How Old Is the Average Country? 375
Daniel_Stuckey writes with a snippet from his piece at Vice: "I did some calculations in Excel, using independence dates provided on About.com, and found the average age of a country is about 158.78 years old. Now, before anyone throws a tizzy about what makes a country a country, about nations, tribes, civilizations, ethnic categories, or about my makeshift methodology, keep in mind, I simply assessed 195 countries based on their political sovereignty. That is the occasion we're celebrating today, right?"
Re:Egypt in 1922? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Egypt in 1922? (Score:5, Interesting)
...or the fact that France was occupied by the Germans during WWII. The three year occupation of Sweden by the Danes during a war in the 1520:s, on the other hand, is apparently enough to cut Sweden's age down to 490 years.
Something which by the way wouldn't bother a Swede if it wasn't for the fact that the blasted Danes are listed at 1048 years. ;-)
Re: If it makes you sleep well at night.... (Score:3, Interesting)
And we returned the favour by owning more of France than the French for over 300 years. Not content with that we then had the largest empire the world had ever seen. Not bad for a little island of drizzle.
Re: If it makes you sleep well at night.... (Score:4, Interesting)
On the US side it really under-states things.
Americans will accept a daily commute of 100 miles (50 miles a way), and won't understand why you didn't drive 150 miles out of your way to see them on the holidays. After all it's only two-and-a-half hours.
OTOH things that happened even 50 years ago (like the Civil Rights Movement) are ancient history.
Re:Incredible mistakes in Europe... (Score:4, Interesting)
Which kind of highlights the huge difference between mainland European monarchy and the one in England. England had a regular parliament of sorts since the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 even if it was only used to levy taxes without too much of a revolt. And every monarch who went against it met a bad end afterwards. Except Henry VIII. Who propably was the only absolutistic(ish) monarch since William the Bastard's line drowned.
Honestly, putting a clear date next to a sovereign state is bound to stir an argument. I do not know what that was supposed to be good for. It's like painting a border around Israel and hoping that nobody will object. Ask a Glaswegian how old the UK is and he won't give you the 1066 date. Thistles, leeks, lions...there's bound to be a huge and pointless argument. And that's even before waking up the French. There might even be a war.
Re:If it makes you sleep well at night.... (Score:4, Interesting)
What is left of The Roman Empire is now called Liechtenstein. This is not a simple history, in fact it is complex and based on many old treaties that have full legal status even today, some are more then 500 years old. For instant, the country of Prussia existed from the year 1525 to the year 1947. I live in the part of Denmark that was once a part of Prussia, it did go under control of Denmark in the year 1920.
Prussia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia [wikipedia.org]
Liechtenstein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein [wikipedia.org]
This map is simple at best and only minor part of this history when it comes to countries existence over time.