Hey, Barbs!
Huge fan here. Also a Geography passionate guy, not as much as you
Oh well. My sweet little country is coming up soon... Yay!!!
Off topic before we start: My suggestion after you do the all the countries in your channel: You can talk about specific regions in countries that may have missed out, you know, because some countries are big and it's hard to cover every region's specificities, I bet people will love it !
Here are some stuff you might not know from Portugal! Hope I can help.
Starting by the easy one. Some of the most
Famous people that you shouldn't miss out:
Literature authors (chronologically): Luís Camões, Eça de Queirós, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago (who won the Nobel Proze of Literature)
DON'T FORGET SOME OF THE PORTUGUESE NAVIGATORS (Vasco da Gama, Fernão de Magalhães, etc.)
Football/Soccer players (the three most legendary): Eusébio (1960s), Luis Figo (early 2000s) and Cristiano Ronaldo (nowadays -- the biggest idol, considered the best in the world and a role model as a sports figure - hard working and successful guy, you know - to lots people in Portugal and abroad). And DON'T FORGET TO MENTION José Mourinho (considered the best Football Manager in Portugal, managing a great football team in England - Man United) and Jorge Mendes (One of the richest and successful Football Agents in the world !!!)
From other sports:
- Rosa Mota (Mota was the first woman to win multiple Olympic marathon medals as well as being the only woman to be the reigning European, World, and Olympic champion at the same time);
- Nélson Évora (
won a Gold Medal recently, Portugal's first triple jump gold medal);
- Telma Monteiro (is a female Portuguese
judoka who has won multiple medals in international competitions)
Actors/Comedians: TWO MOST RELEVANT ACTORS: Diogo Morgado (is a
Portuguese actor who may be best known for his portrayal of
Jesus Christ in the
History Channel epic mini-series
The Bible and in the film
Son of God.), Daniela Ruah (is a
Portuguese-American actress best known for playing NCIS Special Agent
Kensi Blye in the
CBS police procedural series
NCIS: Los Angeles.), TWO MOST RELEVANT COMEDIANS: Ricardo Araújo Pereira (When mentioning him use this three names, allways! For me and for most itelligent and brilliant portuguese comedian only virtually know nationally !!!), Herman José (legendary comedian, almost retiring)
Science: Egas Moniz (won the Medicine Nobel Prize), and others (?). I don't know many really internationally relevant by the media.
Politics/Kings: Our country founder, the King Afonso I of Portugal, best know as "D. Afonso Henriques"), Marquês de Pombal (
Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal, 1st Count of Oeiras, popularly known as
Marquis of Pombal, was an 18th-century Portuguese statesman. He was Secretary of the State of Internal Affairs of the Kingdom (the equivalent of a
Prime Minister today. Undoubtedly the most prominent minister in the government, he is considered to have been its
de facto head. Pombal is notable for his swift and competent leadership in the aftermath of the
1755 Lisbon earthquake. He implemented sweeping economic policies in
Portugal to regulate commercial activity and standardise quality throughout the country, and was instrumental in weakening the grip of the
Inquisition.), António de Oliveira Salazar (former dictator of Portugal - technically he was a Prime Minister from 1932 to 1968. I'm really glad those times are over since the
Revolution that turned our country independent and not isolated anymore from the rest of Europe! And people were not free to criticize the government and stuff, Government prisoners, etc. Research it because it's a big deal to our history.), Mário Soares (important polititian), Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (Use all this names! Our president, but he is really famous and almost everybody loves him, he is the idol)
Most famous sport: BY FAR, football (or soccer if you're american). The "big three" clubs are: FC Porto, Sporting CP and SL Benfica. But it's kind of weird that everywhere people love Benfica. Beyond the city of Lisbon (where the club is), you find a lot of Benfica fans around the country. But Porto and Sporting have also a lot of fans around the country. Just to give an idea, a study done in 2009 (a little outdated but it's what I found, lol): There are 2.2 million Benfica fans, 1.3 million Porto fans and 1.1 million Sporting fans, from the portion of the population interested in football: around 4.7 million total. The national team has
won the Euro 2016, a really big deal in the country, so many people around the country in the street celebrating, as it was the greatest achievement from the National Team.
Other sports: We are really good on roller hockey, our national team won multiple
international titles! We are also very stong in Beach soccer.
Religion: Catholicism in majority.
Climate according to Koppen classification:
(map from our National official public meteorology entity -
https://www.ipma.pt/pt/educativa/tempo.clima/ )
P.S. A little detail, but I won't be angry if you miss out on this:
Watch out the accents on words, for example, when mentioning some portuguese names or cities! You can ask me if the words are rightly wrotten before the episode, I don't mind eheh. Example -
NOT "Joao" but "João". In the famous people you may have noticed that. we use like this: ã , â , á , à for example, sometimes. A little bit confusing but you get it, we have a big deal with vowels
Maybe I will send you another mail with more ideas. I'm running out of time today, and I missed some things out.
) Graças a isso, a Groenlândia não vai ter um tamanho enorme, por exemplo, pois na projeção antiga era assim (devido à sua latitude).
