Curated playlist
States and territories established in 1960
- Burkina FasoIn 1984, Captain Thomas Sankara renamed Upper Volta as Burkina Faso. The new name blends words from two local languages.
- First Congolese RepublicThe First Congolese Republic was born on the 30th of June 1960, when the Belgian Congo declared independence after decades of colonial rule. Within days, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba had wired the United Nations requesting membership,…
- 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…
- 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…
- State of KatangaThe State of Katanga broke away from Congo on the evening of the 11th of July 1960. Moïse Tshombe led the split.
- 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…
- Republic of the CongoThe Republic of the Congo lies on the western coast of Central Africa, just west of the Congo River, and its name causes confusion almost everywhere it goes. On the far bank of that river sits the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a…
- GabonGabon owes its name to a hooded cloak. The Portuguese word gabao, also spelled Gabão, means exactly that. In the 1470s, Portuguese navigators reached the estuary of the Komo River, also called the Como. They decided its outline resembled…
- Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo holds 80 percent of the world's cobalt reserves.
- GujaratGujarat, a state in western India, was home to the world's first dry dock at Lothal.
- 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…
- South KasaiSouth Kasai had its own flag and stamps, yet no government recognized it.
- 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…
- TogoTogo, a country in West Africa, is less than 115 kilometres wide at its narrowest point. That is the distance between Ghana on one side and Benin on the other. Yet the country stretches north from the Gulf of Guinea, where its capital Lomé…
- MaharashtraMaharashtra is India's richest state, yet farming still employs nearly half its people.
- 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…
- NigeriaNigeria's name was coined by a British journalist in 1897. Flora Shaw borrowed it from the Niger River.