{"id":72462,"date":"2026-08-21T12:47:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T07:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=72462"},"modified":"2026-08-21T13:27:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T07:57:31","slug":"christmas-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/christmas-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Island"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Christmas Island Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SpaceX has recently towed Starship to waters off Christmas Island after the spacecraft floated in the Indian Ocean for nearly 24 days.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Christmas Island<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is a <\/span><b>special territory of Australia<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> located in the<\/span><b> Indian Ocean.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It lies about 360 km south of the island of Java and 1,400 km northwest of Australia.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The island is the <\/span><b>summit of an oceanic mountain<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> whose <\/span><b>highest point <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on the island is <\/span><b>Murray Hill, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">rising to 1,184 feet (361 metres) in the western part of the island.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The island has <\/span><b>steep cliffs <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">along most of its coast.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>main settlement and chief port<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is at <\/span><b>Flying Fish Cove<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on the northeastern part of the island.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>History:<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although Europeans sighted Christmas Island in 1615, it was <\/span><b>named for the day of its rediscovery in 1643.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The<\/span><b> discovery of phosphate <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on the island in <\/span><b>1887 led to the UK annexing it<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the following year.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>In 1900<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Christmas Island was <\/span><b>incorporated into the British crown colony<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the Straits Settlements with its capital at Singapore.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>During World War II<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the island was <\/span><b>occupied by the Japanese.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>In 1958 t<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">he island became an <\/span><b>Australian territory.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Most of the island <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is covered in <\/span><b>tropical rainforest. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Much of the island (<\/span><b>63%) is a national park.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the island\u2019s best-known animal residents is the <\/span><b>Christmas Island red crab (Gecarcoidea natalis)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, whose <\/span><b>spectacular annual emergence and migration <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">draws large numbers of tourists.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>reefs around<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Christmas Island have <\/span><b>healthy coral<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. They are home to several rare marine animals.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>These reefs, along with<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> those <\/span><b>near the Cocos (Keeling) Islands,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are sometimes <\/span><b>called &#8220;Australia&#8217;s Galapagos Islands&#8221;.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>population <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">includes many<\/span><b> ethnic Chinese, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a small number of people of <\/span><b>European ancestry,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>Malay labourers <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">recruited mainly from Malaysia, Singapore, and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Economy:\u00a0<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The economy w<\/span><b>as completely based on phosphate mining<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and extraction earlier.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the <\/span><b>mineral close to exhaustion <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">now, <\/span><b>subsistence cropping, fishing, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><b>tourism <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">serve as the backbone of its economy. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>News: <\/b><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiatoday.in\/science\/story\/spacexs-starship-towed-to-christmas-island-after-floating-24-days-in-indian-ocean-2974691-2026-08-19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">IT<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas Island is a special territory of Australia located in the Indian Ocean. Read more about Christmas Island, Location, History, Economy, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":72526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3602],"class_list":["post-72462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","tag-christmas-island","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120360,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72462\/revisions\/120360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}