Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Up with Geography: The Bahamas

Country Name:
The Bahamas

Capital:
Nassau

Continent:
None; it's an island chain. North America is the closest continent.

Map:


Neighbors:
The closest neighbors are Cuba, to the southwest; the U.S., to the west-ish; and Turks and Caicos, to the east-ish.

Water Border:
Atlantic Ocean

Total Area(added March 2015)
5,358 square miles

Five Largest Cities:
Nassau, Freeport, West End, Coopers Town, Marsh Harbour

Famous Geographical Point:
700 atolls and cays, somewhat represented on the map by lots of tiny dots

Famous Person:
Kimbo Slice, boxer, MMA fighter, & actor

Book Set In/About:
An Evening in Guanima by Patricia Glinton-Meicholas

This is a collection of Bahamian folktales.

Movie Set In/About:
"Thunderball" (1965), directed by Terence Young

This is a Sean Connery James Bond movie, wherein Bond is searching for two stolen nuclear warheads in The Bahamas. It was extremely difficult to find a movie set in or about The Bahamas, or even by a Bahamian director. This was the highest rated one I could dig up.

Headline of the Day:
"The Race Is On" in The Nassau Guardian (this is an article about Loretta Butler-Turner announcing her bid to run for leadership of the Free National Movement party).

Note: When I typed "The Bahamas" in Google, no news stories came up. I then typed in "Bahamas news" and clicked on the first news source provided, The Nassau Guardian. I then chose the first article listed.

2 comments:

Patricia said...

This post raises the following question: Not all countries are part of continents? I guess I knew that somewhat, but it seems like when I think of Indonesia, with its many islands, it is part of Asia, right? So do they scoot places like the Bahamas over to North America? Or are there places that just exist not being a continent? It seems like people who classify wouldn't stand for that.

balyien said...

From what I gather, it's basically a matter of personal preference. In the strictest sense of the term "continent," only the large land mass that makes up the continent is included. For example, the island of Tasmania would not be considered part of the continent of Australia; only Australia makes up the Australian continent.

However, many geographers/mapmakers include islands on their continent maps, and people are used to seeing it that way, so it feels weird even to me to not include islands with continents.

I debated the issue internally for a long time, but eventually came to the conclusion that, to me, only a continent can be a continent. No matter how close an island may be to a large land mass, it's still an independent land mass. So that is how I'm classifying them on here.