“Scottish Haggis Are Practically Extinct”: 30 Interesting Facts About Countries Round The Globe

As a Canadian, I cannot stress this enough: DO NOT APPROACH THE GEESE IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE.

French here.

Parisian don't hate you in particular.

They hate everyone.

They hate each other.

And most of them are not even born in Paris in the first place.

Scotland: National animal is the unicorn. Not joking.

Brazil: We have the biggest japanese community outside Japan.

The Italian national animal is the wolf, yes, but it's usually not specified that it's the *female* wolf.

The United States was formed by a bunch of aristocrats that didn’t want to pay their taxes.

Mexico is not yellow, and I'm tired of Hollywood always making Mexico yellow in their movies.

One fact not even people who were born and raised know about: During World War 2 the Netherlands had one of the worst survival rates for Jews in all of the German occupied territories; only 5,000 out 105,000 survived the war. The extensive Dutch civil administration is often cited as a cause of this; once German police had access to the public records they knew exactly who was Jewish, and where they lived. Once they had that information, it was easy for them to target and deport any Jewish people living in the Netherlands.

While that is true, what is not often talked about is how much of the work tracking down Jewish people was done by Dutch people, many of whom benefitted financially from their actions. Police and civil servants got paid bonuses if they found Jews in hiding, notaries public would make a hefty commission on the sale of confiscated Jewish properties, even the national rail company got their cut charging the Germans for use of their trains to transport captured Jews to concentration camps.

Education about this aspect of the German occupation has gotten much better over the past ten years or so, but when I was a kid we were taught none of this. We only heard about the how the heroic resistance would oppose the Germans and try to hide Jewish people, when in reality there were more collaborators than there were ever members of the resistance.

I feel like too few people are really prepared for how fast the Australian sun will burn them when they get off the plane...

If your SPF isn't 50+ it might as well go in the bin.

Retirement in Australia is basically skin cancer treatments.

Slip slip slap people.

New Zealand is colder than people expect.

Iceland does not have a Mcdonalds. Not sure if this is a well known fact or not but I get asked by trourists sometimes.

🇮🇪

1. We're not all drunk alcoholics.
2. We're not British.
3. There is more food and drink in 🇮🇪 than your stereotypes of potatoes, Guinness.
4. We don't like it when you claim your Irish through a long line of relatives.
5. The people here are not leprechauns. Some are just small or ginger.

Most of the haggis sold for meat are farmed in Wales. Wild scottish haggis are practically extinct.

As a Norwegian, Norway likes the "we are forward thinking and accept all people" publicity, but in reality, Norway is incredibly racist and xenophobic.

A lot of Norwegians will get angry if you point it out too.

Many people in the US do not carry firearms.

In World War II Canada interned Japanese people.

Many people don't know this but what is now Strathcona and East Vancouver used to be Japantown which was a bustling Japanese community. They were taken from their homes and businesses. In fact if you visit some of the buildings in Vancouver's Pacific National Exhibition (PNE), you're visiting the very buildings they slept in; hundreds of cots, lined up with no privacy.

Amsterdam is not the only place in the Netherlands.

pierogi is already plural , no knead to call them pierogies.

Our elderly care is abysmal. Nursing homes in US costs $8-15k a month and most insurance companies don't cover it. Don't be old, kids!

Germany: The autobahn is just a mundane part of everyday life many of us don't really think about, and speed limits do exist.