Great Britain Location:
Great Britain is the largest island of the British Isles. It lies to the northwest of Continental Europe with Ireland to the west and makes up the larger part of the territory of the United Kingdom. It is the largest island in Europe, and eighth largest in the world. It is surrounded by over 100 smaller islands and islets.
Great Britain Geography:
With an area of 88,786 square miles (229,957 km2) the island of Great Britain is the largest of the British Isles.[1] It is the largest island in Europe, and eighth largest in the world.[1] It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshu.[2]
Great Britain stretches over approximately ten degrees of latitude on its longer, north-south axis. Geographically, the island is marked by low, rolling countryside in the east and south, while hills and mountains predominate in the western and northern regions. Before the end of the last ice age, Great Britain was a peninsula of Europe; the rising sea levels caused by glacial melting at the end of the ice age caused the formation of the English Channel, the body of water which now separates Great Britain from continental Europe at a minimum distance of 21 miles (34 km).
Great Britain Government:
Politically, "Great Britain" describes the combination of England, Scotland, and Wales. It includes outlying islands such as the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides, and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland, but does not include the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands.
Over the centuries, Great Britain has evolved politically from several distinct nations (England, Scotland, and Wales) through two kingdoms with a shared monarch (England and Scotland) with the union of the Crowns in 1603, a single all-island Kingdom of Great Britain from 1707, to the situation following 1801 in which Great Britain together with the island of Ireland constituted the larger United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). The UK became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1922 following the independence of five-sixths of Ireland as first the Irish Free State, a Dominion of the then British Commonwealth, and then later as an independent republic outside the British Commonwealth as the Republic of Ireland.
Great Britain More Information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain | 
