The Philippines
The Republic of the Philippines is more commonly known as the Philippines and this country is an island over in Southeast Asia. Actually, the country is more than one island and it really consists of 7,641 islands. The capital city of the Philippines is Manila, but that is not the most populous city. The most people live in Quezon City.
Many of the islands have hundreds of mountains on them and they are filled with tropical rainforests. The highest peak is Mount Apo on the island of Mindanao and the deepest point in the country is the Galathea Depth in the Philippine Trench. Amongst all the mountains are active volcanoes and it is common for there to be approximately twenty earthquakes every day of the year in the Philippines, but hardly any of them are felt by the people who live there.
The tropical rainforests of the Philippines have made the country one of the top ten biologically diverse countries in the entire world. The animals that are native to the Philippines include the Philippine eagle, the palm civet cat, the dugong, the cloud rat, and the Philippine tarsier. Amongst all those animals in the rainforests are rare species of orchids and rafflesia, which are both beautiful.
The weather in the Philippines is dependent on the time of the year. Every year from March to May, it is hot and dry, while the months of June through November are rainy and December through February is always cool and dry. Typhoons are common during the rainy season and it is possible for nine of them to strike the islands each year out of all the ones that are in the area.
Here are some unique and interesting facts about the Philippines:
· In the last ten years, sixteen new species of mammals have been discovered in the Philippines.
· In 2002, the largest shoes in the world were made in Marikina City. The shoes measured 17.4 feet in length, 7.9 feet in width, and 6.6 feet in height.
· Three of the ten largest shopping malls in the world are in the Philippines. They are the SM Megamall, SM North Edsa, and SM Mall of Asia.
· There are 175 languages that are spoken in the Philippines, however, four of them are currently not being used, because the people who spoke them have died.
· Despite all those languages, the Philippines is the fifth largest English-speaking nation.
· The locals love to play basketball and it is common to find makeshift basketball hoops everywhere!
· The Philippines produce the most coconuts in the entire world. Every year they ship approximately 19.5 million tons of coconut to other countries.
· The English word ‘boondocks’ came from a word from the Philippines. Over there, the word ‘mountain’ is ‘bundok’.
· The Spanish Jesuits founded the University of San Carlos in Cebu City in 1595. The Dominican Order founded the University of Santo Tomas in Manila in 1611. Both of these schools are older than Harvard, which wasn’t founded until 1636.
The Philippines is a country that likes things big and rare, which is why they are always striving to identify new animals and build bigger and better things.
