Before the Internet, there was a certain value to knowing how to find out about things. Reference librarians could help you locate specialized data like the Thomas Register, the EE and IC Masters for electronics, or even an encyclopedia or CRC handbook. But if you wanted up-to-date info on any country of the world, you’d often turn to the CIA. The originally classified document was what the CIA knew about every country in the world. Well, at least what they’d admit to knowing, anyway. But now, the Factbook is gone.
The publication started in 1962 as the classified “The National Basic Intelligence Factbook,” it went public in 1971 and became “The World Factbook” in the 1980s. While it is gone, you can rewind it, including a snapshot taken just before it went dark on Archive.org.
Browsing the archives, it looks like the last update was in September of 2025. It would be interesting to see a project like Wikipedia take the dataset, house it, and update it, although you can presume the CIA was better equipped. The data is public domain, after all.
Want to know things about Croatia? Unfortunately, the archive seems to have missed some parts of some pages. However, there are other mirrors, including some that have snapshots of the data in one form or another. Of course, these are not always the absolute latest (the link has data from 2023). But we would guess the main languages (Croatian and Serbian) haven’t changed. You can also find the internet country suffix (.hr) and rankings (for example, in 2020, Croatia ranked 29th in the world for the number of broadband internet subscribers scaled for population and 75th in total broadband usage.
We are sorry to see such a useful reference go, but reference books are definitely an endangered species these days.
Probably redundand given the state of wikipedia
The 2026-2027 version is out. Maybe they’re going to privatize the thing.
The Fact Book was full of, well, facts. Wikipedias entries more depend on how their gaggle of editors and contributors feel that day.
Honestly what I remember most about the Factbook was how disappointed I was when I read it. Like, the CIA man! Their factbook! that stuff should be cooooool. What did I get? blah blah tin exports
People get very excited about their tin exports! Doesn’t Kazakhstan mention potassium in their national anthem?
Spy stuff isn’t all James Bond, somebody has to find out how many mangos Malaysia exported in the last year.
The Library of Alexandria got burnt. There’s always a group who don’t understand the value of actual knowledge as opposed to consensus opinion. It looks like their descendants are continuing the tradition… :)
It’s still in my info repo next to the cryptome archives.
Used to refer to it from time to time, but wikipedia does a reasonable job. Reasonable enough to get donations.
Seems strange they would just deep six it, it is a “reputable” reference so you think they could have just made it a subscription service. And for people saying they wouldn’t want the extra work the job of the CIA is collecting information, the Factbook is money for old rope.