A group of islands in the central Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii and astride the equator. First visited by American sailors in 1798, they were formerly part of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony and are now part of Kiribati.
Line Islands
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Line Islands (līn)  |
A group of islands in the central Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii and astride the equator. First visited by American sailors in 1798, they were formerly part of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony and are now part of Kiribati.
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Line Islands or Equatorial Islands, coral group, 43 sq mi (111 sq km), central and S Pacific. Once valuable for their guano deposits, the islands now have coconut groves, airfields, and meteorological stations. Of the 11 islands in the group, 8 comprise part of the Republic of Kiribati: Teraina, Tabuaeran, Kiritimati (formerly Washington, Fanning, and Christmas Islands), Malden, Starbuck, Caroline, Vostok, and Flint. Kingman Reef, Palmyra, and Jarvis Island are dependencies of the United States. The islands were uninhabited when discovered by American sailors in 1798, although a few show evidence of ancient Polynesian culture. The British government once conducted hydrogen bomb tests on Malden.
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Coordinates: 0°0′S 157°0′W / 0°N 157°W
The Line Islands, or Equatorial Islands, is a chain of eleven atolls and low coral islands in the central Pacific Ocean, south of the Hawaiian Islands that stretches for 2,350 km in a northwest-southeast direction, making it one of the longest islands chains of the world. Eight of the islands form part of Kiribati, while the remaining three are United States territories grouped with the United States Minor Outlying Islands.
Those that are part of Kiribati are in the world's farthest forward time zone, UTC+14. The time of day is the same as in Hawaiʻi, but the date is one day ahead. The time is 25 hours ahead of some other islands in Oceania.
The United States previously claimed all the Line Islands under the Guano Islands Act. This claim was relinquished under the Treaty of Tarawa, which recognised Kiribati's sovereignty over the majority of the chain.
The group is geographically divided into three subgroups; The Northern, Central, and Southern Line Islands. The Central Line Islands are sometimes grouped with the Southern Line Islands. The table below lists the islands from North to South.
* The lagoon areas marked with an asterisk are contained within the island areas of the previous column because they are, unlike in the case of a typical atoll, inland waters completely sealed off from the sea.
Only three islands are inhabited, with a total population of 8,809 (census of 2005), of which 5,115 are on Kiritimati, 2,539 on Tabuaeran, and 1,155 on Teraina. The total population of these three atolls in 1900 was about 300.
Kiritimati is the largest atoll in the world in terms of land area. The islands were annexed by Britain in 1888 with a view to laying the Pacific cable with Tabuaeran (then Fanning Island) as a relay station. That cable functioned between 1902 and 1963 except for a short period in 1914.
Copra and "Petfish" are the main export products (with seaweed).
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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Mentioned in
- Palmyra Atoll
- Starbuck
- Kiritimati (Line Islands)
- Kiribati (island country of the west-central Pacific Ocean)
- Jarvis Island (island, the Pacific/United States)
- Kingman Reef (island, the Pacific/United States)
- Palmyra (atoll, Pacific Ocean)
- Tabuaeran (island, Kiribati)
- Teraina (island, Kiribati)
- Wonsan (city, North Korea)
- Palmyra
- Diomede Islands
- Crinoid clingfish
- Thousand Islands (island group, New York/Canada)
