Geography

Country Information

Country Overviews

A good place to start when you want to know "what is my country famous for?"

    • National Geographic Travel - A-Z country listing
    • BBC Country Profiles - Published by the British Broadcasting Corporation and updated regularly. Choose your country or territory from the pull-down menu under the correct world region. Includes a country profile, overview, leaders, facts, and media. Also look for a timeline and links to current news stories about your country.
    • Embassies - A country's embassy is it's official "office" in other countries. Most countries have embassies in Washington DC. Check this list.
  • Living In... - A BBC feature that gives an overview of a city or country, geared toward people looking to live there. It has a nice section called "What Is It Known For?" and "Side Trips" tells you about some travel highlights. It does not exist for all countries, but there are currently about 70 articles, accessible through a pull-down menu. The end of the article features some links to local resources.

Country studies, profiles, and statistics

When you want the facts

    • CIA World Factbook - Published by the U.S. Central American Intelligence Agency and updated annually. To use this site, choose the name of your country from the pull-down menu near the top of the page, where it says "Select a country or location."
    • BBC Country Profiles - Published by the British Broadcasting Corporation and updated regularly. Choose your country or territory from the pull-down menu under the correct world region. Includes a country profile, overview, leaders, facts, and media. Also look for a timeline and links to current news stories about your country.
    • Index Mundi - detailed country statistics, charts, and maps compiled from multiple sources.
    • United Nations Countries at a Glance - Choose a country from the map to find a country overview, today's news, economy, environment, health, and technology.
    • United Nations InfoNation Basic (also InfoNation Advanced) - Allows you to compare data from different countries.
    • State Department Background Notes - from the U.S. Department of State. These profiles are updated periodically and include information on each country's people, history, government, political conditions, economy, defense, foreign and U.S. relations, and travel/business information.
    • Library of Congress Country Profiles - These are Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files. Brief, summarized information on a country’s historical background, geography, society, economy, transportation and telecommunications, government and politics, and national security. Part of the Country Studies Program, formerly the Army Area Handbook Program. Does not cover every country in the world.

News

    • New York Times Country List - Click the name of a country or territory on this page to view recent and archival news about that country from The News York Times.
    • Also check the BBC Country Profiles for current news.

Weather & Climate

- Current weather, weather forecast and weather averages across the U.S. and in 6,500+ locations worldwide.

- records and averages, climatology and historical weather for 16,000+ cities in the U.S. and worldwide, searchable by city, state, country or ZIP code.

- brief description of typical weather regimes throughout the year.

Flags & Maps, Holidays, Weather, Currency

Government & Political Leaders

Capital Cities

- Alphabetical list of countries with capital city/cities, geographic coordinates, and time difference from UTC and from Washington, DC.

Languages

- rank ordering of languages starting with the largest and sometimes includes the percent of total population speaking that language. Includes notation official languages as well.

Cultural Information

- from Kwintessential, covers about 40 countries and some U.S. states.

- Wikipedia

- UNESCO - A list of 936 of the most important and famous sites in the world that are an important part of the heritage and culture of a country. This list is organized by country or location.

Currencies & Postal Rates