11th July: Mongolia Revolution Day

It's Mongolia revolution day - so here are ten things you might not know about Mongolia.

1. From July 11th to 13th, the Mongolian national festival, Nadaam, takes place. It celebrates the country's independence. Its central features are three Mongolian traditional sports - archery, wrestling and Horse racing. The horse racing is not as we know it in the west, but is a much longer cross-country event, and trick riding, which is very popular. According to legend, the Mongolian military hero Damdin Sükhbaatar scattered coins on the ground and then picked them up while riding a horse at full gallop. Another game played during the event, popular with older men, is Shagaa, in which the ankle bones of sheep are flicked at a target.
2. Horses are extremely important in Mongolian culture. In Mongolia, there are 13 times more horses than humans, and the country is also home to the last truly wild horses left on the planet. Mongolian native horses are called takhi, the Mongol word for “spirit,” and have 66 chromosomes, or two more than the average horse. Mongols have a reputation for being the best horsemen on Earth, and one of Mongolia's nicknames is "Land of the horse".
3. Mongolia has the oldest National Park in the world, the Bogd Khan National Park dating from 1778. It was chartered by Ming Dynasty officials in the 1500s as an area to be kept off limits and protected for its beauty and sacred nature.
4. Genghis Khan is considered the founding father of Mongolia. His name means “King of the Oceans” or “Universal King.” His tribe, the Mongols, derived from the word "mong" meaning brave, gave the country its name. Even though he couldn't read and write himself, he commissioned the first Mongolian writing system – the Mongolian script. When he wasn't conquering the world, he must have spent a lot of time fathering children, for genetic studies have shown that about 17 million men in Central Asia share a common progenitor, dating back to the 13th century, and are thought to be descended from him. Nobody knows where Genghis Khan is buried. According to legend, all 2,000 people who attended his funeral were killed by 800 soldiers, who then killed themselves so the secret would die with them. Genghis Khan is commemorated today by a 131-foot statue just outside Ulan Bator, which has the distinction of being the tallest statue of a horse in the world.
5. Ulan Bator (or Ulaanbaatar) is the capital city. The name means "Red Hero". It has an interesting history. It was founded in 1639 as a movable monastery, so it used to move from place to place. It moved 28 times before it settled permanently at its present location on the Tuul and Selbe rivers in 1778. Ulan Bator also has the distinction of being the coldest capital city in the world with an average temperature of -1.3 °C/29.7 °F.
6. Mongolia is the most sparsely populated nation in the world, with only 4.3 people per square mile. Its area is 1,564,116 square kilometres (603,909 sq mi), with a population of around 3 million people. It is also the world's second-largest landlocked country.
7. Mongolia's national symbol, which appears on their flag, is a Buddhist icon called Soyombo (meaning "created out of itself"). It incorporates a three-tongued flame (for eternal growth, past present and future), the sun and moon, representing the eternal blue sky (Mongolia is known as the "Land of the Eternal Blue Sky" because it has over 250 sunny days a year), two triangles, which represent spears (defeat of enemies), the Yin-yang symbol representing the complement of man and woman, or two fish, meaning vigilance, because fish never close their eyes, two horizontal rectangles meaning stability and two vertical ones representing unity and strength.
8. The Mongolian Stock Exchange is the smallest in the capitalist world and is housed in a refurbished children’s cinema.
9. The traditional dwelling in Mongolia is the yurt, or ger. A traditional ger is a portable, round tent covered with skins or felt used by nomads. Much of the permanent architecture is based on its design, and even today, and even in cities, many people still live in one. Ger also means home, and gerlekh means to marry, since part of the traditional wedding ceremony involves presenting the newly married couple with a new ger.
10. Mongolians tend to be superstitious. They believe whistling indoors calls evil spirits into the building; if they accidentally step on someone's toe or bump into them, they will shake hands with that person because according to superstition, if they don't, that person will become their enemy; children may be given names like Nergui (Mongolian: without name) or Enebish (Mongolian: not this one), to protect them from evil spirits; boys would be dressed up as girls, or marked with soot before they go out at night so that evil spirits will believe they are Rabbits and won't harm them.