Round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows

When I was a boy (admittedly 70 years ago) and a devourer of maps (not literally, but I could study them for hours), the world was an entirely different place. Perhaps entirely different is a redundancy. Actually, it was the same place, but many of the names on maps are different nowadays, plus technology has advanced somewhat.

French Equatorial Africa became the countries of Chad, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon.

French West Africa became the countries of Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan (now Mali), French Guinea (now Guinea), Ivory Coast (now Côte d'Ivoire), Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Dahomey (now Benin) and Niger.

You can't trust maps. Cameroon is not included as part of the green French Equatorial Africa area on the first map but it is included on the second map in the gray area. I note that the island of Madagascar is also included. Curiouser and curiouser.

Let us dispense with any more maps as they seem to raise more questions than they answer.

British West Africa became the independent countries of The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria. Until independence, Ghana was referred to as the Gold Coast.

The British Empire was far-flung and worldwide, spawning the saying that the sun never sets on the British Empire. Eventually, however, it did.

British East Africa became largely Kenya. Tanganyika and Zanzibar became Tanzania. Northern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. Southern Rhodesia became Zambia. Nyasaland became Malawi.

Belgian East Africa (formerly German East Africa) included Ruanda-Urundi, which became the countries of Rwanda and Burundi. The Belgian Congo, formerly a colony of Belgium in Central Africa, became the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

German Southwest Africa became the country of Namibia.

The list of changes goes on.

In the Western Hemisphere, British Honduras became Belize. Canada created two more provinces, one called Newfoundland and Labrador, which sounds like two provinces, and one called Ninavut, which was carved out of the Northwest Territories.

British Guiana became Guyana. Dutch Guiana became Surinam.

In Asia, India was divided at "the partitioning" into India, West Pakistan, and East Pakistan. West Pakistan became plain old Pakistan, and East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Burma became Myanmar. Ceylon became Sri Lanka.

French Indo-China became the countries of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. For a while there was a North Vietnam and a South Vietnam, but once again there is only Vietnam.

Even Europe was not immune. What was once Yugoslavia is now Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovenia, and the double-named Bosnia and Herzegovina. Within Serbia there is a partially-recognized state, the Republic of Kosovo. Czechoslovakia became two countries called The Czech Republic and Slovakia. If you go back to even older European maps you will find names like Prussia and Schleswig-Holstein and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Go back far enough and you will find a Holy Roman Empire. But I digress.

The list includes places formerly known as the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the Dutch West Indies (now called collectively the Netherlands Antilles and individually called Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, and a few other places).

There were two places, Trinidad and Tobago, which are now one place, called Trinidad and Tobago. Go figure. Interesting facts about Trinidad and Tobago include that its capital is named Port of Spain and that its population religiously are 49.6% Christian, 18.2% Hindu, 5.7% Spiritual Baptist (this is either another redundancy or a typographical error), 5.0% Muslim, 1.2% Bahá'í, 0.9% Orisha-Shango (Yoruba), 0.3% Rastafarian, 5.8% Other, 11.1%, and Not stated, 2.2%. The statistics in this paragraph are courtesy of our old friend Wikipedia.

All this change is called progress, and perhaps the map-devouring children of today, if there are any left, will have much more progress to report 70 years from now.

P.S. - The trivia factoid of the day is that on this date in 1906, my dad (non-bio), Clifford Ray "Ted" Brague, was born in Tomah, Monroe County, Wisconsin, the youngest of the five sons of Elmer Elsworth Brague and Edith Lillian (Johnson) Brague. Dad would be 114 years old today but left us two months before his 61st birthday thanks to a horrible disease known as pancreatic cancer. It is through Edith Lillian's mother, Bloomy Jane (Cleveland) Johnson that on paper, at least, I am the eighth cousin three times removed of U.S. President Grover Cleveland, the only president to have non-consecutive terms. I like my trivia factoids to be packed with information. I am told that my posts suffer from the same tendency.