Located between Hawaiian Guam in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is one of the smallest countries in the world, the Marshall Islands.

The Marshall Islands has a history unlike many other small countries in the Pacific.

Not the least of which is the fact that it has experienced more nuclear

detonations per capita on its territory than any other country. Learn more about the

Republic of the Marshall Islands and what makes it special on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. Thank you. I've done several episodes now on very small countries and I've always been fascinated by

these places and how they came to be.

But perhaps the most interesting story is that of the Marshall Islands.

The Marshall Islands is only one of four countries on Earth that consists entirely of Corral atolls. The others are Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Maldives.

As with other atoll nations, they are all at or very close to sea level. The highest point in the

Marshall Islands, for example is

only 10 meters above sea level and the average is pretty much at sea level. There also

isn't a whole lot of land. In terms of land area it is the 189th largest country in the world, just slightly larger than Lictonstein.

Because there isn't much space, there also aren't many people.

The population of the Marshall Islands is only 54,000, which ranks at 187th amongst the nations of the world.

The Marshallese people are broadly classified as Micronesian.

However, unlike Polynesians, there's a greater variation between different Micronesian groups.

It's believed that the Marshall Islands might have been first settled by humans as early as 3,000 to 5,000 years ago,

but this is only an estimate as there's little evidence to be found one way or the other.

There is no written record and given the nature of coral atolls and the materials which exist on them,

there's little in the way of artifacts.

The first recorded European sighting of the islands occurred in 1526

by the Spaniard Alonzo de Salazar.

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