WHO KNEW?….Fun Facts by Daniel

1. With 3 national capitals, South Africa has the most capital cities of any country on Earth.  This is due to the fact that different branches of government are located in different cities.  Pretoria is the administrative and executive capital while Cape Town is the legislative and Bloemfontein is the judicial.  While South Africa is the only country with 3 capitals, many countries have 2.  This is often due to the fact that the different government branches or departments aren’t all located in the same city (as is the case in Benin, Bolivia, Chile, Georgia, Malaysia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, and Tanzania) or simply because the official capital is different from the de facto seat of government (as is the case in Ivory Coast, Taiwan, and Western Sahara).  In fact, Taiwan’s official capital, Nanjing, isn’t even located in Taiwan but rather in China, a country which Taiwan (officially named Republic of China) claims sovereignty over.

2. While you may not be able to tell to look at him, Justin Trudeau is actually mixed race.  While he is mostly of French and Scottish descent, one of his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers on his mothers side was an ethnic Malay.  This makes him our first prime minister to have confirmed non-European ancestry.  However, while US President Barack Obama is widely known for being that country’s first leader with non-Caucasian ancestry, most people are likely unaware about Trudeau.  This is likely because Obama is half non-Caucasian while Trudeau is only 1/256th non-Caucasian.  Another interesting fact about Trudeau is that his birthday is Christmas Day.

Pictures:  1. South African Houses of Parliament, Cape Town                  2. Justin Trudeau at the APEC summit in Manila, November 18, 2015