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I searched the interwebs and happened to find a wonderful resource that would be great for coloring fun all while getting a geography education. A digital image collection provided by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology (FCIT) — part of the College of Education at the University of South Florida — ClipArt ETC houses over 200 black and white world flags (↗) that could be used as printable coloring pages. If you know about all the world's countries, you might notice some countries' flags are missing — including AFGHANISTAN, HAITI, KAZAKHSTAN, LIECHTENSTEIN, LUXEMBOURG*, MALTA, and ZAMBIA. Nevertheless, lots of coloring fun can be had since the website's images are easy to copy/paste into a document and print. For educational, classroom, and non-profit uses, ClipArt ETC grants you "permission to use a maximum of fifty (50) clipart items in any non-commercial, educational project (report, presentation, display, website, etc.)" although there are some reasonable restrictions. More information about the free (and commercial) licensure options can be found on the ClipArt ETC website (↗). If you are a teacher, you could let your students choose a flag to color and instruct them to create a poster or PowerPoint presentation involving the flag's country. Enjoy, and kudos to FCIT for a wonderful website!
* The NETHERLANDS' flag can be used as a substitute due to three-stripe similarity.
1) Situated in the extreme northwest corner of British Columbia, Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park is wedged in a triangular area between Alaska to the south and west and which territory of CANADA to the north?
A — Northwest Territories
B — Nunavut
C — Yukon
2) True or false: The state of Georgia in the UNITED STATES has two towns named Mountain Park.
3) Tanbaly (Tamgaly) is an archaeological UNESCO world heritage site situated in the historic Zhetysu region of southeastern KAZAKHSTAN. Tanbaly is featured on an interestingly shaped 500 Tenge coin (↗) from the year 2012. The landscape is particularly notable for having about 5,000 ____________.
A — hieroglyphs
B — petroglyphs
C — buildings
D — vases
ANSWERS
Question 1:
C . . . . . Yukon
Question 2:
True . . . . . a small Mountain Park town is in Fulton County, and a Census-designated place with the same name is in Gwinnett County.
Question 3:
B . . . . . petroglyphs
People all across KAZAKHSTAN are celebrating their country's Independence Day today on Wednesday, December 16th. Kazakhstan achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Happy Independence Day!
The Amazing Race’s penultimate eleventh episode of Season 32 aired on Wednesday, December 9th and was set in the capital city of Manila, located on Luzon island in the PHILIPPINES. Filmed about a year or so before the coronavirus’ worldwide wrath, this episode featured a sprint and an exploration of the city through multiple clues but also lacked a Detour and Roadblock.
● Episode 11 info on CBS — In the first city sprint, the final four teams race through Manila, the capital of the Philippines.
● Once arriving in Manila, teams rode a colorful jeepney to Rizal Park and met Phil Keoghan there.
● Phil informed the four remaining teams that, instead of typical Amazing Race events such as Detours and Roadblocks, they will compete in a City Sprint. Outside a large mall near the Manila Bay in Bay City, Philippines, team members had to trot in high heels for 500 meters (0.31 miles)! At first, the guys understandably struggled to walk while wearing the unfamiliar footwear, but they eventually figured out how to do it with poise!
● After searching for and finding the Binondo Arch of Goodwill in Manila’s Chinatown, teams looked for a clue in the mouth of a colorfully costumed lion dancing in the pedestrian walkways. This clue told teams to arrive by foot to the Central Post Office for another clue.
● “Hay Day”: in a plaza outside the Central Post Office, teams found a kalesa (horse-drawn carriage) and searched the area for necessary ingredients to mix up a bucketful of horse food. Dried grass and the bucket’s mixture were fed to a team’s respective horse, and a clue to Mehan Garden was subsequently given to the team.
● For this episode’s last task, teams arrived at Mehan Garden where a band produced some melodies and rockin’ good tunes for the residents of Manila. The band continuously played four musical compositions featured in previous Amazing Race episodes. A bunch of cases for guitars and other instruments were strewn about, and each case displayed a country’s flag. Teams were tasked to find cases with four flags corresponding to the songs’ national origin; teams organized these cases in chronological order based on when the songs were played in Season 32.
While most of the flags represented countries the teams visited — including Colombia, France, Germany, India, Kazakhstan, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago — I also spotted an “extra” flag of a country that teams did not step foot in: Mozambique. If you noticed any other flags in this episode, please feel free to comment below! In any case (pun intended), these are the correct flags on the instrument cases in earlier to later order: Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Paraguay, and France. Maddison and Riley completed this task first, so they quickly proceeded to the nearby Pit Stop.
● Pit Stop: Lapu Lapu Monument (Statue of the Sentinel of Freedom) — Rizal Park, Ermita District in Manila
● Season 32’s finale (episode 12) will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. A glimpse of the millionaire-making Pit Stop reveals that teams will end their Amazing Race journeys at the New Orleans Saints’ home turf: Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
Season 32, Episode 11 Pit Stop Results
The 1st through 4th place results are the same as episode 10.
1st — Maddison and Riley
1st place prize — no prize given in this episode
2nd — James and Will
3rd — Chee and Hung
4th — DeAngelo and Gary
Eliminated from the competition? Yes
According to National Geographic MapMaker (mapmaker.nationalgeographic.org), the following items are major exports of KAZAKHSTAN: barley, bauxite, chemicals, chromium, coal, cobalt, copper, ferrous metal, gold, iron ore, machinery, manganese, meat, melons, molybdenum, natural gas, nickel, petroleum and refined products, potatoes, silver, spring wheat, titanium, uranium, wool, and zinc. According to the International Monetary Fund (data.imf.org), countries and territories buying and importing most of those exports (February 2017 statistics) include Russia (top importer), Switzerland, China, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, India, Uzbekistan, the United States, Turkey, Ukraine, Japan, Romania, the United Kingdom, Poland, Greece, South Korea, Portugal, and Iran.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ for KAZAKHSTAN in central Asia lists 18 critically endangered species and 21 endangered species. Kazakhstan's critically endangered species include the European Mink, Great Sturgeon, Persian Sturgeon, Saiga, Slender-billed Curlew, Sociable Plover, and Two-humped Camel. Endangered species include the Asiatic Wild Dog, Caspian Seal, Egyptian Eagle, Mongolian Wild Horse, Shrubby Buckwheat, Snow Leopard, and Wild Apricot.
The Beloribitsa (Stenodus leucichthys) fish species formerly lived and swam in the Caspian Sea basin of western KAZAKHSTAN. Unfortunately due to hydroelectric dams along the Volga, Ural, and Terek rivers and drainages, the species' spawning grounds were decimated. This species was rare for several decades in some rivers. For example, they were rare to find in the Ural River in the 1960s. Today, the species barely survives in cultured stocks.
Various countries have suns on their flags. They are ANTIGUA and BARBUDA, ARGENTINA, KAZAKHSTAN, KIRIBATI, KYRGYZSTAN, MALAWI, NAMIBIA, NEPAL, NORTH MACEDONIA (known as Macedonia or FYROM in 2015), The PHILIPPINES, RWANDA, and URUGUAY. Comprised of a main island and smaller islands, TAIWAN (Republic of China) is not exactly a country but it also has a sun on its flag. The sun on Taiwan's flag is featured in the top-left corner on top of a blue rectangle. The flags of BANGLADESH and JAPAN both feature a central red circle representing the sun. PALAU's yellow circle actually represents the moon!
There are sixteen countries with Z in their names. Two countries start with the letter Z: Zambia and Zimbabwe. Other countries with the letter Z in their names are Azerbaijan, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mozambique, New Zealand, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tanzania, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. Zaire was a former Z country, but that became the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
It would be a difficult feat to build a bridge across the Caspian Sea of Western Asia due to its approximately 200 kilometer width and 800 kilometer length. However, there is a thin, vertical isthmus serving as a natural bridge, allowing a road to connect two peninsulas in western TURKMENISTAN. This isthmus and road are found along the Caspian Sea's eastern coast and west of Garabogaz Aylagy lagoon. North of the town of Bekdash in northwest Turkmenistan, the highway eventually crossed the border and heads into KAZAKHSTAN. In addition to Turkmenistan's natural bridge with a road, a man-made bridge is found hovering over the Caspian Sea in eastern AZERBAIJAN on the other side of the Caspian Sea.
Hovering above the 56th degree longitude line, the Ustyurt Plateau is found along the border between KAZAKHSTAN and UZBEKISTAN. It is less than 200 miles east of the Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland water body/lake that is completely surrounded by land. The plateau is in the southwestern part of Kazakhstan and western Uzbekistan. The Ustyurt is not very high in elevation - in fact, it is barely above sea level - which defies the typical perception of what a plateau is. However, the land is higher than the surrounding area, especially compared to land in the northwest (Kazakhstan) where there is a depression below sea level.
A large country in Central Asia, KAZAKHSTAN is found northeast of the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan's largest lakes are in the eastern part of the country, a region in close proximity with countries like China and Kyrgyzstan. This post from July 2011 (link opens in a new tab or window) is specifically about Lake Balkhash, a salty lake that is the largest water body completely in Kazakhstan - Aral Sea and Caspian Sea, both of which are larger than Lake Balkhash, are also partially situated in other countries besides Kazakhstan. Other lakes in Eastern Kazakhstan include Alaköl, Marqaköl, Qapshaghay Bögeni reservoir, Sasyqköl, and Zhaysang Köli. Lakes in Central Kazakhstan include Meshkeysor Köli, Ozero Sarykopa, Tengiz Köli. Finally, lakes in Western Kazakhstan include Aralsor Köli, Ozero Shalkar, and Ÿnder Köli.
Have you noticed that many Central and South Asian countries have the suffix of -stan? This generally means 'country' and is added to the ethnic group that makes each 'Stan Country' unique. For example, -stan is added to Uzbek, the largest ethnic group in UZBEKISTAN. The remaining 'Stan Countries' are AFGHANISTAN, KAZAKHSTAN, KYRGYZSTAN, PAKISTAN (unlike the others, Pakistan's name isn't derived from ethnic group + stan; people are called Pakistanis, not Pakis or Paks), TAJIKISTAN, and TURKMENISTAN.
Quite a few capitals previously had different names. The following is a list of many, definitely not all, of the capitals that had different names in the past — they are categorized by continent.
AFRICA
Bujumbura, BURUNDI's former capital (Gitega is the new capital since 2019), was called Usumbura until 1962.
N'Djamena, CHAD's capital, was called Fort Lamy until 1973.
Kinshasa, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO's capital, was called Léopoldville until 1966.
Banjul, the capital of GAMBIA, was named Bathurst until 1973.
Antananarivo, MADAGASCAR's capital, was named Tananarive until 1975.
Maputo, MOZAMBIQUE's capital, was named Lourenço Marques until Mozambique's independence in 1976.
Harare, ZIMBABWE's capital, was named Salisbury until 1982.
ASIA
Tbilisi, GEORGIA's capital, was known as Tpilisi (Georgian) or Tiflis (Russian) until 1936.
Jakarta, INDONESIA's highly-populated capital, was known as Sunda Kelapa, then Jayakata, then Batavia, then Djakarta from 1949 to 1972.
Tokyo, JAPAN's capital located on the island of Honshu, was previously named Edo until 1868.
Astana, KAZAKHSTAN's capital, was known as Tselinograd, then Aqmola.
Bishkek, KYRGYZSTAN's capital, was named Pishpek until 1926 and Frunze until 1991, the fall of the Soviet Union.
Ulaanbaatar, MONGOLIA's capital, was known as Ugra until 1924.
Dushanbe, TAJIKISTAN's capital, was called Dyushambe until 1929 and received the name Stalinagrad until 1961.
Ankara, TURKEY's capital, was called Angora until 1930.
Ashgabat, TURKMENISTAN's capital, was called Poltoratsk from 1919 until 1927.
EUROPE
Belgrade, SERBIA's capital, was known as Singidunum in ancient times.
Podgorica, MONTENEGRO's capital, was known as Birziminium before the 11th century, Ribnica during the Middle Ages, and Titograd from 1946 to 1992. The capital possessed the name Podgorica in 1326 until 1946, resuming in 1992.
SOUTH AMERICA
Sucre, one of two capitals of BOLIVIA and named in honor of Antonio José de Sucre, was called Chuquisaca until 1825.
Credit goes to the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition, which conveniently listed former capital names.
Lake Assal and the Assal Depression, located west of the Gulf of Tadjoura in central DJIBOUTI (a small country in the Horn of Africa), is the lowest point on the African continent, boasting an elevation of -512 feet! The lowest point on land in the world (excluding deep oceanic trenches) is ISRAEL's Dead Sea, which is more than a whopping 1,300 feet below sea level; it is so salty that swimmers can easily float with minimal effort! The Dead Sea's depth pales in comparison to the Marianas Trench, the deepest trench in the world at almost -36,000 feet and almost -11,000 meters! Therefore, the Marianas Trench's depth is larger than Mt. Everest's height. Other depressions and negative-elevation points in the world include CHINA's Turfan Depression, EGYPT's Qattara Depression, and KAZAKHSTAN's Karagiye Depression.
>>> To discover more about Djibouti, visit my Djibouti post! Also, click on the 'Countries' tab above to find links to my posts of other African countries.
Ozero Balkhash (Lake Balkhash) is a large lake in southeastern KAZAKHSTAN, an Asian nation located south of Russia and northwest of China. Towns/cities that are situated along the shores of the Ozero Balkhash include Balkhash, Burubaytal, Gul'shad, Kopbirlik, Saryshagan, and Tasaral.
The largest lake and enclosed water body in the world, the Caspian Sea is located in Central Asia. The 5 countries of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan share borders with this sea. There are at least four major sources of water flowing into the Caspian Sea, as detailed below.
● Kura (Kür) River — flows through Azerbaijan, meeting the Caspian Sea's southwest shore at the towns of Bankä and Neftçala.
● Terek River — flows through SW Russia, meeting the west shore at the Agrakhanskiy Poluostrov peninsula — the town of Lopatin is located at the tip of that peninsula.
● Ural (Zhayyq) River — flows through Kazakhstan, meeting the north shore at the towns of Atyraū, Balyqshy, and Zhumysker.
● Volga River (longest river in Europe) — flows through western Russia, meeting the northwest shore at the city of Astrakhan.
Here are the 10 largest countries in area:
1) Russia
2) Canada
3 or 4) * United States of America
3 or 4) * China
5) Brazil
6) Australia
7) India
8) Argentina
9) Kazakhstan
10) Algeria — was formerly Sudan until South Sudan separated from Sudan
*** Visit this wikipedia page for the whole list of countries by area.
* The areas of the USA and China may vary depending on what is included and excluded from the total area; both total areas are similar.
Also known as QAZAQSTAN, the Republic of KAZAKHSTAN is a large, former Soviet Republic located in Central Asia, bordering 5 countries: China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The western part of the country is in Europe. There are a couple of well-known bodies of water that border this country: the Caspian Sea, which is actually a large lake; and the Aral Sea, a lake that is shrinking at a rapid rate. The capital of Kazakhstan is Astana. Almaty, Kazakhstan's most populated city as of 2024, served as the country's first capital after independence in the 1990s. Kazakhstan's currency is the Kazakhstani Tenge; the ISO 4217 currency code is KZT.
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