Fun Trivia About
the Philippines
1. The Philippines is the third
largest English-speaking nation in the world, behind the United States and
England.
2. Boondocks and Boonies, words
that have come to mean “in middle of nowhere” in the English language, are
derived from the Tagalog word bundock, which means “mountain”. An educated guess
would be that American soldiers fighting in the Philippines a century ago
adopted the word. As an example, “Our units going into the boondocks to search
for insurgents.” After the war, soldiers brought the term home with them, and
the rest is history.
3. The Philippines is the fourth
largest Catholic country in the world, behind Brazil, Mexico, and the United
States.
4. Though the Republic of the
Philippines is roughly the same size as Arizona in total area, it has 36,289 km
of coastline. The United States, in comparison, has a “mere” 19,924 km of
coastline. How is that possible? The Philippines is composed of around 7,000
islands (some are quite tiny), each of which has its own coastline. All those
coastlines combined add up!
5. General Douglas MacArthur,
known for his “Return” to the Philippines, was the son of Arthur MacArthur, a
Brigadier General in the Army who played a major part in pacifying the
Philippines during the Philippine-American war at the end of the 19th
Century.
6. The Philippines has the
longest accessible underground river in the world.
7. With a total membership
exceeding 3 million, the Philippines has the third largest Boy Scouts
organization in the world, behind the United States and Indonesia.
8. The first recorded
intermarriage of a Filipino to a westerner occurred in 1565, when Isabel, the
daughter of a Cebuano chief, Rajah Tupas, was married to a Greek by the name of
Maestre Andrea. A widow, Isabel was one of the first Cebuanos to be taught the
Catholic faith.
(End of
book excerpt – if you’d like the entire text, please consider ordering
The ASAWA Guide to Fil-West
Relationships. Thank you!)