BERMUDA

Bermuda /bɜrˈmjuːdə/, also referred to in legal documents as, fully, "the Bermudas or Somers Isles",[6][7][8][9] is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean, located off the east coast of North America. Its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, United States, about 1,030 kilometres (640 mi) to the west-northwest. It is about 1,239 kilometres (770 mi) south of Cape Sable Island, Canada, and 1,538 kilometres (956 mi) north of Puerto Rico. Its capital city is Hamilton.

The first known European explorer to reach Bermuda was Spanish sea captain Juan de Bermúdez in 1503, after whom the islands are named. He claimed the apparently uninhabited islands for the Spanish Empire. Paying two visits to the archipelago, Bermúdez never landed on the islands, but did create a recognisable map of the archipelago. Shipwrecked Portuguese mariners are now thought to have been responsible for the 1543 inscription in Portuguese Rock (previously called Spanish Rock).[10] Subsequent Spanish or other European parties are believed to have released pigs there, which had become feral and abundant on the island by the time European settlement began. In 1609, the English Virginia Company, which had established Jamestown in Virginia (a term originally applied to all of the North Americancontinent) two years earlier, permanently settled Bermuda in the aftermath of a hurricane, when the crew and passengers of the Sea Venture steered the ship onto the surrounding reef to prevent its sinking, then landed ashore. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia