Curated playlist

Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations

TanzaniaTanzania's name was invented in a newspaper contest. Mohammed Iqbal Dar won by blending Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
United KingdomThe United Kingdom is one country made of four nations. Four capitals share the work.
The BahamasIn 1841, enslaved people who revolted on the US brig Creole steered it to Nassau in the Bahamas.
TuvaluA deacon caught in a storm drifted for eight weeks and brought Christianity to Tuvalu.
Antigua and BarbudaHurricane Irma forced nearly all of Barbuda's residents to flee in September 2017.
GrenadaGrenada put a nutmeg on its flag. The Caribbean island nation is nicknamed the Island of Spice.
Saint LuciaBritain and France fought over Saint Lucia fourteen times. The Caribbean island earned the nickname "Helen of the West."
DominicaDominica has had no standing army since 1981, after two coup attempts. The mercenaries' ship never left dock.
Saint Kitts and NevisSaint Kitts and Nevis is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere. Its two islands are volcanic.
MauritiusMauritius had no people at all until sailors, thought to be Arab, reached it around 975.
VanuatuOn the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, villagers of the Yaohnanen tribe revere Britain's Prince Philip as a god. Their belief rests on an ancient story about the pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit. According to the tale, he ventured across…
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…
NauruIn May 2026, the Parliament of Nauru voted to change the country's English name to Naoero, the spelling used in the Nauruan language. The amendment takes effect only if voters approve it in a referendum. Nauru is an island country in the…
KenyaKenya took its name from a mountain, not from its people.
MaltaMalta was once handed to a religious order for the rent of one falcon. Emperor Charles V made the deal in 1530.
SamoaSamoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa, once deleted a whole day from its calendar. Friday, the 30th of December 2011, never happened there. At the end of that month the island country moved its clocks from UTC-11 to UTC+13. The…
CyprusIn March 2008, a wall that had cut across Ledra Street in the heart of Nicosia was demolished. The wall had stood for decades, and it had come to symbolise a division of the island that lasted 32 years. On the 3rd of April 2008, Ledra…
NamibiaThe name Namibia comes from a desert, and the word at its root means vast place. The Namib is the oldest desert in the world, and its name has Khoi origins. A man named Mburumba Kerina chose it for the country, after first proposing the…
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…
Sierra LeoneSierra Leone is named for a line of mountains that Portuguese sailors saw from the water in 1462. The explorer Pedro de Sintra mapped that stretch of the West African coast and called the heights Serra Leoa, which means lioness mountains.…
AustraliaAustralia's name began as a guess about a continent nobody had found. Mapmakers imagined Terra Australis Incognita.
KiribatiKiribati has only 811 square kilometres of land, yet its islands are scattered across such a vast stretch of the central Pacific that the country reaches into all four hemispheres. No other nation can say that. Its islands straddle both…
GuyanaGuyana's economy grew 49% by 2020, after offshore oil was found in 2015.
GhanaGhana, a country of more than 35 million people on the Gulf of Guinea, made history on the 6th of March 1957. That day it became the first colony in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve sovereignty. Its capital and largest city is Accra, and it…
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…
BarbadosOn the 30th of November 2021, Barbados swore in its first president, Sandra Mason, at a ceremony in Bridgetown. Prince Charles, then heir to the Barbadian crown, attended at the government's invitation. With that oath, the island stopped…
CanadaCanada's name began as a word for a village. In 1535, locals used it to point Jacques Cartier to Stadacona.
JamaicaJamaica has sometimes been called the world's least populous cultural superpower. Reggae and Rastafari began there.
PakistanPakistan's name began as an acronym in a 1933 student pamphlet. Choudhry Rahmat Ali published it in Now or Never.
MalaysiaMalaysia's king is elected by and from nine hereditary rulers, for a five-year term.
Solomon IslandsThe Solomon Islands are named for a biblical king who had no connection to them. Mapmakers imagined Bible gold there.
New ZealandNew Zealand was the last large habitable land on Earth to be settled by humans.
The GambiaThe Gambia is the smallest country on the African mainland, and in 1964 its prime minister wrote a letter to protect a single word. Dawda Jawara asked a British committee on geographical names to let the country keep the definite article…
MozambiqueIn 1995, Mozambique joined the Commonwealth of Nations. At the time, it was the only member that had never been part of the British Empire. Its traffic even keeps to the left, like that of its Commonwealth neighbours, although no British…
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…
CameroonIn 1472, Portuguese sailors reached the coast of Central Africa and found the Wouri River teeming with shrimp. They called it Rio dos Camarões, the river of shrimps, after the Cameroon ghost shrimp, Lepidophthalmus turneranus. English bent…
SingaporeIn 1965, Malaysia's Parliament voted 126 to 0 to expel Singapore from its federation. It had joined in 1963.
BruneiBrunei, officially Brunei Darussalam, may owe its name to a shout of recognition. According to local tradition, a ruler named Awang Alak Betatar left Garang, in the Temburong District, and moved to the estuary of the Brunei River around AD…
Papua New GuineaPapua New Guinea is home to about 840 known languages, more than any other country in the world. Most are spoken by fewer than a thousand people, and the typical language has only around 7,000 speakers. That one figure hints at how many…
South AfricaSouth Africa built six nuclear devices, then became the first nation to voluntarily dismantle its arsenal.
NigeriaNigeria's name was coined by a British journalist in 1897. Flora Shaw borrowed it from the Niger River.
BangladeshBangladesh became a country only on the 16th of December 1971. Its land was once called the breadbasket of India.
IndiaIndia is both the most populous country and the most populous democracy. More than 1.4 billion people live there.
Sri LankaThe English word serendipity comes from an old Arab name for Sri Lanka. Travelers knew the island as Sarandīb.
MaldivesOne Maldives president held a cabinet meeting underwater. Mohamed Nasheed did it in 2009 to raise climate awareness.
FijiFiji is a country where the map was bent to suit the clock. The 180th meridian normally marks the place where one calendar date gives way to the next. In Fiji it runs through the island of Taveuni. The International Date Line swerves…
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…
SeychellesSeychelles, a country of tropical islands scattered across the Indian Ocean, was almost seized by mercenaries in 1981. A team of 43 South African mercenaries, led by Mike Hoare, flew in disguised as holidaying rugby players. Their goal was…