Trivia
- 52 million people in the Philippines speak English, making it the fifth largest English-speaking nation behind the U.S., India, Pakistan, and the U.K.
- In 2009, about 1.39 billion SMS messages were being sent in the Philippines daily. The country
was one of the earliest adopters of text messaging, earning the moniker "text capital of the
world" from the mid '90s to the early 2000s
- The Philippines is the world's leading producer of coconuts.
- The positioning of the Philippine flag's colours indicate a message. If it is flown with the red stripe on top, the nation is in a state of war. Otherwise, during peacetime, the blue is on top.
- In 1611, the University of Santo Tomas was founded in Manila by the Dominican Order. It is the world's largest Catholic university in terms of population. Both it and University of San Carlos are older than Harvard, which was not founded until 1636.