a phrase that points to the island's place against the International Date Line.
- El SalvadorEl Salvador sits at the western edge of Central America, the smallest and most densely packed country on the continental mainland, a place its own people…
- GuatemalaThe name Guatemala comes from the Nahuatl word Cuauhtemallan, meaning "place of many trees." The Mexica first used it to describe a single Kaqchikel city…
- HaitiHaiti is the only country in history established by a slave revolt. On the 1st of January 1804, in the town of Gonaives, the leaders of the Haitian…
- Caroline IslandsThe Caroline Islands stretch across approximately 3,540 km of the western Pacific Ocean, a scatter of roughly 500 tiny coral islands that together form one…
- PeruPeru traces its heritage back to the 10th millennium BCE and the Caral-Supe civilization, the earliest civilization in the Americas.
- Puerto RicoPuerto Rico sits about 1,000 miles southeast of Miami, a Caribbean archipelago that is neither a U.S. state nor an independent nation. Its people have held U.
- UruguayUruguay, the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, sits tucked between two giants: Argentina to the west and Brazil to the north, opening eastward onto the Atlantic…
- JamaicaThe Ciboney people who first lived here called the island Xaymaca, a word meaning the Land of Wood and Water, or the Land of Springs.
- ArgentinaArgentina covers 2,780,085 square kilometres, making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil and the eighth-largest in the world.
- Kingdom of SardiniaThe Kingdom of Sardinia traces its origins to a single political transaction in 1297, when Pope Boniface VIII created a fictional realm on paper and offered…
- New MexicoNew Mexico sits at the heart of the American Southwest, a landlocked state that holds the oldest state capital in the United States.
- ChileChile stretches like a ribbon down the western edge of South America, running more than 4,300 kilometers from the driest desert on Earth to the last scrap of…
- TexasTexas stretches across 268,596 square miles of the southern United States, a territory so vast that it would rank as the 39th-largest country on earth if it…
- VenezuelaVenezuela sits on the northern edge of South America, officially known as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and it holds something that much of the world…
- LouisianaLouisiana sits at one of the most consequential crossroads in North America, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico.
- ArizonaArizona became a state on the 14th of February 1912 - Valentine's Day - making it the 48th and last of the contiguous United States to join the Union.
- ColombiaColombia takes its name from the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus, a label first meant to describe the entire New World.
- CaliforniaCalifornia holds a place in the American imagination unlike any other state. It is, in the same territory, home to the lowest and hottest point in North…
- PhilippinesThe Philippines spreads across roughly 7,641 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, a country with a population of over 114 million.
- MexicoMexico domesticated maize, the tomato, and beans, three plants that would feed much of the world. Human presence on this land reaches back at least to 8,000…
- CubaCuba sits at the convergence of three bodies of water: the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean. An archipelago of more than four…
- FloridaFlorida juts into the Atlantic world like no other piece of the United States. It is the only state that shares a border with both the Gulf of Mexico and the…