Curated category
Island countries
- JapanJapan sits at the edge of the Pacific, a chain of 14,125 islands stretching more than 3,000 kilometers from the frigid Sea of Okhotsk to the warm East China…
- United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland sits off the northwestern coast of continental Europe, home to over 69 million people in 2024.
- The BahamasThe Bahamas sits at an unusual crossroads of geography and identity. Officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, it comprises 700 islands and more than 2,500…
- Marshall IslandsThe Marshall Islands is 98.62 percent water. No other sovereign state on Earth carries so much ocean against so little land.
- TuvaluTuvalu sits roughly midway between Hawaii and Australia, a scattering of nine islands so flat that the highest point anywhere in the country rises just 4.6…
- Antigua and BarbudaAntigua and Barbuda sits where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea, a nation of two main islands and dozens of smaller ones covering just 440 square…
- GrenadaGrenada is the smallest of the eastern Caribbean's spice nations, and yet its national flag carries a nutmeg. That single image hints at how much one tree…
- Saint LuciaSaint Lucia holds a distinction unlike almost any other place on earth. This small island, covering just 617 square kilometres in the eastern Caribbean, has…
- DominicaDominica is the only eastern Caribbean island that still has a population of pre-Columbian native Kalinago, the people who once called the island Wai'tu…
- Saint Kitts and NevisSaint Kitts and Nevis holds a distinction that most people never think to wonder about: at just 261 square kilometres and roughly 48,000 inhabitants, it is…
- GuadeloupeGuadeloupe sits where the northeastern Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean, a butterfly-shaped pair of main islands flanked by smaller ones.
- MauritiusMauritius sits roughly 1100 nautical miles off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar, an island country in the Indian Ocean.
- American SamoaAmerican Samoa sits 2,200 miles southwest of Hawaii, making it the southernmost territory the United States holds. It straddles one of the most remote…
- BermudaBermuda sits alone in the North Atlantic, the nearest land more than a thousand kilometres away on the coast of North Carolina.
- 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.
- Isle of ManThe Isle of Man sits in the Irish Sea, almost equidistant from England, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, with Wales to the south.
- Cook IslandsThe Cook Islands sits in the South Pacific Ocean, 15 specks of land whose total area barely reaches 236.7 square kilometres, yet whose ocean territory, the…
- 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…
- MaltaMalta sits in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and North Africa, an archipelago 80 km south of Italy, 284 km east of Tunisia, and 333 km north of Libya.
- 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.
- GreenlandGreenland holds the lowest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere: -69.6 C, measured near the topographic summit of its ice sheet on the 22nd…
- 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.
- Solomon IslandsSolomon Islands sits at one of the most contested crossroads on Earth, a scatter of more than a thousand islands in Melanesia where some of the bloodiest…
- TaiwanTaiwan sits in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, tucked between the East and South China Seas, with the People's Republic of China to its northwest, Japan to…
- Faroe IslandsTórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, receives only 840 hours of sunshine a year, the fewest recorded of any city in the world.
- New ZealandNew Zealand sits alone in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, a pair of islands so remote that they were the last large habitable land on Earth to be settled by…
- IndonesiaIndonesia stretches more than 5,120 kilometres from east to west, scattered across over 17,000 islands between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
- SingaporeSingapore sits about one degree of latitude north of the equator, roughly 137 kilometres of sea between it and the line that divides the globe.
- EnglandEngland covers roughly 62% of the island of Great Britain, yet its reach across history stretches far beyond those shores.
- WalesWales, known in its own language as Cymru, sits on the western edge of the island of Great Britain, bounded by the Irish Sea, the Bristol Channel, and the…
- ScotlandScotland occupies nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, yet it holds a history so distinct from its southern neighbor that for centuries the…
- PhilippinesThe Philippines spreads across roughly 7,641 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, a country with a population of over 114 million.
- IcelandIceland sits on a rift where two of the planet's great tectonic plates, the Eurasian and the North American, are slowly pulling apart.
- 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…
- Sri LankaSri Lanka sits at the southern tip of India, separated from the subcontinent by just a narrow channel of water. It is one of the most ancient inhabited…
- MaldivesThe Maldives sits an average of just 1.5 metres above the sea that surrounds it. Its highest natural point reaches only 2.4 metres, which makes it the…
- Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland sits in the north-east corner of the island of Ireland, and it has never been easy to agree on what to call it.