Category: Historical Tidbits

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L is for Liechtenstein

Fast Facts

  • Named for: “Light stone” Liechtenstein Castle in Southern Austria
  • Capital: Vaduz
  • Long/Lat: 47.1 N/9.3 E, 6000 miles or 11 hours East of Castro Valley
  • Population: 41,232 or 0.8 CVs
  • Size: 62 sq mi, 4 CVs
  • Avg temp in April: 54F/12 C mountains!
  • Median household income: ~$150,000
  • Ethnicity: 67% Liechtensteiners, 9% Swiss, 7% German (pasty white people)
  • Main industries: Precision manufacturing (e.g. dental equipment), financial services (low taxes)

We move from islands to mountains: Central Europe, on the other side of the world from Kiribati, literally and metaphorically. Liechtenstein is one of only two double land-locked countries, which is a thing because humans now must have special statistics for everything. Double land-locked means that it’s land-locked between two other land-locked countries, in this case between Switzerland and Austria. If they could carve out a country within Liechtenstein’s borders, that would be land-locked cubed.

Liechtenstein’s nickname is “The Principality,” which isn’t much shorter, so I’ll just have to learn to spell it. Liechtenstein means “light stone,” and it was what Hugo von Petronell called the castle he built after receiving a fief from the Babenburg margraves. Translating that medieval-speak, it means he did something good for the honchos who ran Austria in the 13th century. But here’s the rub: Liechtenstein Castle is in Austria. Was then, still is now.

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I is for Iceland

Iceland, just hanging out near the top of the world. Graphic by Hayden120 & Nuclear Vacuum.

Fast Facts

Note: Starting today, I am adding world capitals to the facts list. I have revised prior days’ as well because we should know how to spell Reykjavik and Tegucigalpa.

  • Named by: Flóki Vilgerðarson, who saw ice caps in Iceland. Earlier names included Snæland (Snowland) and Garðarshólmur (Garoar’s island, mine all mine!)
  • Capital: Reykjavik
  • Long/Lat: 64.1 N/21.2 W, 4200 mi and 8 hrs east of Castro valley
  • Population: 394,000 or only 6x CVs
  • Size: 39,800 sq mi or 2350 CVs, not population dense
  • Avg temp in April: 39 F/4 C brrr
  • Median household income: $55,000 because stuff is expensive in Iceland
  • Ethnicity: 86% Icelander, 7% Polish
  • Main industries: Fishing, tourism, aluminum

So many volcanoes! Hekla, Eldgjá, Herðubreið, Eldfell, and Laki, whose 1783 eruption wiped out a quarter of the population. This is what happens when a country emerges out of the ocean rift between two tectonic plates, as the Eurasian plate and Mid-Atlantic plate are moving away from each other. You get Iceland.

A fourth-grade view of geology would point out that all the continents used to be huddled together in Pangaea, and, over a LOOOOONG time, they’ve been separating. The Atlantic Ocean’s getting bigger, and the Pacific, smaller. One of the points of separation goes through Iceland, which is only about 14 million years old. Proto-humans began at 3 mya, so Iceland is just a little older than we are. No wonder it’s still got acne!

The tectonic plates underneath Iceland, great write-up of the Laki Fissure Eruption.
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F is for Fiji

Courtesy Countryreports.co, Fiji is east of Australia. (Islands are not as close together as they may seem.)

Fast Facts

  • Named for: Fiji is the Anglicized pronunciation of the Tongan pronunciation of the indigenous’ name Viti.
  • Capital: Suva
  • Long/Lat:  18.1S/178.3 E (almost in the West), 5500 mi, 10 hours west
  • Population: 926,000 (14 Castro Valley’s worth)
  • Size: 7000 sq mi of land (411 CVs) but 75,000 sq mi total territory, 332 islands
  • Avg temp in April: 89 F/31 C, tropics!
  • Median household income: $6000 annually
  • Ethnicity: 57% indigenous Fijians, 38% Indo-Fijians
  • Main industries: Tourism, sugar cane, gold

Fiji is not a particularly small island, compared with others that we’ll see later, however, it is the smallest country beginning with F. It’s actually two big islands, plus 330 other small islands, some with and some without people. Plus, technically, a lot of water in between.

Beaches and mountains on the two largest islands, Viti Levu and Vanau Levu.

We might, perhaps, be tiring of the pronunciation issue. Fiji is called that because that’s what Captain Cook heard the Tongans call it, i.e., the name is not what the people who live there call it. But since their language isn’t ours anyway, they may not care how we butcher their name. They know who they are. Also, it always pleases me to remember that the arrogant colonizer Cook ended up clubbed to death because he opened fire on indigenous Hawai’ians who thought he had given them his boats. He said, “No, I take them back, you savages,” and they said, “Yeah, well you shot one of us, but while you’re reloading your fire stick, we avenge all our island brothers.” *whomp*

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