Great Britain (4074)

Great Britain (Scottish Gaelic: Breatainn Mhòr, Welsh: Prydain Fawr) is the largest island of the British Isles. more...

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It lies to the northwest of Continental Europe, with Ireland to the west, and makes up the larger part of the territory of the United Kingdom. It is the largest island in Europe, and the eighth largest and the third most populous island in the world. It is surrounded by over 1000 smaller islands and islets.

Geographical definition

With an area of 209,331 km² (80,823 square miles) the island of Great Britain is the largest of the British Isles. It is the largest island in Europe, and eighth largest in the world. It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshū.

Great Britain stretches over approximately ten degrees of latitude on its longer, north-south axis. Geographically, the island is marked by low, rolling countryside in the east and south, while hills and mountains predominate in the western and northern regions. Before the end of the last ice age, Great Britain was a peninsula of Europe; the rising sea levels caused by glacial melting at the end of the ice age caused the formation of the English Channel, the body of water which now separates Great Britain from continental Europe at a minimum distance of 21 miles (34 km).

Political definition

Great Britain is no longer a country, but simply an island in the United Kingdom. Politically, "Great Britain" describes the combination of England, Scotland, and Wales, and therefore also includes a number of outlying islands such as the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides, and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland, but does not include other outlying islands such as the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands.

Great Britain has evolved politically from the gradual union of England and Scotland which started in 1603 with the Union of Crowns under James VI of Scotland and eventually resulted in the Acts of Union in 1707 which merged the parliaments of each nation and thus resulted in the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain, which covered the entire island, 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.

Read more at Wikipedia.org