Download information from the CIA

The Central Intelligence Agency is famously the US version of MI5 in the UK, responsible for national security and surveillance.

What many people don't know, however is that you can get access to much of the information that they gather about countries all over the world via their World Factbook.

Click on the map or select a country from the drop-down menu to get all sorts of information and statistics about that place and its people, ranging from its economy, its military, its geography to its communications and transportation, even down to the number of phone lines it has or how many kilometres of road there are in the country.

This link here even lets you compare different countries over a range of different issues too.

Another even better source for getting pan-country statistics across an even wider range of issues (such as crime, education, health, media ... even terrorism!) is NationMaster.

For UK data, try the Office for National Statistics or the Government's Data Gateway website.