Amazingly beautiful, the Virgin Islands are still one of the few places on Earth where got the destructive influence of civilization. The water here is clean and transparent, the sand is snow-white, and crabs busily scurry along the beaches. This is really a piece of paradise that people somehow got to, and one can only envy those who were lucky enough to be born there.
Facts about the Virgin Islands
- De jure, they are not an independent state. Some of them are controlled by the US, and some by the UK. The Spanish Virgin Islands, despite the name, is controlled by Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico is also a territory incorporated with the United States.
- The name of the Virgin Islands was given by Christopher Columbus, to whom the rocks on the coast reminded the figures of puffy ladies (interesting facts about Columbus), and all the locals were killed.
- The vast majority of the population of the modern Virgin Islands are descendants of African slaves who were once brought here to work on sugar cane plantations.
- In total, the Virgin Islands archipelago includes 60 islands.
- During the «golden age of piracy» filibusters and smugglers often hid here.
- The currency used here is American dollars.
- The entire population of the Virgin Islands speaks English.
- Like many other former English colonies, local roads drive on the left.
- The crime rate in the Virgin Islands is the lowest in the entire Western Hemisphere, and one of the lowest in the world.
- The archipelago is located on the border of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean (interesting facts about the Atlantic Ocean).
- Due to the fact that the British Virgin Islands are an offshore zone with convenient taxation, more than 700 thousand companies are officially registered here. This is 25 times more than the local population.
- Every year on November 2, the main local holiday, Freedom Day, is celebrated in the US Virgin Islands.
- One of the islands here was once almost entirely inhabited immigrants from Denmark.