Ascension Island is an island in the South Atlantic Ocean, east from ► Brazil and around 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the coast of ► Africa. It is a dependency of the British overseas territory of ► Saint Helena, which is 800 miles (1,287 km) to the south east. The Island is named after the day of its recorded discovery, Ascension Day.
Short name
Ascension Island
Official name
Ascension Island
Status
Dependency of the British overseas territory of ► Saint Helena, British since 1815
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day Ascension Island, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day Ascension Island.
The island of Ascension is discovered by the Portuguese explorer João da Nova Castella on Ascension Day of 1501. In 1815 the United Kingdom takes possession of the island of Ascension. The island is annexed in 1922 to Saint Helena as an dependency.
Satellite maps
Satellite image of Ascension Island in 2010
Notes and references
General remarks:
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.
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