Great Britain
Travels in Great Britain:
Lakeland Mountain Biking (7 days)
Discover England's Lake District
Quick Facts:
Official Name: |
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) |
Capital: |
London |
Area: |
88,786 square miles (229,957 km²) |
Languages: |
English, Welsh (about 26% of the population of Wales), Scottish form of Gaelic (about 60,000 in Scotland) |
Currency: |
Pound Sterling, £, GBP |
Population figure: |
60,776,238 (July 2007 est.) |
Ethnology: |
white (of which English 83.6%, Scottish 8.6%, Welsh 4.9%, Northern Irish 2.9%) 92.1%, black 2%, Indian 1.8%, Pakistani 1.3%, mixed 1.2%, other 1.6% (2001 census) |
Religions: |
45 % Anglican, 19 % other Protestant churches, 10 % Roman Catholic, 2.7 % Muslim, 1 % Hinduist |
National holiday: |
The UK does not celebrate one particular national holiday |
Government type: |
Constitutional monarchy |
History
Great Britain may well be a translation of the French term Grande Bretagne, which is used in France to distinguish Britain from Brittany (in French: Bretagne). Over the centuries, Great Britain has evolved politically from several distinct nations (England, Scotland, and Wales) through two kingdoms with a shared monarch (England and Scotland) with the union of the Crowns in 1603, a single all-island Kingdom of Great Britain from 1707, to the situation following 1801 in which Great Britain together with the island of Ireland constituted the larger United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). The UK became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1922 following the independence of five-sixths of Ireland as first the Irish Free State, a Dominion of the then British Commonwealth, and then later as an independent republic outside the British Commonwealth as the Republic of Ireland.
Geography and Climate
The UK lies between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, and comes within 35 km (22 miles) of the northwest coast of France, from which it is separated by the English Channel. It comprises the island of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and the northeastern one-sixth of the island of Ireland (Northern Ireland), together with many smaller islands. The mainland areas lie between latitudes 49°N and 59°N (the Shetland Islands reach to nearly 61°N), and longitudes 8°W to 2°E. The Royal Greenwich Observatory, near London, is the defining point of the Prime Meridian. The climate of the UK varies, but is generally temperate, though significantly warmer than some other locations at similar latitude, such as central Poland, due to the warming influence of the Gulf Stream. In general, the south is warmer and drier than the north. The prevailing winds are southwesterly, from the North Atlantic Current. More than 50% of the days are overcast. Average annual rainfall varies from over 3,000 mm (120 inches) in the Scottish Highlands down to 553 mm (21.8 inches) in Cambridge.
This article is partly based on a free article of the encyclopaedia Wikipedia and is subject to GNU-licence for free documentation. A list of authors is available on Wikipedia