Do you know the difference between Malta and Yalta? I didn’t except for the fact that they are both small. I didn’t know if one was a city and the other was a country, if it was vice versa, if they were both countries, if they were both islands, etc. I knew one hosted a very important Allied conference during WWII. Which one though? I could never be sure.

Today, Malta came up as a cross word answer in a puzzle I’m doing – “island nation south of Sicily” – I knew the last four letters were alta and I could not decide if it was malta or yalta for about 10 minutes, until i figured out the four letter word for ramble – “roam” – which happened to end where “_alta” began. So, “malta” was the answer to the clue and I decided that I would do some research and figure out once and for all the differences.

After checking with Wikipedia, here is what I found:

MALTA: The Republic of Malta is a small and densely populated island nation in southern Europe. It consists of an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea directly south of Italy. These strategically located islands have been ruled and fought over by various powers over the centuries. It is finally its own nation, having fully divested itself from Britain, the last nation to hold dominion over it, in 1979 and it joined the EU in 2004.

YALTA: Yalta is a town in the Crimea in southern Ukraine, on the north coast of the Black Sea, that was the site of the Yalta Conference. It has about 77,100 inhabitants (2004). Near Yalta is the Livadia Palace, the former summer palace of the Russian Imperial family, where the conference actually took place. Throughout the Soviet era it continued to be an important resort for the Soviet elite. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union it has, however, struggled economically.

Who knows? Maybe one or the other or both will be on Jeopardy one day…