You may have missed it, but Bruno Julie wrote a small piece of Olympic history earlier this week in Beijing. A boxer in the bantamweight class, he won his third fight against Manzanilla of Venezuela and thereby reached the semi-finals. With bronze medals awarded to losing semi-finalists, Julie has ensured his nation’s first medal. Bruno Julie is from the island nation of Mauritius, located in the Indian Ocean. Discovered in the 16th century, it is perhaps best known as the habitat of the now-extinct dodo. Only 1.2 million people live in Mauritius, much less than in the Olympic city of Beijing, which has roughly 15 million inhabitants.

While Mauritius is the smallest nation to earn a medal in Beijing so far, it is not the smallest country (counting by population) ever to win medal. That honour goes to Monaco, which won a bronze medal in the 1924 art competitions. For the small principality (population: 33,000) on the Mediterrenean coast, Julien Médecin won a bronze for his stadium design in the architecture competition. When counting only the sports events, the smallest nation to win an Olympic medal is another European principality, Liechtenstein. The country won no less than nine medals, all in alpine skiing. Five of those nine medals were won by members of the Wenzel family, of German origin. Hanni Wenzel won two gold medals at the Lake Placid Olympics, winning the slalom and giant slalom.

The smallest nation to win medal in the Summer Olympics (not counting the art events) is Bermuda. Like Mauritius, Bermuda is an island nation, but has only 65,000 inhabitants. Also like Mauritius, their medal was won by a boxer. Clarence Hill won his bronze in the heavyweight division at the 1976 Olympics. He would later be jailed several times, for drug possession and armed robbery, but went clean and became a carpenter. The smallest country to win a gold medal at the Summer Olympics is a neighbour of Bermuda: the Bahamas. They have won a total of 4 gold medals, the first dating from 1964, won by sailor Durward Knowles.

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