North Korea does not show up on Google maps.  How will I ever mail Kim Jong-il his Christmas present!?

San Marino (not to be confused with NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino) is a tiny European country, completely surrounded by Italy.  San Marino claims to be the oldest recorded sovereign state and constitutional republic.  The country’s roots trace back to AD 301, with the founding of a monastic community.  In 1600, San Marino’s constitution was enacted, making it the world’s oldest constitution still in effect.  Like a lot of old things, San Marino pretty much goes without notice.

Automaker Henry Ford was the only American mentioned in Hitler’s Mein Kampf.  Hitler admired many of Ford’s theories about auto-making and also some anti-semitic articles that were published under Ford’s name in a weekly newspaper The Dearborn Independent.  In 1924, Hitler even sent a representative to Ford’s house to ask him for a contribution to the Nazi movement.  Ford declined.  Once his anti-semitic views became more widely known, Ford retracted many of his statements.  In 1927, he issued a public apology, and history text books pretty much swept it all under the rug. 

On another note, Henry Ford was also a big proponent of hiring the handicapped (I sincerely hope it wasn’t an act of exploitation).  In 1919, more than 20% of  Ford’s employees had some form of disability.

That’s very respectable.  And also something you don’t really want to hear coming from your car company.

Nazi Germany initiated the first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history.  Hitler smoked in his younger years, but unfortunately gave it up when he got older.  He viewed smoking as “the wrath of the red man against the white man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor.”  Could also be the highly addictive nicotine, but whatever.  Hitler expressed that “so many excellent men have been lost to tobacco poisoning.”  Wow, what a humanitarian.  Inversely, many cigarettes felt that too many good men had been lost to Hitler poisoning.

A coastal state has jurisdiction over its territorial water,  which extends up to 12 nautical miles out from the coast.  A nautical mile is equivalent to 1.151 miles or 1.852 kilometers (which is the same as 1.151 miles…).  The nautical mile is very helpful in navigation with charts and maps because the unit is roughly the same as a minute of latitude, thus it’s easy to measure distance on maps that use such dividers.  Also, a knot is equivalent to 1 nautical mile per hour.  I don’t know how to wrap this one up, because I know that not-jokes aren’t funny anymore.

KNOT!!!!

But seriously, they’re not funny.

Sister cities…why?  The U.S. sister city program was originally proposed as a way to connect people internationally by President Eisenhower in 1956.  Eventually this led to the creation of Sister Cities International in 1967, whose goal is to “promote peace through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation…”  I am pretty sure that exact mission statment can be (and has been) used for every politically correct initiative ever.  Seriously, try to be a little more generic…  Anyway, critics of the program complain that the sister city program is simply a waste of money and nothing more than an excuse for a politician to get a free vacation to some foreign city.  I’m sure that’s what the mayor of Miami, Florida is doing…let’s see…yeah…he’s definitely mooching off a free trip to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti…

Currently 66% of the world’s population drives on the right side of the road, while 34% drive on the left side.  Here is pretty cool picture of a cross over road at a border where the drivers must switch sides of the road to accommodate the rules of the road in a new country.  It looks like a giant 7 year-old designed this with track used for Hot Wheels cars.

Of the independent countries at the time, New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote (1893).  However, things are not quite as equal in Lebanon, where women have partial suffrage.  Proof of elementary education is required for women, but not for men.  Also, voting is compulsory for men, but optional for women.  Gee… that’s so nice of Lebanon to let the women have the option of voting or not.   The Lebanese government is so chill.

In 2009, the Bureau of Immigration of the Philippines issued an order prohibiting actor Alec Baldwin from entering the country, considering him an “undesirable alien.”  This was in response to a joke Baldwin made about wanting a Filipino mail-order bride.  Joke’s on the Philippines…This doesn’t stop him from getting a mail-order bride.

Antarctica is considered politically neutral, which really hurts my chances of claiming Antarctica as my own country.  In 1959, the Antarctic Treaty was established, which designated Antarctica as a politically neutral place of scientific research.  Also, all military activity was banned.  No one could build a secret military ice station.  Well, I guess they could if it was secret…  Currently, there are 46 treaty recognizing nations.  Now that I know Antarctica is the world’s scientific playground, I can’t wait to go down there and study all the…ice?

The Stargate Project was the code name of a $20 million dollar research project funded by the United States Federal Government to study the possibility of using psychic powers for military gains.  One of the central goals of the project was to master “remote viewing.”  Remote viewing is the ability to psychically “see” things, places, and information from extreme distances using ESP.  The project took place from the 1970s to 1995 as a way to get a leg up on the Soviets.  How great would it be if we could watch things taking place from a great distance from the safety of our homes.  It would have to have a snappy, high-tech name.  Let’s see.   What’s the Greek word for “distance”?  Tele.  And we want to put another word in there that shows that we are actually seeing it.  Vision!  We will call it “Television”!!! 

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit proposed the Fahrenheit temperature scale in 1724, where water freezes at 32 degrees and water boils at 212 degrees.  Currently the United States, Belize, Burma, and Liberia (the 4 Global Superpowers) are the only countries that have yet to be metricated.  Nearly the entire science community in the U.S. uses Celsius now.  Great Britain made the switch to only teaching Celsius in the 1960s and ’70s.  But I say, who gives a crap what the rest of the world does?  I don’t see Burma using Celsius.  I don’t see Liberia wimpin’ out.  I don’t see children in Belize fawning over the Celsius scale.  As long as we have Burma, Belize, and Liberia on our side, I know we will be ok.

Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of the University of Chicago have maintained and controlled the Doomsday Clock.  This symbolic clock tracks earth’s proximity to total destruction— the closer to midnight, the closer to annihilation.  Originally, this clock represented the threat of global nuclear war, but since 2007, the Doomsday Clock has considered climate issues and nanotechnology.  Since its creation, the clock has changed 19 times (the clock was originally set at 11:53 PM).  The closest we’ve been to disaster was in 1953, when the clock was set at 11:58 PM.  This occurred after the United States and the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons within 9 months of each other.  January 14, 2010 was the last time the clock was updated; currently, we are at 11:54 PM.  Adhering to this clock, Cinderella shouldn’t spend much time worrying about her carriage transmogrifying into a pumpkin. When the clock strikes twelve, they won’t be using her glass slipper to find her…they will be using the radioactive glass crater that kind of smells like her.

I always hear about First World Countries and Third World Countries, but I never really hear about the Second World Countries.  I wanted to find out more about the Silver-medal countries.  The placement of countries into different “worlds” started after World War II when the world split into two large geopolitical blocs.  The first bloc refers to the First World, which includes developed, capitalist, industrial countries that aligned with the United States after the second World War.  They all generally share common political and economic interests.  The second main bloc is made up of the Second World Countries, formerly known as the Eastern Bloc, referring to the communist-socialist, industrial states that at the time aligned with the USSR.  It now includes Russia, Eastern Europe, as well as China according to OWNO (One World-Nations Online).  The Third World was composed of the countries that didn’t fit into the first main blocs and is now used to vaguely describe developing countries, including both capitalist and communist countries, and the rich (Saudi Arabia) as well as the poor (Mali).  Interestingly, where your country ranks in terms of First, Second, or Third World Countries is inversely related to how well your country finished in Olympic marathon race.