Great Britain Printable Map
Great Britain (Welsh: Prydain Fawr, Scottish Gaelic: Breatainn Mhòr, Cornish: Breten Veur, Scots: Great Breetain) (also renowned as Britain) is an island located to the north-west of Continental Europe. It is the ninth biggest isle in the world, the biggest European isle and the biggest of the British Isles. With a population of about 60.0 million persons in mid-2009, it is the third most populous isle in the world, after Java and Honshū. Great Britain is enclosed by over 1,000 lesser isles and islets. The island of Ireland lies to its west. Politically, Great Britain furthermore mentions to the island itself simultaneously with a number of surrounding isles which constitute the territory of England, Scotland and Wales.
All of the island is territory of the sovereign state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and to the north Ireland, and most of the United Kingdom's territory is in Great Britain. Most of England, Scotland, and Wales are on the island of Great Britain, as are their respective capital towns: London, Edinburgh, and Cardiff.
The Kingdom of Great Britain produced from the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland with the Acts of amalgamation 1707 on 1 May 1707 under Queen Anne. In 1801, under a new proceed of Union, this kingdom merged with the Kingdom of Ireland to conceive the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. After the Irish conflict of Independence (1919–1921) most of Ireland seceded from the amalgamation, which then became known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and to the north Ireland.
The variety of fauna and flora on the island is restricted in evaluation to continental Europe. This is due to the dimensions of Great Britain and the fact that wildlife has had little time to develop since the last glacial period. For fungi there is not adequate information available for meaningful assessments to be made. The high level of urbanisation on the isle has assisted to a species extinction rate that is about 100 times Great than the backdrop species extinction rate.
