Curated playlist
Landlocked countries
- UzbekistanUzbekistan touches no coast, and every country bordering it is landlocked too.
- Burkina FasoIn 1984, Captain Thomas Sankara renamed Upper Volta as Burkina Faso. The new name blends words from two local languages.
- NigerNiger is a landlocked country in West Africa, and more than 80 percent of its land lies in the Sahara. Yet it takes its name from a river, and nobody can say for certain where the river's name came from. The geographer Ptolemy described a…
- BotswanaBotswana is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, and about 70% of its territory lies inside the Kalahari Desert. The terrain is flat. South Africa borders it to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, Zambia to the…
- KyrgyzstanKyrgyzstan lies farther from the sea than any other individual country on Earth. Even its rivers cannot reach an ocean, because every one of them empties into a closed drainage system. Yet this landlocked nation in the mountains of Central…
- TajikistanTajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, was once a mountain town of roughly 1,000 residents. Now it has 1.24 million people.
- EswatiniOn the 19th of April 2018, King Mswati III announced that the Kingdom of Swaziland would from then on be called the Kingdom of Eswatini. The date was chosen to mark fifty years since independence. In the Swazi language the new name means…
- MoldovaMoldova is barely larger than Belgium but has the world's largest wine cellar. Mileștii Mici holds the record.
- KazakhstanKazakhstan was the last Soviet republic to declare independence. It did so on the 16th of December 1991.
- LaosBetween 1964 and 1973, American planes dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos.
- South OssetiaOnly five United Nations members recognize South Ossetia as a country. Every other country calls it Georgian land.
- LesothoLesotho is a country whose lowest ground sits 1400 metres above sea level, the highest lowest point of any nation on Earth. It is also the only independent state anywhere that lies entirely above 1000 metres. About 2.3 million people live…
- Vatican CityOn the 11th of February 1929, two men signed a treaty at the Lateran Palace and created Vatican City.
- EthiopiaEthiopia stayed independent while most of Africa fell to European rule. Its army beat Italy at Adwa in 1896.
- AfghanistanPersians, Mongols, British, Soviets and Americans all marched into Afghanistan, and each marched out.
- AzerbaijanAzerbaijan's name once belonged only to a region of northwestern Iran. Before 1918, no country used it.
- RwandaThe name Rwanda comes from Ku-aanda, a word meaning "expansion" or "spreading out from the centre". Today the country feels anything but spread out. About 14 million people share 26338 square kilometres, which makes Rwanda the 21st most…
- TransnistriaIn Transnistria, saying the word Transnistria in public can bring a fine of 360 rubles or up to 15 days in jail. The region's Supreme Council passed that law on the 4th of September 2024. Local authorities prefer another name for their…
- BhutanBhutan began mining bitcoin in 2019 using power from its rivers. By November 2024 it held around 12,206 BTC.
- MongoliaMongolia is the most sparsely populated sovereign state on Earth.
- NepalIn September 2025, protests over a social media ban in Nepal forced the prime minister to resign.
- ChadChad is a landlocked country in Central Africa, and its capital, N'Djamena, lies 1060 km from the nearest seaport, Douala in Cameroon. That distance, together with a largely desert climate, gave the country a bleak nickname: the "Dead…
- ArmeniaArmenia is a landlocked country in the Armenian highlands of West Asia, and its best-loved mountain stands outside its borders. Mount Ararat rises 5,137 meters, or 16,854 feet, making it the highest mountain in the region. It now lies in…
- North MacedoniaNorth Macedonia, a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, received that name on the 12th of February 2019. On that day its government announced that constitutional amendments had taken effect, and it informed the United Nations and its…
- SwitzerlandSwitzerland's 1847 civil war lasted less than a month and killed fewer than 100 people. Most deaths were friendly fire.
- BelarusBelarus lost a quarter of its people in World War II. Its population did not return to its prewar level until 1971.
- Czech RepublicThe Czech Republic holds the oldest ceramic figurine ever found, dated to 29,000 to 25,000 BC.
- AustriaAustria's 1938 vote on independence never happened. German troops crossed the border the day before it.
- LiechtensteinIn March 2007, a Swiss infantry unit of 170 men lost its way during a training exercise and accidentally crossed into Liechtenstein. The soldiers had marched 1.5 kilometres into foreign territory before they realised their mistake and…
- AndorraAndorra is a landlocked country in the eastern Pyrenees, wedged between France to the north and Spain to the south, and its two heads of state are a Catholic bishop and a foreign president. One is the Bishop of Urgell, who serves in…
- UgandaUganda has the lowest median age of any country in the world, just 15 years. Its population grew from 9.5 million people in 1969 to 34.9 million in 2014. By the latest census figures, 49.5 per cent of Ugandans were under the age of 18. The…