Christmas Island

Christmas Island Latest News

SpaceX has recently towed Starship to waters off Christmas Island after the spacecraft floated in the Indian Ocean for nearly 24 days.

About Christmas Island

• It is a special territory of Australia located in the Indian Ocean. 
• It lies about 360 km south of the island of Java and 1,400 km northwest of Australia.
• The island is the summit of an oceanic mountain whose highest point on the island is Murray Hill, rising to 1,184 feet (361 metres) in the western part of the island. 
• The island has steep cliffs along most of its coast. 
• The main settlement and chief port is at Flying Fish Cove on the northeastern part of the island.
• History:
  • Although Europeans sighted Christmas Island in 1615, it was named for the day of its rediscovery in 1643.
  • The discovery of phosphate on the island in 1887 led to the UK annexing it the following year. 
  • In 1900 Christmas Island was incorporated into the British crown colony of the Straits Settlements with its capital at Singapore. 
  • During World War II the island was occupied by the Japanese. 
  • In 1958 the island became an Australian territory.
• Most of the island is covered in tropical rainforest. Much of the island (63%) is a national park. 
• One of the island’s best-known animal residents is the Christmas Island red crab (Gecarcoidea natalis), whose spectacular annual emergence and migration draws large numbers of tourists.
• The reefs around Christmas Island have healthy coral. They are home to several rare marine animals. 
  • These reefs, along with those near the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, are sometimes called “Australia’s Galapagos Islands”. 
• The population includes many ethnic Chinese, a small number of people of European ancestry, and Malay labourers recruited mainly from Malaysia, Singapore, and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
• Economy: 
  • The economy was completely based on phosphate mining and extraction earlier. 
  • With the mineral close to exhaustion now, subsistence cropping, fishing, and tourism serve as the backbone of its economy.

News: IT

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