The CIA World Factbook, is an encyclopedic collection of data about
every country in the world. The information is
compiled by the Central
Intelligence Agency of the United States government, which keeps it
current. The Factbook is freely accessible and contains a wealth of
geographic, demographic and political information useful to travelers,
business people, and students. This website is a particularly useful
source of demographic and economic information about the nations of the
world. The World Factbook may be ordered as a hardcopy or
downloaded as one or several .zip files from this site. Older versions
of the book, dating back to 2000 are also available for download, for
use in examining trends. Beginning from the homepage, one can choose a country or
region from a drop-down list, which takes the user to an information
page specific to the user's choice. The page displays a map of the
country and its flag, gives information about its population, area,
natural resources, industry and products, government, recent history,
regional issues (such as border disputes, money laundering or illicit
drug trade), location, etc. The homepage also has links to current information including:1. Chiefs of state2. Text only/low bandwidth version of the Factbook3. Flags of the world4. CIA home page.
The Apendixes are an interesting collection of data in tabular form. There are six of these.
1. A list of abbreviations used at this and other U.S. government websites and publications.
2. Names of international organizations and information about their founding, previous names, purpose, and member nations.
3. Selected international environmental treaties, including titles,
dates treaties were opened for signature and entered into force,
objectives and signatories.
4. Cross-reference list of country data codes of International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) country codes, and Internet
country codes used by the U.S. government and international
organizations for exchange of data.
5. Principal Oceans and Seas of the World With Hydrographic Codes by Institution and their map coordinates.
6. Cross-reference list of place names, including cities, countries, and regions and their map coordinates.
7. An exhaustive table of conversion factors for weights and
measures for the three remaining countries in the world (U.S., Burma,
and Liberia) that have not adopted SI metric weights and measures.
Relevant Links: https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html