Some facts about Latvia
1 It’s watery
Latvia has 12,000 rivers and 3,000 small lakes – perfect if you like messing about in boats and has sandy beaches It’s a decent bet for an offbeat beach holiday, if you don’t mind the chilly water, with 330 miles of sandy beaches.
2 It’s wild
Around 54 percent of Latvia is forest, making it one of Europe’s greenest countries, while 10 percent is bog. It’s home to black storks, lesser spotted eagles, otters, beaver, lynx, and wolves, and great concentrations of deer, wild boar, elk and red fox.
3 And it has one of the world’s oldest flags
Latvia’s current flag design has been in use since 1280. Only Denmark’s has been around longer.
4 It once owned a bit of the Caribbean
Latvia, or the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, as it was in the 17th century, established two colonies – tiny St. Andrews Island (now Kunta Kinteh Island) in the estuary of the Gambia River, and Tobago, in the Caribbean.
5 And discovered Angel Falls
Another Riga native, Aleksandrs Laime, was the first recorded human to reach Venezuela's Angel Falls, in 1949.
6 And build Coral Castle
Edward Leedskalnin was a Latvian emigrant to the United States, self-taught engineer and amateur sculptor who single-handedly built the Coral Castle in Florida, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
7 It has its own waterfalls too
Venta Rapid in Kuldīga is the widest waterfall in Europe – stretching up to to 270 metres depending on the season. It’s not as spectacular as it sounds, however, as it is just a couple of metres high.
8 It looks after its nature
Around 20 per cent of Latvia is protected. There are four national parks, 42 nature parks, 260 nature reserves, 355 nature monuments, seven protected marine areas, 24 micro reserves and a biosphere reserve. It topped the Environmental Performance Index in 2012.
9 It’s national bird knows how to shake a tail feather Latvia’s national bird is the white wagtail, so called because it almost constantly wriggles its backside.
10 It has a World Heritage site you’ve never heard of
There are two Unesco World Heritage sites – the historic centre of Riga, known for its Art Nouveau architecture, and the lesser-known Struve Geodetic Arc, which Estonia shares with Belarus, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Moldova, Russia, Sweden and Ukraine. It is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, which yielded the first accurate measurement of a meridian (now you know).
11 Crocodile Dundee was actually Latvian
According to some sources, the inspiration for Crocodile Dundee may have been Arvīds Blūmentāls (or Crocodile Harry). Born in Dundaga in 1925, he moved to Australia in 1951 and spent years hunting crocs in Queensland.
12 One of the last corners of Europe to join Christendom, Latvians are still very much pagans at heart. They worship nature by jumping over bonfires at Midsummer Eve, and many surnames are about birds, animals or trees.
13 With over 1 million folk songs, Latvians love to sing. You can catch over 10,000 of them on stage at once at the Song Festivals.
14 Latvians are a people to look up to.
Latvia has the world’s tallest women, with the average lady coming in at an impressive 170 cm. The men are no midgets either, holding fourth place.
15 Little Latvia is 3888 km away from monument of freedom in Riga called Milda
For more info check the site: http://www.latvia.eu/