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Location:
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Caribbean, chain of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean, southeast of Florida, northeast of Cuba.
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Area:
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13,878 km² 5,358 sq mi
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Border Countries:
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None
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Capital City:
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Nassau
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Main Cities:
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Nassau, Freeport, Matthew Town
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Population:
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323,000
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Currency:
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Dollar (BSD)
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Languages:
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English (official), Creole (among Haitian immigrants)
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Religions:
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Baptist 35.4%, Anglican 15.1%, Roman Catholic 13.5%, Pentecostal 8.1%, Church of God 4.8%, Methodist 4.2%, other Christian 15.2%, none or unspecified 2.9%, other 0.8% (2000 census)
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The flag of Bahamas: The flag of The Bahamas has an approximately 1:2 aspect ratio. The black triangle on the left represents the unity of the 300,000 people of The Bahamas, who are primarily of African descent. To the right of the triangle, the blue stripes at the top and bottom of the flag represent the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, and the gold stripe in the middle represents the sun and sand between them: the sandy shores of the Bahamian islands. The flag was adopted on July 10, 1973.
The civil ensign is a red ensign with a white cross throughout and the national flag in the upper-hoist corner; the naval ensign is a white ensign with the same canton.
Subdivisions: Bahamas is divided to 21 districts. There are no known flags of those districts. The districts are:- Acklins and Crooked Islands, - Bimini, - Cat Island, - Exuma, - Fresh Creek, - Freeport, - Governor´s Harbour, - Green Turtle Cay, - Harbour Island, - High Rock, - Inagua, - Kemps Bay, - Long Island, - Mayaguana, - Marsh Harbour, - Nichollstown and Berry Islands, - New Providence, - Ragged Island, - Rock Sound, - Sandy Point, - San Salvador and Rum Cay.
The Commonwealth of The Bahamas is an independent English-speaking nation in the West Indies. An archipelago of 700 islands and cays, the Bahamas is located in the Atlantic Ocean, east of Florida and the United States, north of Cuba and the Caribbean, and northwest of the British dependency of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The Bahamian population is from approximately 85% African descendency, followed by 12% Caucasian descendency. Other minorities include Asians and Hispanics at 3%. Many Bahamian Caucasians are concentrated on Abaco Island, Spanish Wells, Harbour Island, Long Island, and the Montagu Bay district of New Providence (just to the east of Nassau). There are also a significant number of non-citizen Caucasian expatriates from the United States and Europe.
The official language is English, spoken by nearly all inhabitants, though many speak a patois form of it Bahamian Creole Dialect not to be confused with Haitian Creole spoken by a considerable number of immigrants. Spanish and Portuguese are also spoken by immigrant groups.
A strongly religious country, there are more places of worship per person in the Bahamas than any other nation in the world. The islands are overwhelming Protestant Christian (over 80%). Baptists form the largest denomination (about one third), followed by the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches.
A few people, especially in the southern and eastern islands, practice Obeah, a spiritistic religion similar to Voodoo. While well-known throughout the Bahamas, Obeah is shunned by many people. Voodoo is practiced, but almost exclusively by the large number of immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
Christopher Columbus' first landfall in the New World was on the island of San Salvador, also called Watling's Island, in the south part of Bahamas where he encountered the indigenous Tainos (commonly known as the Lucayan) and exchanged gifts with them.
Taino Indians from the north part of Hispaniola and north part of Cuba moved into the south area of The Bahamas in maybe the 7th century and became the Lucayans. It seems as though they settled by the 12th century AD. There were maybe 40,000 Lucayans living in the Bahamas when Columbus came through.
The Bahamian Lucayans were taken to Hispaniola as slaves, and in two decades, many Lucayan societies stopped existing because of forced labour, warfare, disease, emigration and outmarriage.
After the Lucayans were gone, the Bahamian islands were left alone with no one in them until the English settlers came from Bermuda in 1650. They were the Eleutherian Adventurers, those people established settlements on the island that was then called Eleuthera. The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1718. Some 8,000 loyalists and their slaves moved to the Bahamas in the late 1700s from New York, Florida and the Carolinas.
The British made the islands internal self-government in 1964 and, in 1973, Bahamians got full independence while staying a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Since the 1950s, the Bahamian economy has prospered based on the twin pillars of tourism and financial services. Despite this however the country still faces significant challenges in areas such as education, healthcare, correctional facilities and violent crime and illegal immigration. The urban renewal project has been launched in recent years to help impoverished urban areas in social decline in the main islands. Today, the country enjoys the third highest per capita income in the western hemisphere.
Some say the name 'Bahamas' derives from the Spanish for "shallow sea", baja mar. Others trace it to the Lucayan word for Grand Bahama Island, ba-ha-ma ("large upper middle land").
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The flag is a piece of cloth, often flown from a pole or mast, generally used for signalling or identification. The design of a flag displayed in another form is also referred to as a flag. The first flags were used to assist military coordination on battlefields, and flags have evolved into a general tool for rudimentary signalling and identification, especially in environments where communication is similarly challenging (such as the maritime environment where semaphore is used).
National flags are potent patriotic symbols with varied wide-ranging interpretations, often including strong military associations due to their original and ongoing military uses. Flags are used in messaging or advertising, or for decorative purposes, though at this less formal end the distinction between a flag and a simple cloth banner is blurred. The study of flags is known as vexillology, from the Latin vexillum meaning flag or banner.
Although flag-like symbols have been used by ancient cultures for thousands of years, the origin of flags in the modern sense is a matter of dispute. Some believe flags originated in China, while others hold that the Roman Empire's vexillum was the first true flag. Originally, the standards of the Roman legions were not flags, but symbols like the eagle of Augustus Caesar's Xth legion; this eagle would be placed on a staff for the standard-bearer to hold up during battle. But a military unit from Scythia had for a standard a dragon with a flexible tail which would move in the wind; the legions copied this; eventually all the legions had flexible standards — our modern-day flag.
During the Middle Ages, flags were used mainly during battles to identify individual leaders: in Europe the knights, in Japan the samurai, and in China the generals under the imperial army.
From the time of Christopher Columbus onwards, it has been customary (and later a legal requirement) for ships to carry flags designating their nationality; these flags eventually evolved into the national flags and maritime flags of today. Flags also became the preferred means of communications at sea, resulting in various systems of flag signals; see International maritime signal flags.
Beginning in the 17th century, European knights were replaced by centralized armies, and flags became the means to identify not just nationalities but also individual military units. Flags became much more elaborate, and were seen as objects to be captured or defended. Eventually these flags posed too much danger to those carrying them, and by World War I these were withdrawn from the battlefields, and have since been used only at ceremonial occasions.
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