Palau Islands?? ...what is that?

Do you know what Palau Island is? Chances are, you don't or you didn't, before you heard that Obama administration was sending 17 of its guantanamo bay detainees to Palau Island. I am not much into world politics, but Palau Island? surely doesn’t ring a bell so I decided to search it a bit on the net. I first heard of it on google hot trends where it was the sixth most searched item today. Googled it and read some stuff on wikipedia and other places. Turns out, somewhere in the middle of Pacific the Palau islands is an archipelago of hundreds of islands, some of which have been inhabited by humans much before the Europeans started settling in US and Australia. It has a 4000 year old history. One of youngest nations of the world, it is a tourist place and has been the location of one season of the TV series Survivors. While I was looking up the map, I found quite a few such archipelago nations; Marshall Islands, Micronesia etc , quite an addition to my geography knowledge. Pacific is one place on the map I didn't pay attention to in my geography classes and its interesting when you come to know, that there are countries existing, you never knew.