The volcanic island of Fuerteventura (Spanish for “strong fortune”) is the second-largest of the Canary Islands (after Tenerife). Located about 100 km. off the North African coast, Fuerteventura is the second largest of the Canary Islands – blessed with having the longest white sand beaches within that archipelago. The Spaniards first settled in Fuerteventura during […]
Brazil was first discovered in 1500 when a fleet commanded by Portuguese diplomat Pedro Álvares Cabral arrived at a site between present-day Salvador and Rio de Janeiro called Porto Seguro. Since the Portuguese Empire’s priority was trade with the Far East, it didn’t bother to colonize the country until after 1530, when other European powers […]
The city of Miami is one of America’s younger metropolises. Located in the American state of Florida, that state (including the area now known as Miami) was originally settled by Spanish explorers in the 1560s. With that colonial power and Great Britain alternatively controlling it over the centuries, Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. in […]
The Balearic Islands are a Spanish archipelago in the western Mediterranean sea, near mainland Spain’s east coast. The four largest islands are: Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera. With these islands’ official language being Catalan and Spanish, they are considered an autonomous community. Given their location in the Mediterranean, the history of these islands go far […]
London, the capital of England, is a place that goes back in time. As confirmed by an accidental archeological find during the construction of a railway tunnel in London in October 2013, the city was first established as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia. With that settlement having been abandoned after the collapse […]
Abu Dhabi, the largest part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was the first emirate state to discover oil. It currently holds 9% of the world’s proven oil reserves (98.2bn barrels) and almost 5% of the world’s natural gas (5.8 trillion cu metres). Abu Dhabi (whose city of the same name had a population of […]
New Zealand, like nearby Australia, is perceived by many as being a relatively young country – compared to the Far East nations (which boast civilizations going back thousands of years). Historians suggest that New Zealand was first settled by the Maoris (an eastern Polynesian ethnic group) in the 13th century A.D. The first European […]
Fiji, a country in the South Pacific, is an archipelago of more than 300 islands. Historians note that Fiji was originally settled by Austronesians and later by Melanesians, with some Polynesian influences. The first European contact with Fiji was during the 17th century (when Dutch explorer Abel Tasman came across the islands during his voyage […]
The small Persian Gulf state now known as Qatar was known as a maritime trading post for centuries, with commerce taking place between nearby Arabian territories and South Asian countries like India. Qatar’s profile was first raised in the modern global economy when then-European colonizer Great Britain discovered petroleum and other hydrocarbons within that country […]
The Philippines, located in Southeast Asia, consists of 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean. This country was discovered by Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. Another Spanish explorer (Ruy López de Villalobos) named this country Las Islas Filipinas after King Philip II of Spain. After the establishment of Spanish settlements in 1565, the country […]