clockwise around the Baltic Sea
- King County — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
King County, located in Western Washington, covers some 2,100 square miles extending from the crest of the Cascade Range to Puget Sound, including Vashon Island. It is Washington’s most populous county and contains its largest city – Seattle. It is the commercial center of the Pacific Northwest with public and private enterprises including Boeing, Costco, Group Health Cooperative, Washington Mutual, Starbucks Coffee Co., Amazon.com, University of Washington, Microsoft, PACCAR Inc, Weyerhaeuser, Seattle City Light, and the Port of Seattle, which operates the nation’s eighth-largest port as well as Sea-Tac International Airport…
- Kaliningrad Oblast (Wikipedia)
Kaliningrad Oblast (Russian: Калининградская область, romanized: Kaliningradskaya oblastʹ) is the westernmost federal subject of the Russian Federation. It is a semi-exclave situated on the Baltic Sea. The oblast is surrounded by two European Union and NATO members: Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east. Its coastline faces the Baltic Sea to the northwest and a maritime border with Sweden to the west. The largest city and administrative centre of the province (oblast) is the city of Kaliningrad, formerly known as Königsberg. The port city of Baltiysk is Russia’s only port on the Baltic Sea that remains ice-free in winter. Kaliningrad Oblast had a population of roughly 1 million in the Russian Census of 2021.
