Wherio #20 — August 1st, 2026

Cartagena de Indias was founded on the Caribbean coast of what is now Colombia, and grew into one of the crown jewels of Spanish America. Positioned on the route to the West Indies, it became a key port for shipping Bolivian silver to Spain and, grimly, for importing enslaved Africans under the asiento system. Its wealth drew pirates and privateers, so the city ringed itself with massive stone walls and fortresses that repelled attackers for centuries. The walled old town survives magnificently and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Geography clue given: It is the world's leading source of emeralds.

The world’s biggest food fight traces its origins to the town square of Buñol, near Valencia, where a scuffle broke out during a Giants and Big-Heads parade and young people began pelting each other with tomatoes from a nearby vegetable stall. The impromptu battle became an annual tradition held on the last Wednesday of August. La Tomatina survived bans in the Franco era to become a global tourist phenomenon, so popular that since 2013 it has been ticketed and capped at 20,000 throwers in a town of about 9,000 people.

Geography clue given: It ranked as the second-most visited country in the world, with 93.8 million visitors in 2024.

French couturier Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel launched Chanel No. 5 in 1921, her first perfume. Perfumer Ernest Beaux created the formula, blending floral ingredients with unusually prominent synthetic aldehydes to produce an abstract scent rather than an imitation of a single flower. Chanel reportedly chose the fifth sample presented to her and introduced it on the fifth day of the fifth month, reinforcing the name. Its plain rectangular bottle contrasted with ornate perfume packaging of the era. Intensive marketing and famous admirers turned No. 5 into one of the world’s best-known fragrances.

Geography clue given: Its scattered overseas territories give it more time zones than any country.

Communist Albania under Enver Hoxha outlawed religion entirely, proclaiming itself the world’s first officially atheist state. Mosques, churches and tekkes were closed, demolished or converted, clergy were persecuted, and religious practice was driven underground for over two decades until the ban collapsed with communism in 1990. The legacy lingers: modern Albania is a secular country where religious identity, today a narrow Muslim majority alongside Christian communities, coexists with strikingly low levels of observance and one of Europe’s most relaxed attitudes toward religious difference.

Geography clue given: Its people call their country the "land of the eagles."

Minamoto no Yoritomo, victor of the Genpei War, was appointed shogun and formalized a warrior government based in the eastern coastal city of Kamakura, far from the emperor’s court in Kyoto. The Kamakura shogunate ruled Japan as a military regime while the emperor remained a figurehead, with real power soon passing to the Hōjō clan as hereditary regents. The arrangement it pioneered, samurai government in the shogun’s name, would define Japanese politics in successive forms for nearly seven centuries, until the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

Geography clue given: Its flag shows a single red disc representing the rising sun.