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 2/ The island was named Christmas Island 🇨🇽 when it was sited by an English sea captain on 25 December 1643. Christmas Island is an external territory of Australia 🇦🇺, but for historical reasons it has its own ISO 3166-1 code: "CX", a good example of why our geocoding API returns both ISO codes and a "country_code" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_territories_of_Australia#External_territories 7 comments
4/ Despite being just south of Indonesia 🇮🇩, Christmas Island 🇨🇽 has a population of Malay and Chinese speakers, a legacy of workers brought in from Singapore to mine phosphate, the island's main export. 5/ As an external territory of Australia 🇦🇺, the island is not self-governing, a governor is appointed Today the administrative division "The Shire of Christmas Island" makes up part of Australia's Indian Ocean Territories (together with Territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands 🇨🇨) and the laws of Western Australia apply. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Indian_Ocean_Territories 6/ The "capital" (largest village) of Christmas Island 🇨🇽 is the delightfully named Flying Fish Cove, named after the HMS Flying Fish, a British 🇬🇧 surveying vessel which first mapped the island in detail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Flying_Fish_(1873) The "city" has a population of about 1,600. 7/ 🇨🇽 Christmas Island's flag, like 🇦🇺 Australia's, features the Southern Cross, as do the flags of Brazil 🇧🇷, New Zealand 🇳🇿, Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬, and Samoa 🇼🇸 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Christmas_Island The flag also features a map of the island. Two countries have maps on their flags: Cyprus 🇨🇾 and Kosovo 🇽🇰 #MapsintheWild 8/ Christmas Island 🇨🇽 also offers us a great example of the challenge of geocoding: there is another Australian 🇦🇺 Christmas Island, a small island north of Tasmania (-39.68, 143.82001) |
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3/ Christmas Island 🇨🇽 only joined Australia 🇦🇺 in 1958, when the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 transfered it from the Colony of Singapore in exchange for a payment of $20 million.
#geoweirdness