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The name Australia has been applied to two continents. Originally, it was applied to the south polar continent, or sixth continent, now known as Antarctica.The name is a shortened form of Terra Australis which was one of the names given to the imagined (but undiscovered) land mass that was thought to surround the south pole.
The name Australia (pronounced / ə ˈ s t r eɪ l i ə / in Australian English) [39] [page needed] is derived from the Latin Terra Australis (' southern land '), a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. [40] Several 16th-century cartographers used the word Australia on maps, but not to identify ...
The history of Australia from 1901 to 1945 begins with the federation of the six colonies to create the Commonwealth of Australia. The young nation joined Britain in the First World War, suffered through the Great Depression in Australia as part of the global Great Depression and again joined Britain in the Second World War against Nazi Germany in 1939.
Australia also gained a 42 per cent share of the formerly German-ruled island of Nauru, giving access to its rich superphosphate reserves. Australia argued successfully against a Japanese proposal for a racial equality clause in the League of Nations covenant, as Hughes feared that it would jeopardise the White Australia policy. [297]
Melchisédech Thévenot (c. 1620 – 1692): 1663 Map of "New Holland, discovered in 1644", based on a map by the Dutch cartographer Joan Blaeu.. The name New Holland was first applied to the western and northern coast of Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman, best known for his discovery of Tasmania (called by him Van Diemen's Land).
The northern tip of Australia's east coast now known as Cape York was named by Cook. [7] Cape York Peninsula is the entire promontory between the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Coral Sea (Pacific Ocean) and was not named by Cook (who did not enter the Gulf of Carpentaria), but its name is derived from the name Cook gave to its northern tip. [8 ...
Samuel de Champlain chose the name in 1608 for the new town there, [140] which gave its name to a section of French Canada and then the British province of Quebec, which eventually became modern Canada and even briefly included the entire Ohio River valley between the enactment of the Quebec Act in 1774 and the surrender of the region to the ...
The monarchs of Australia are the same as those of the United Kingdom. The sovereigns reigned over Australia as monarchs of the United Kingdom until 1942 (by a legal fiction, from 1939). From that year they reigned as sovereigns in right of Australia, though the first to be accorded an Australian title, Queen of Australia, was Elizabeth II, in ...