São Tomé and Príncipe

São Tomé and Príncipe is the smallest country in the world, aside from some other countries that are smaller. An island nation located some amount of miles off the coast of west Africa, São Tomé and Príncipe was uninhabited before the year 1470, when the islands were discovered by Portuguese explorers conducting an experiment to see if they could find São Tomé and Príncipe. As it turned out, they could. In 1975, São Tomé and Príncipe gained its independence from Portugal as part of an experiment to see if they could do a better job on their own. I haven't managed (nor have I tried) to find any statistics on whether or not that worked out, so I'm gonna assume that it did. One thing I like about São Tomé and Príncipe is that São Tomé has a tilde in it. I think that's pretty cool.

São Tomé and Príncipe's president is Fradique de Menezes, seen here wearing a dumb-looking bowtie.

San Marino

San Marino (also known as The Most Serene Republic of San Marino [Really, San Marino? "Most serene?" There's a claim to fame. (Sarcasm!!!)]) is one of the European microstates, which is a nice way of saying that it has a soccer team that has never, ever won. San Marino is located in the Apennine Mountains, totally surrounded by Italy like a Vatican City with no popes in it. San Marino is the oldest sovereign state currently in existence, probably because it's really not all that difficult to maintain sovereignty over a tennis court-sized area in a mountainous region. Congratulations, I guess. Originally founded in the fourth century as a haven for Christians who were sick of the Roman Empire calling them mean, but not very clever names like "Christhole" and "Jesus balls." The nation's capital is the city of San Marino, located in the shadow of the country's highest peak, Mount Titano (Italian for "Mount Tittaaaays").

San Marino is named after its founder, Saint Marinus, shown here building some sort of thing.

Samoa

Samoa is an island nation in the south Pacific Ocean, the land mass of which is made up entirely of coconuts that have agglomerated in a massive pile due to a peculiar vortexy tidal situation. (Author's Note: Is that a racist thing to say? It feels like it was kind of racist. Or at least cruel and minimizing. I apologize to any and all of my Samoan readers.) The two largest islands in Samoa are Upolu and Savai'i, but even these so-called "main islands" are tiny as hell. The Samoan economy is based largely on tourism and agriculture, with its primary export being vaguely ethnic professional wrestlers - though Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka turns out to have been Fijian (Author's Note: Glad I looked that up, or I would have looked even more racist just now), prominent stars of Samoan extraction have included a guy named Rikishi, whose gimmick was "The Samoan Man with the Giant Fat Ass," as well as esteemed dramatic actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The capital, Apia, is nothing to write home about.

Sometimes Samoan people get weird tattoos.