New Zealand
New Zealand is well known for its natural beauty and for the film The Lord of the Rings. But did you know that their sheep to inhabitant ratio is slightly more than 6 per inhabitant?
Yes – they have an average of 4.9 million human inhabitants for almost 30 million sheep!
Bhutan
Bhutan is a Buddhist kingdom on the Himalayas’ eastern edge and is the only carbon-negative country in the world.
The country is made up of 60% forests, which remove carbon from the atmosphere. Also, the energy there is produced by Hydroelectric power stations, there are no industries and there is almost no oil-based transportation (gasoline or diesel).
Iceland
In Iceland, it is tradition to exchange books on Christmas Eve, stimulating culture and slowing down consumerism at this time of year. After Christmas dinner, it is common to spend the rest of the night reading.
Because of this, around 70% of Iceland’s books are published in the final months of the year and the country is one of the biggest reading nations in the world.
Kiribati
Kiribati is the only country in the world that is situated within all four hemispheres (North, South, East, and West).
This is because its 32 coral atolls and one island are scattered across a large expanse of the Pacific Ocean (equivalent in size to the continental United States)!
Ethiopia
Did you know that in the African country, Ethiopia, it is the year 2013?!
Because of the presence of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the locals use their own traditional Ethiopian calendar.
The main point of difference lies in the calculation of the date of the birth of Jesus, which results in the Ethiopian calendar being 7 to 8 years behind the Gregorian calendar (used by most of the world).
