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How Did New Zealand Get Its Name?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:06:00 +0000

If New Zealand is "New,' then where is "Old" Zealand?

These large Pacific islands were sighted by a Dutch explorer in 1642. They were named after Zeeland, a region of the Netherlands along the North Sea. British explorer James Cook was the first to land in New Zealand in 1769 and the discovery of gold there in 1861 brought many British settlers to the islands.

New Zealand is located in the South Pacific. about 1,200 miles from Australia. The nation consists of two large islands, called North Island and South Island, plus a few smaller islands

Who Discovered The Waitomo Glowworm Caves In New Zealand?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:05:00 +0000

Waitomo Cave, an underground cavern on New Zealand's North Island, never sees daylight. But there's plenty of "natural light" in this cave, produced by thousands of tiny glowing worms!

Visitors to Waitomo Cave descend into a cavern 100 feet long and 50 feet wide. They then ride a boat along an underground river.

All around them on the ceiling and walls of the cave are thousands and thousands of glowworms. the larva of a certain kind of moth, whose tails flicker with blue-green lights

How Long Is the Longest Place Name In The World Today?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:05:00 +0000

If someone were to ask you the name of a certain hill on North Island, New Zealand, you could probably take the person to the top of the hill in less time than it would take to answer the question.

As this hill has a native name that consists of 85 letters, making it the longest place name still in use on earth.

In the language of the native Maoris who live in New Zealand, the hill's name means ''the hill where Tamatea, the man with the big knee who slid, climbed. and swallowed mountains, played his flute for his lady love".

Were Convicts or Miners The First Settlers In New Caledonia?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:04:00 +0000

New Caledonia is a French colony that consists of about 25 islands in the South Pacific, some 750 miles off the coast of Australia.
Most of the islands are very small. The single large island, called New Caledonia, has an area of 6,530 square miles, about the same size as all the Hawaiian Islands put together.
In 1853, France took control of New Caledonia and set up a penal colony there. French convicts were sent there to serve their prison sentences. Until the 1890s, most of the Europeans on New Caledonia had come there as convicts.

Why Is July 12 So Special For Kiribati?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:04:00 +0000

July 4 is a special day in the United States. But to the people of the new nation of Kiribati, July 12 will always be Independence Day.

For on that date in 1979, Kiribati joined the community of nations.

Kiribati consists Of about 35 small islands spread over some 2 million square miles of territory in the Pacific Ocean. Included in these islands are the former Gilbert. Phoenix, and Line islands.

Who Built The Ancient City Of Nan-Matal In Ponape, and Why Did They Disappear?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:03:00 +0000

The people who live on the remote island of Ponape in the Pacific are simple farmers and fishermen.

There are no cities of any size on the island. However, the ruins of an ancient city suggest that Ponape may once have had a much larger population than it does today.

This city, called Nan-Matal, is located in the most hard-to-get-to part of Ponape. Nan-Matal once boasted a network of canals, a large sea wall to protect the city's port, and walls 30 feet high that surrounded the city.

Who Has The Shortest Alphabet In The World?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:02:00 +0000

Bougainville is the largest island in the Solomons, a group of South Pacific islands North East of Australia.

Some of the island natives use an alphabet of only 11 letters, the shortest alphabet on earth.

This alphabet includes the same five vowels as our alphabet: a, e, i, o, and ii. But there are only six consonants in the Bougainville alphabet: b, g, k, p, r, and t.

Think how easy spelling would be with an alphabet of only 11 letters!

Where Is The Largest Atoll In The World?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:02:00 +0000

An atoll is a horseshoe-shaped or ring-shaped coral reef enclosing a lagoon.

Atolls are formed by the skeletons of sea creatures called corals. These corals live in colonies, and their skeletons collect over the course of years to form a reef. Then sand collects on the reef, and vegetation eventually follows.

The largest atoll in the world is Christmas Island, which is located near the Equator in the Pacific Ocean. Part of the nation of Kiribati, Christmas Island is an atoll with an area of 184 square miles.

Why Was Nauru Known As Pleasant Island?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:01:00 +0000

Nauru is an island in the Pacific, almost on the Equator. Its total area is about eight square miles, making Nauru the smallest completely independent republic in the world.

Nauru also called itself the "richest republic on earth." The tiny nation's wealth came from the guano, or seabird manure, that covers the island. Guano is rich in the phosphates used to make fertilizers.

Where is Saipan And When Did The Japanese Invade The Island?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:01:00 +0000

Saipan is a 15-mile-long island in the Pacific Ocean, about 1,200 miles south of Japan.

If you like weather with temperatures that hardly vary from one day to the next, then Saipan is the place to go. During a nine-year period at one place on Saipan, the temperature never rose higher than 88 degrees, and it never dropped lower than 67 degrees.

In nine years, then, the difference between the highest and lowest temperatures was just 21 degrees! In most of the United States, the temperature can vary more than 21 degrees in a single day.

When Did Tuvalu Gain Its Independence?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Tuvalu means "cluster of eight islands" in the language of the natives who live there.

This tiny nation actually consists of nine islands in the South Pacific, but only eight of them are inhabited. The islands form a chain about 360 miles long. The total area of the nine islands is less than ten square miles.

Before Tuvalu gained its independence in 1978, the people of the islands had to decide whether they wanted to be ruled by a king or to become a republic.

Why Is Kingdom of Tonga Known As The Friendly Islands?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:59:00 +0000

The nation of Tonga consists of 150 islands spread over 100,000 square miles of ocean in the South Pacific. The total area of these islands is just 270 square miles, and Tonga's 93,000 people live on only 45 of the islands.

The English explorer James Cook discovered these islands in the eighteenth century and called one of them Friendly Island because of the peaceful Polynesian people he found there. Eventually, the entire island group was known as the Friendly Islands and came under the control of Britain. Tonga regained its independence in 1970

How Did The Bikini Get Its Name From An Island And The Atomic Bomb?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:59:00 +0000

Bikini is an atoll in the Pacific, a ring of about 20 islands that includes Bikini Island.

Bikini first came to public attention in 1946, for two entirely different reasons.

In July, 1946, the United States conducted tests of the recently invented atomic bomb at the Bikini atoll. A number of old ships were anchored nearby, cameras were set up in various places, and animals were brought to the islands so that scientists could learn what effects the A-bomb blast would have on them. Two atomic bombs were exploded at Bikini that month.

How Did Captain William Bligh Survive Two Mutinies In The British Navy?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:58:00 +0000

If You've ever enjoyed the book or the film Mutiny on the Bounty, then You know the story of the British ship Bounty and its cruel Captain Bligh.

The story is true. The tiny Pacific island of Pitcairn is proof.

In 1787, William Bligh was sent to the Pacific to bring, back a tropical fruit known as the breadfruit. The British wanted to plant breadfruit on islands in the West Indies

How Deep Is the Ocean And Where Is The Deepest Point?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:58:00 +0000

That depends upon what part of the ocean you're talking about.

Even the Pacific, the largest ocean, is just a few hundred feet deep at some points. On the average, the Pacific is about 14,000 feet deep. But at one point its more than twice as deep as that!

The Marianas Trench is an underground canyon located a few hundred miles southwest of Guam. It takes its name from the nearby Marianas Islands. When this canyon was first measured by scientists, it was estimated to be about 35,700 feet deep.

What Would Happen If The Ice Cap In Antarctica Melted?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:57:00 +0000

The continent of Antarctica, which surrounds the South Pole, has an area of more than 5 million square miles.

Only a few hundred miles of the continent are free from a permanent cover of ice. The ice cap that covers Antarctica is more than 6,000 feet thick in many places. At some points, it's over 11,000 feet thick, more than two miles!

You can imagine how much water must be frozen in the Antarctic ice to form a mile-thick ice cap over an entire continent

Where Is the Coldest Place In The World?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:57:00 +0000

The coldest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole was more than 102 degrees below zero.

That's plenty cold, but it's not the coldest temperature ever recorded on the continent of Antarctica.

In 1960, Russian scientists working at an Antarctic base called Vostok, more than 750 miles from the South Pole, recorded a temperature of almost 127 degrees below zero!

This is the coldest temperature ever recorded anywhere on the face of this planet.

Where Is the Lowest Place on Earth?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:56:00 +0000

There are a number of places on earth where the land is below sea level.

In Death Valley, California, and around the Dead Sea in Israel, for instance. But none of these depressions, or low-lying places, can compare to a huge depression in Antarctica that is covered with thick ice.

Scientists have found that at a certain place in Antarctica, about 6,000 feet above sea level, the ice covering the land is about 14,000 feet thick.

That means that the land itself is some 8,000 feet below sea level! By comparison, the lowest place in America, Death Valley, is just 282 feet below sea level.

Which Is the Greatest Ocean Current In The World?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:55:00 +0000

An ocean current is a stream of water moving through a larger body of water. Just as a river is a stream of water moving through land, an ocean current is a "river" of water moving through the ocean.

One of the major ocean currents is the Gulf Stream, which flows out of the Gulf of Mexico and warms the east coast of the United States. But the greatest of all ocean currents is the West Wind Drift Current, a moving stream of water that circles the continent of Antarctica.

Where Is Mount Erebus And Why Is The Volcano Surrounded by Ice?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:55:00 +0000

When you think of a volcano, you think of bubbling lava, steam, smoke, and heat.

But there's a large volcano in the last place you would expect to find heat, Antarctica, the coldest continent!

Mount Erebus is the earth's most southerly volcano. It's located less than 900 miles from the South Pole. It's not really on the continent of Antarctica, but on an island just off the coast of the continent. The ice pack that covers Antarctica connects Mount Erebus's island with the Antarctic mainland.

Did The Aurora Islands Named After A Spanish Ship Ever Exist?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:54:00 +0000

Islands have been known to appear and disappear due to volcanic eruptions.

The Aurora Islands, which were supposed to lie in the South Atlantic within about 1,000 miles of the continent of Antarctica, appeared and disappeared a number of times over the course of several decades. But their disappearing act wasn't due to volcanoes, the Aurora Islands never existed!

How Is The Penguin The Fastest Swimming Bird On Earth?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:53:00 +0000

Most birds are built for life in the air, but penguins are far better equipped for life in the water.

These flightless birds use their wings as paddles when they're swimming, enabling them to "fly" through the water. And they can "fly" indeed, some penguins travel more than 22 miles an hour when swimming underwater, making them the fastest swimming birds on earth.

Which Bird Flies the Longest For Its Migration?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:53:00 +0000

The Arctic tern might just as well be called the "Antarctic" tern.

As this sea bird, related to the gull, spends about three months of each year in the Antarctic region and about three months in the Arctic. It spends the rest of the year traveling from one end of the globe to the other!

After spending the summer in Arctic lands, the Arctic tern leaves in the autumn and heads south. Flying day after day, stopping for food and rest from time to time, the bird makes its way on a three-month journey to the Antarctic.

Which Insect Lives in Antarctica?

noreply@blogger.com (iMr) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:52:00 +0000

Whales weighing as much as 100 tons live in the waters near Antarctica, and some seals spend part of the year on that continent.

Penguins and some other birds also spend part of the year in Antarctica or the waters nearby. But the only creature that lives on the continent of Antarctica year-round is an insect.

These insects are members of a few species related to the fly, but they're wingless. Though they are the largest land creatures on the entire continent of Antarctica, these insects are less than one-tenth of an inch long!