Let’s play a guessing game. What do you think is the most commonly celebrated national holiday in the world?

We’ll give you a clue to make it a bit easier: this is a holiday shared by 65 different countries, and each country celebrates it on a different day. On an annual basis, this holiday is celebrated somewhere on Earth once every six days. Can you guess what it is?

It’s independence from the British!

Currently, there are 65 ex-British colonies that celebrate an Independence Day, and probably a handful more waiting to join in on the fun. As unbelievable as it might sound in this day and age, there are still 14 colonies under British rule. Collectively, these territories encompass a population of about 250,000 people and a land area of about 1,600,000 km2 (most of which is the uninhabited British Antarctic Territory).

Which begs the question: are there any penguins in Antarctica plotting their independence from the British? There's gotta be a Pixar movie in there somewhere!

The British certainly had an impact on the world and so do major brands who manage to crack the advertising code and deliver campaigns that pay off for decades thereafter. Coca-Cola, Gillette, De Beers and Sunkist are four perfect examples of brands that brainwashed the world, as explained by Dominique Olivier in her excellent column this week. 

Read on for a story of mutiny, love and coconuts, as well as Fast Facts that bring you some more interesting nuggets from Mud Island (i.e. England) and surrounding countries.

Have a lovely day and enjoy what we've brought you!

The Finance Ghost (follow on X) | Dominique Olivier (connect on LinkedIn)

TL;DR: There’s a tiny island in the Southern Pacific Ocean that is entirely populated by the descendents of a band of runaway mutineers.

The mutiny on HMS Bounty is one of those stories that you just know would make a great Netflix series. Since no such series currently exists, we’re stuck with our imaginations for now.

We’ll set the stage: 1789, South Pacific. A group of disgruntled sailors, led by acting-Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, had enough of their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and decided it was time for a hostile takeover. They seized the ship, tossed Bligh and 18 loyalists into a rowboat, and left them to fend for themselves at sea.

Bligh, being the resilient guy that he was, didn’t let that get him down. After a brief provisions stop on Tofua (where they lost one crewmember to the locals), he navigated his rowboat full of survivors over 3,500 nautical miles (that’s about 6,500 kilometres) to safety. Not bad for someone who had just been booted off his own ship. Once back in England, he wasted no time and set the wheels in motion to hunt down the mutineers.

The Bounty’s original mission was to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and transport them to the West Indies. It seems like a simple enough errand, but as anyone who has ever gotten a bit overenthusiastic at Stodels (or your local nursery) will tell you, transporting live plants is actually a bit of a headache.

The great cabin of the ship, normally the quarters of the ship's captain, was converted into a greenhouse for over a thousand potted breadfruit plants, with glazed windows, skylights, and a lead-covered deck and drainage system to prevent the waste of fresh water. The space required for these arrangements in the small ship meant that the crew and officers had to put up with severe overcrowding for the duration of a very, very long voyage.

What also didn’t help the situation was the fact that the ship spent five months berthing in Tahiti, where the crew enjoyed a little too much of the local… let’s call it “hospitality”. After five months of lounging on beaches, drinking from coconuts and getting cozy with the locals, military discipline didn’t exactly rank highly on the crewmembers’ list of priorities. As Bligh attempted to tighten the reins and bring his men back in line, relations between him and the crew went from bad to worse. Three tense weeks at sea post-Tahiti, competing with a thousand breadfruit plants for space, were enough for Fletcher Christian. He riled up the majority of the crew and sent Bligh off in his rowboat.

Back in England, Bligh wasn’t content to let the mutiny slide. Enter HMS Pandora, dispatched to round up the mutineers. Fourteen of them were snagged in Tahiti, but Christian and his crew weren’t among them. The Pandora, in true Murphy's Law fashion, hit the Great Barrier Reef on the way back from Tahiti, losing 31 crew members and four prisoners. The ten remaining mutineers eventually made it to England, where they faced court-martial: four got off scot-free, three were pardoned, and three were hanged.

(Can we take a moment to consider the dreadful experience of the three mutineers who thought they got away with mutiny, only to be captured - and then to survive a shipwreck, only to be hanged?)

As for Christian and the rest of his crew - they had picked up a few Tahitians (read: kidnapped) and settled down on the uninhabited Pitcairn Island, where they managed to stay hidden from the vengeful eyes of the British Navy for almost two decades. By the time they were found in 1809, most had already died from a messy combination of infighting, alcoholism (they learned how to brew whiskey from roots) and Tahitian disputes. The lone survivor, John Adams, was spared punishment for his participation in the mutiny, and the descendants of those mutineers and their Tahitian companions still live on Pitcairn Island to this day.

Ironically, the tiny island that was founded by a group of criminals running from the British crown was one of the first Pacific territories claimed by Britain (in 1838), and is one of only fourteen territories still owned by Britain today.

An assortment of facts that will take you only a minute to read.

• There is no location in Britain that is more than 135 kilometres from the sea. 

• There is a botanical garden in Britain that contains more than 100 species of toxic plants.

• Between them, Scotland, England, and Wales have over 6,000 islands, 136 of which are inhabited.

• A Welsh town holds the record for having the longest name in the world: Llanfairpwllgwyngyll-gogerychwyrndrobwlllllandysiliogogogoch.

• Golf was first invented in Scotland and was said to have been banned in 1457 by James the Second when he blamed it for causing troops to neglect their military training for the sport. Today it is Scotland's national sport.

• In ancient times, people in Wales played a medieval version of soccer called Cnapan. The game was said to have been messy and brutal and hosted up to 2,000 players at a time.

• Brits in the UK consume 165 million cups of tea every day. The average British person drinks 884 tea cups annually.

• British sausages got the name “bangers” because they were filled with water during WW1 amid food shortages. This caused them to explode when the water evaporated while they were being cooked.