50 Fun Facts About Former Countries

Which former country, a union of South Slavic peoples long led by Tito, broke up in the early 1990s?

Yugoslavia had been created after World War I as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and it split at first into five countries, setting off the Yugoslav Wars.

Which US state was an independent republic for almost ten years before the United States annexed it in 1845?

Texas was a sovereign country for nine years and entered the Union as the 28th state, though the formal handover of power waited until February 1846.

Which empire, the eastern heir of Rome, ended when Mehmed II captured Constantinople in 1453?

The Byzantine state was the last surviving part of the Roman Empire, so its fall closed a story that had begun in roughly 27 BC, nearly 1,500 years earlier.

Which French Enlightenment writer quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire?

Voltaire's jibe outlived its target: Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire in 1806 after a military defeat by the French under Napoleon.

Which tiny state was created in 1929, decades after Italy absorbed the much larger Papal States?

Vatican City was created by the Lateran Treaty, which ended the decades after 1870 when popes, having lost Rome, lived as self-declared prisoners in the Vatican.

Which animal appeared on the flag of the California Republic, a breakaway state that lasted 25 days in 1846?

A grizzly bear in silhouette gave the rebels' Bear Flag its name, and the design later became the basis for California's official state flag.

By what name was the island nation of Sri Lanka known until it became a republic in 1972?

Ceylon had been independent since 1948 as a dominion sharing its monarch with other Commonwealth countries, and it took its present name on becoming a republic.

Which East German car, with body panels of plastic made from cotton waste, became a symbol of the country?

The Trabant kept its 1950s design almost unchanged until 1990, and it came to symbolise the country as East Germans crossed the open border in 1989.

Which island nation united with mainland Tanganyika in 1964 to form a new East African country?

Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika three months after a revolution deposed its sultan, and the new country's name, Tanzania, blends the two.

Which city was the capital of South Vietnam until the country fell to northern forces in 1975?

Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976, when North and South were formally merged into a single country under the victorious communist government.

Who was the last leader of the Soviet Union, resigning as the country dissolved in December 1991?

Mikhail Gorbachev had led the country since 1985, and after stepping down he became a vocal critic of Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.

By what short name was East Germany's Ministry for State Security, its feared secret police, commonly known?

The Stasi relied on a vast network of civilian informants, and after reunification its files on millions of citizens were opened so that people could read their own.

Which city was the capital of West Germany from 1949 until the country's reunification in 1990?

Bonn stayed the seat of government for reunified Germany until 1999, when the government finally relocated to Berlin.

Which former German kingdom, with its capital at Berlin, was formally abolished by the Allies in 1947?

Prussia was condemned by the Allies as a bearer of militarism and reaction, though it had lost its real independence in 1932, when its government's powers passed to the German chancellor.

Which empire, ruled by sultans for about six centuries, was replaced by the Republic of Turkey in the 1920s?

The Ottoman name is an English form of Osman, the tribal leader whose small principality in north-western Anatolia grew into the empire.

Which Habsburg-ruled dual monarchy in Central Europe was dissolved in 1918 at the end of World War I?

Austria-Hungary dated only from 1867, when a compromise turned the old Habsburg empire into a union of two states under one monarch.

What title was held by the ruler of the Republic of Venice, elected for life until Napoleon ended the state?

The Doge was chosen through a complex series of votes, and by tradition the office lasted about 1,100 years, from 697 to 1797.

Which general led the volunteer Expedition of the Thousand that conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1860?

Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from near Genoa with a corps of volunteers, landed at Marsala in Sicily, and conquered the south in the name of King Victor Emmanuel II.

Which city served as capital of the Confederate States of America for nearly all of the Civil War?

Richmond took over in May 1861 from Montgomery, Alabama, which had been the Confederate capital for less than four months.

Queen Liliʻuokalani, deposed in a coup in 1893, was the last monarch of which Pacific island kingdom?

Hawaii lost its queen to a coup led by a committee made up mostly of residents of American descent, after she tried to bring in a constitution strengthening royal power.

Which British dominion gave up self-government in 1934 and became a province of Canada in 1949?

Newfoundland is the only dominion ever to give up its self-governing status, and for 15 years it was run by an appointed six-member commission.

Which Himalayan kingdom, ruled by a priest-king called the Chogyal, became a state of India in 1975?

Sikkim had been a monarchy since 1642, and it joined its giant neighbour after a referendum held once troops had taken over the capital, Gangtok.

Egypt united in 1958 with which country to form the United Arab Republic, a union that lasted three years?

Syria seceded after a coup in 1961, yet Egypt went on calling itself the United Arab Republic for another ten years.

Which port city was the capital of South Yemen until the country united with its northern neighbour in 1990?

Aden had been a British colony before independence in 1967, and until 1937 it was governed as a part of British India.

Biafra, a breakaway state whose defeat ended a civil war in 1970, tried to secede from which country?

Nigeria faced the secession of its Eastern Region, home mainly to the Igbo people, which declared independence in 1967 and held out for two and a half years.

Which West African country was called Upper Volta until Thomas Sankara renamed it in 1984?

Burkina Faso means 'Land of Incorruptible People', a name adopted exactly one year after Sankara took power in a military coup.

Which African country, ruled by emperors until a 1974 coup, was historically known as Abyssinia?

Ethiopia was ruled by a dynasty founded around 1270 until its final emperor, Haile Selassie, was deposed, and the old empire also covered present-day Eritrea.

Which Southeast Asian country was officially called Burma in English until a name change in 1989?

Myanmar declared independence in 1948, and a coup in 1962 began the long military rule under which the English name was changed.

What name did Mobutu Sese Seko give the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which used it from 1971 to 1997?

Zaire vanished along with its ruler: the old name was restored in 1997, and Mobutu died in exile less than four months later.

Which unrecognised state, which declared independence from Britain in 1965 under Ian Smith, is now Zimbabwe?

Rhodesia broke away to delay black majority rule, then fought a long bush war against nationalist guerrillas before a 1979 agreement led to recognised independence.

Which kingdom, the only Southeast Asian country never colonised by Europeans, was known as Siam until 1939?

Thailand took its new name seven years after a 1932 revolution turned the kingdom into a constitutional monarchy.

Which country's ruler asked foreign governments in 1935 to stop using the name Persia?

Iran had long been the name its own people used, so Reza Shah's request changed only what outsiders wrote in formal correspondence.

Which country annexed the Korean Empire in 1910, having made it a protectorate five years earlier?

Japan had its influence over Korea firmly established by the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended its war with Russia in 1905.

Puyi, the last emperor of China, was installed in the 1930s as ruler of which puppet state?

Manchukuo was set up in north-eastern China in 1932 and dissolved in 1945; Puyi was its figurehead but had no actual political power.

Which modern capital grew from Tenochtitlan, built on a lake island as the seat of the Aztec Empire?

Mexico City began as a settlement built around 1325 on islands in Lake Texcoco, and after the siege of 1521 it was rebuilt to Spanish urban standards.

Which ruler of the Mali Empire, famed for his gold, made a lavish pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324?

Mansa Musa drew his wealth from taxing the trade in salt and gold, at a time when Mali was probably the largest gold producer in the world.

Which soldier deposed the child emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476, ending the Western Roman Empire?

Odoacer was himself an officer of the Roman army, and after the coup he ruled Italy for 17 years, using the title of king.

Which king built the Zulu Kingdom into a military power before his half-brothers assassinated him in 1828?

Shaka ruled the Zulu for only twelve years, from 1816, and his killers are thought to have tried at least twice before they succeeded.

Which country was the province of East Pakistan before winning independence in a 1971 war?

Bangladesh means 'country of Bengal', and before its years as East Pakistan the province had been called East Bengal.

Which Balkan country voted narrowly in a 2006 referendum to end its state union with Serbia?

Montenegro declared independence on 3 June 2006, and the break-up of the union turned Serbia into a landlocked country.

The Free City of Danzig, a city-state under League of Nations protection until 1939, is now which Polish port?

Gdańsk had been a free city once before, from 1807 to 1814, and its second spell ended when German forces invaded Poland.

Who was the last emperor of the Russian Empire, forced to abdicate by the February Revolution of 1917?

Nicholas II had reigned since 1894, and his abdication ended the Romanov dynasty's 304-year rule.

The Congo Free State was the private property of which Belgian king, who never once visited it?

Leopold II won the territory by persuading other European states that his aims were humanitarian, and Belgium's parliament took it over in 1908 after international pressure.

Which independence leader was president of Gran Colombia, the short-lived union that broke up in 1831?

Simón Bolívar wanted a stronger presidency while his vice-president's camp pushed for constitutional rule, and the republic split into Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Residents of Neutral Moresnet, a tiny European territory, rallied in 1908 to adopt which constructed language?

Esperanto speakers hoped to turn the territory into the first state using their language, and a world congress in Dresden declared it the capital of their community.

Leaders of Russia, Ukraine and which third republic signed the 1991 accords declaring the Soviet Union ended?

Belarus hosted the meeting at a state dacha in the Belovezha forest, and the three republics were the surviving signatories of the 1922 treaty that had created the union.

Which English adventurer founded the Raj of Sarawak on Borneo in 1841, starting a dynasty that lasted a century?

James Brooke built his kingdom from land granted by the Sultan of Brunei, and his family held it until the last rajah ceded it to Britain as a Crown Colony in 1946.

Dubrovnik, on the coast of Croatia, was for centuries the centre of which maritime republic, annexed in 1808?

Ragusa carried that name from 1358, reached its commercial peak in the 15th and 16th centuries, and was conquered by Napoleon's French Empire.

Which West African country dropped the name Dahomey in 1975, choosing one seen as neutral between its peoples?

Benin was named after the Bight of Benin, because Dahomey recalled an old kingdom dominated by a single ethnic group, the Fon.

Which North African city-state was destroyed by the Roman Republic in 146 BC, at the end of the Third Punic War?

Carthage began as a Phoenician colony and grew into the capital of an empire dominating the south-western Mediterranean; its end came after a siege of nearly three years.