Curated playlist

Member states of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie

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.
DjiboutiDjibouti, a tiny African country, has the United States, France, Japan and China all paying to keep soldiers there.
MauritiusMauritius had no people at all until sailors, thought to be Arab, reached it around 975.
Burkina FasoIn 1984, Captain Thomas Sankara renamed Upper Volta as Burkina Faso. The new name blends words from two local languages.
TunisiaA street vendor's self-immolation in December 2010 set off Tunisia's revolution.
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…
SenegalSenegal is named for a river, not the ocean it faces. Where the river's name came from is still debated.
MauritaniaNear the town of Ouadane, on the Adrar Plateau in Mauritania, the desert floor is marked by a set of concentric rings. From above, the formation looks like a giant eye. It is called the Richat Structure, and it has been dubbed the Eye of…
HaitiHaiti is the only country in history established by a slave revolt.
CambodiaCambodia's Tonle Sap lake swells to nearly ten times its dry-season size each year.
Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo holds 80 percent of the world's cobalt reserves.
MoldovaMoldova is barely larger than Belgium but has the world's largest wine cellar. Mileștii Mici holds the record.
LaosBetween 1964 and 1973, American planes dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos.
MoroccoIn Turkish, Morocco is called Fas, after the medieval city of Fes. In Persian, Urdu and Punjabi it is Murrakush, a name that points to Marrakesh. In Arabic, the country is al-Maghrib, which means the west. Each name looks toward a…
MadagascarMadagascar appears on a map drawn by Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154 under the name Gesira Malai, Arabic for Malay island. That is a strange label for a place off the southeastern coast of Africa. Today the Republic of Madagascar is the world's…
CanadaCanada's name began as a word for a village. In 1535, locals used it to point Jacques Cartier to Stadacona.
FranceFrance may be named after a tax privilege. One suggestion says only Franks were exempt from taxes.
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…
BelgiumBelgium once went 589 days without a formal government, a world record at the time.
Ivory CoastIvory Coast supplies more cocoa beans than any other country. It has also endured two civil wars and a coup.
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…
LebanonLebanon takes its name from a Phoenician root, lbn, which means white. The word apparently describes the snow on its mountain peaks. The name is far older than the modern country. It turns up in Middle Bronze Age texts from the library of…
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…
Cape VerdeCape Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is a nation of volcanic islands scattered across the central Atlantic off the coast of West Africa. Its 2021 census counted 491,233 people. Nearly one million Cape Verdeans live abroad,…
GreeceIn 508 BC, Cleisthenes set up the world's first democratic government in Athens.
EgyptAbout 99% of Egyptians live on roughly 5.5% of the country's land. The rest is desert and scattered oases.
VietnamVietnam has a cave with a rainforest inside it. Hang Sơn Đoòng has caverns big enough to hold a 40-story skyscraper.
SwitzerlandSwitzerland's 1847 civil war lasted less than a month and killed fewer than 100 people. Most deaths were friendly fire.
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…
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…