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.

Montenegro

Montenegro is a former Yugoslav republic located on the Adriatic coast. The name, meaning "black mountain," is Italian or something, reflecting the fact that the Serbian equivalent, Crna Gora, looks really stupid on paper. Of course, modern Montenegro was originally part of someplace called Duklja (What? [Exactly.]), so I guess everything's relative. Montenegro has gone through a number of political changes throughout its history, having been a metropolitanate, a principality, a kingdom, a socialist republic, a federal republic, and I think a kingdom again over the course of the past couple centuries. Jesus guys, will you make up your minds? In fact, I'm calling bullshit on metropolitanate. That word is marked as being misspelled every time I type it. And I'm an excellent speller. Pretty sure it's not even a real thing. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Montenegro has been having a relatively nice time, experiencing a high enough level of development that, if they're lucky, France might start letting them sit at the cool kids' table pretty soon.

From 1860 to 1910, Montenegro was ruled by King Nicholas I who, judging by this picture, also doubled as the country's entire military.

Malta

Malta is a European nation comprised by a handful of islands in the Mediterranean. Due to its strategic location due south of Sicily, Malta has been a military stronghold throughout history for numerous empires who were hoping for a good look at what those sneaky Italians were up to and, on occasion, for those sneaky Italians, who are just kind of narcissistic if you ask me. Throughout the 19th century, Malta's economy was based on cotton, shipbuilding, and "what dreams are made of" (Author's Note: That's a Humphrey Bogart reference. Ask your parents). The latter resource is no longer available, owing to the events of World War II, when the Maltese archipelago got blowed up real good and flooded the Mediterranean with dreams (it took years for the southern European fishing industry to recover). Malta has a rich religious history, thought by many Christian scholars to be a place where St. John once went by accident when he was shipwrecked on his way to, I dunno, the Cannes Film Festival or something. Malta is also home to the Megalithic Temples, the oldest free-standing structures in Europe.

The Megalithic Temples were built more than 3000 years before the invention of Jesus Christ, so it pretty much goes without saying that whoever built them is in Hell now. Whoops.

Macedonia

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (so named as a result of a copyright dispute with neighboring Greece [for a brief time, FYR Macedonia was designated only by an unpronounceable symbol that looked kind of like a stick figure doing a jumping jack (no particular significance, they just thought it looked cool)]) is a nation in southern Europe that has a much harder time ignoring Serbia than most of us. Once a part of ancient Paeonia, which I've never heard of, Macedonia was later conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which sounds at least reasonably familiar to me. In 1910, Macedonia produced its most famous native of the 20th century: Mother Teresa, who was not, in fact, anybody's mother, but rather a nun of Albanian descent who was charitable as hell and probably smelled terrific. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Macedonia became a part of Yugoslavia, but they'd probably rather I didn't talk about that period because it really didn't work out for anybody.

At 66 meters, the Millennium Cross in Skopje, Macedonia is the world's largest cross. If I were the world's largest heretic, I'd steer clear of Macedonia.

Italy

Italy is a country in southern Europe that would probably be okay if not for the fact that it is almost completely full of Italians. The capital is Rome, center of an ancient civilization that, at one point, stretched all the way into the British isles (mainly just so Roman officers would have a place to send soldiers they really didn't like). The ancient Romans basically invented stealing ideas from other cultures, making them lamer and then taking credit for them; in many ways, Roman mythology can be seen as an ancient precursor to Taco Bell. Florence, Italy was home to the Renaissance, a cultural movement that spanned the 14th to 17th centuries and extended all across Europe, providing us with some sweet-ass paintings and a bunch of sculptures of naked dudes with terrific muscles and tiny penises. One of the most famous Renaissance artists was Leonardo Da Vinci, who was the first to conceptualize a helicopter and a bunch of other awesome scientific shit, but is best remembered for this stupid painting of a woman who's kind of smiling, but not really. Over the past century, Italy has made a number of innovations in doing a terrible job of running a country, providing the world with such great steps backward as fascism and Silvio Berlusconi.

Seriously guys, she's not even that hot.