1 Nauru once had the largest GDP per capita in the world, making its profits from mining its phosphate reserves. However, the supply was eventually exhausted, decimating the economy.
Since then, the unemployment gap went to 90%. However, when Australia placed one of its detention facilities on Nauru, work went up dramatically.
Nice to see a list about the least famous country in the world
2 94.5% of the population is overweight, which makes Nauru the fattest sovereign state in the world. On top of this, 2 in 5 Nauruans are Type II Diabetic. Obesity is considered a sign of wealth in Nauru.
Obesity is a common problem in Oceania, due to the imports of processed foods, which is eaten in large quantities as feasting is generally a form of cultural celebration. In some Pacific Island nations, calorie-dense and unhealthy food is all which they can afford to import.
3 One of the smallest countries worldwide, Nauru covers only 20.98km², making it approximately a third the size of Manhattan Island. The majority of the population, however, lives on one small corner of the island.
The country has only one supermarket, one hospital, two hotels and three primary schools. Those schools are either controlled by the church or the state and thus have very different education systems, so that adds to the lack of options one has.
4 Nauru has one airport, and only one airline, Nauru Airlines, which only connects to Brisbane Airport in Australia, and five other airports in the South Pacific.
Needless to say, it is very hard to get into Nauru. And that's not accounting for the VISA costs.
The runway actually crosses the entire width of the island!
5 The closest land to Nauru is Banaba Island, Kiribati, which is 186 miles away.
A long way to go for literally anything.
6 From 2015 to 2018, Facebook was banned on the island. This ban was claimed to be part of a crackdown on child pornography, however was suspected to be part of a cover-up on media attacking Nauruan politics.
7 In 2014, the number of people in Australia's detention facility in Nauru peaked. That year, foreign journalists were limited in their ability to report this. The cost of a Nauruan VISA went from $200 to $8,000, and was non-refundable, even if rejected.
8 Nauru is the least visited country in the world. It has approximately 200 tourists a year.
9 90% of Nauru's land has been rendered infertile by the process of phosphate mining, which has wiped out much of its wildlife. Coconuts are grown along the coastline, but Nauru is heavily reliant on food imports.
10 Nauru is the only country with no capital city
Technically that goes for Switzerland as well
They actually do. Vatican City and Monaco do not
The Contenders
11 For a long period, Nauru had zero tax laws, and its banks did not require any record of transactions, which made it a top haven for money laundering. An income tax was placed for the first time in 2014.
The Russian Mafia famously laundered over $70 billion USD through Nauru in 1998.
12 The Nauruan language has no similar languages, so its origin is unknown.
13 The national day is the Angam day, the day where the population reached 1,500 inhabitants when Eidegenegen Edagaruwo was born.
That's her name. She was killed by the japanese in a work camp during WWII (at that point, Nauru's population dropped below 1,500 again).
14 A tribal war killed a third of the population in the 19th century.
It started with an argument over etiquette. Careful when debating, kids!