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People all across MOLDOVA celebrated their country's Independence Day yesterday on Thursday, August 27th. Moldova proclaimed independence from USSR (the Soviet Union) in August 1991; independence officially occurred once the USSR collapsed and dissolved in December 1991. Happy belated Independence Day!
Name at least two countries that directly border the Black Sea in Eastern Europe.
All possible answers are listed below!
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Possible answers:
BULGARIA
GEORGIA
ROMANIA
RUSSIA
TURKEY
UKRAINE
(MOLDOVA does not quite border the Black Sea, although it does have access to the Black Sea via a port along the Danube River.)
What is the Struve Geodetic Arc, a UNESCO World Heritage Site spanning across the countries of BELARUS, ESTONIA, FINLAND, LATVIA, LITHUANIA, MOLDOVA, NORWAY, RUSSIA, SWEDEN, and UKRAINE? The UNESCO World Heritage Site webpage (↗) provides an interactive map and description:
The Struve Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through 10 countries and over 2,820 km. These are points of a survey, carried out between 1816 and 1855 by the astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, which represented the first accurate measuring of a long segment of a meridian. This helped to establish the exact size and shape of the planet and marked an important step in the development of earth sciences and topographic mapping. It is an extraordinary example of scientific collaboration among scientists from different countries, and of collaboration between monarchs for a scientific cause. The original arc consisted of 258 main triangles with 265 main station points. The listed site includes 34 of the original station points, with different markings, i.e. a drilled hole in rock, iron cross, cairns, or built obelisks.
Surveyors from around the world and other people involved in geodesy and geography might consider adding a [probably expensive] trip through Eastern Europe onto their travel "Bucket List"! The UNESCO description is available under license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Intergovernmental Organization 3.0 license (↗).
According to MIT's Observatory of Economic Complexity (atlas.media.mit.edu), the following items are major exports of MOLDOVA: aircraft, apples, barley, bovine livestock, chocolate, cleaning products, clothing, corn (maize), dairy products (especially cheese and ice cream), footwear parts, frozen bovine meat, fruit juice, furniture, glass bottles, grapes, hair care supplies, heating machinery, honey, insulated wire, insulated wire, iron materials, jam and jelly, leather footwear, liquid pumps, liquor and wine, luggage, mattresses, medical supplies, nuts, pears, petroleum, pitted fruit, prefabricated buildings, scrap copper, seed oil, soap, soybeans, sugar, sunflower seeds, and wheat. According to the International Monetary Fund (data.imf.org), countries and territories buying and importing most of those exports (February 2017 statistics) include Romania (top importer), Russia, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Poland, Belarus, Switzerland, France, Turkey, Greece, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Austria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Iraq, the United States, and Lithuania.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ for MOLDOVA in Southeastern Europe lists one extinct species*, six critically endangered species, and only three endangered species. Moldova's six critically endangered species are the European Eel, European Mink, Great Sturgeon, Russian Sturgeon, Saiga antelope, and Star Sturgeon. Moldova's three endangered species are all large raptor birds — the Egyptian Eagle, Saker Falcon, and Steppe Eagle. All of these species inhabit a much larger geographic area than just Moldova. There are likely some localized species that are endangered in Moldova and that do not appear on the IUCN Red List.
Extinct since the late 19th century, the Ukrainian Migratory Lamprey (Eudontomyzon sp. nov. ‘migratory’) is Moldova's sole extinct species featured on the IUCN Red List.
The capital of MOLDOVA, an eastern European nation that was part of the Soviet Union until 1991, is Chişinău. To learn more about Moldova, visit my Moldova post!
MOLDOVA is a landlocked, former-Soviet country located in Eastern Europe. It has a population above 3,500,000. Moldova borders two countries: Romania in the southwest and Ukraine in the northeast. The capital of Moldova, which has a population over 700,000, is Chişinău. Moldova's currency is the Moldovan Leu, and its ISO 4217 currency code is MDL. As indicated on the map, the Upper & Lower Trajan's Walls are located in southern Moldova, while the Lower Trajan's Wall stretches over through Ukraine and the Black Sea. For more information about these walls, visit the GeoFact of the Day Blog's 
Upper and Lower Trajan's Walls post.
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