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The United Kingdom

The United Kingdom, officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is an island nation and constitutional monarchy in north-western Europe.

Great Britain is the largest of the British Isles. It comprises, together with numerous smaller islands, England and Scotland, and the principality of Wales. Northern Ireland, also known as Ulster, occupies the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland.

The United Kingdom is bordered to the south by the English Channel, which separates it from continental Europe, to the east by the North Sea, and to the west by the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The only land border is between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The total area of the United Kingdom is 242,752 sq km. The capital and largest city is London.

The names «United Kingdom», «Great Britain», and «England» are often used interchangeably. The use of «Great Britain», often shortened to «Britain», to describe the whole kingdom is common and widely accepted, although strictly speaking it does not include Northern Ireland.

However, the use of «England» to mean the «United Kingdom» is not acceptable to members of the other constituent countries, especially the Scots and the Welsh.

England and Wales were united administratively, politically, and legally by 1543. The crowns of England and Scotland were united in 1603, but the two countries remained separate political entities until the 1707 Act of Union, which formed the Kingdom of Great Britain with a single legislature. From 1801, when Great Britain and Ireland were united, until the formal establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, the kingdom was officially designated the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Hong Kong, which has 200,000 of the 6 million combined population of the dependencies, was returned to China in 1997.

The maximum overall length of the United Kingdom is 1,264 km: the most northerly point is Out Stack in the Shetland Islands. The most southerly is St Agnes in the Scilly Isles. The kingdom’s maximum width is 670 km. The mainland of the island of Great Britain is 974 km at its longest and 531 km at its widest; however, the highly indented nature of the island's coastline means that nowhere is more than about 120 km from the sea.

Relative to its size, the scenery of the United Kingdom is very diverse and can change dramatically within short distances. This diversity reflects in part the underlying rocks, which range from the ancient mountains of the Highlands of Scotland to the recent deposits in eastern England.

All of the United Kingdom, except the area of England south of the Thames, was covered with ice during the ice age, and glaciation shaped its most spectacular scenery, including the English Lake District, the loughs of Northern Ireland, the Welsh valleys, and most of Scotland, including the lakes.

The climate of the United Kingdom is mild relative to its latitude, which is the same as that of Labrador in Canada. The mildness is an effect of the warm Gulf Stream. This current brings the prevailing south-westerly winds that moderate winter temperatures and bring the depressions which are the main day-to-day influence on the weather. The western side of the United Kingdom tends to be warmer than the eastern; the south is warmer than the north. The mean annual temperature is 6 °С in the far north of Scotland; 11°C in the south-west of England. Winter temperatures are seldom below -10°C and summer temperatures rarely higher than 32°C. The sea winds also bring plenty of moisture; average annual precipitation is more than 1,000 mm.

Rain tends to fall – throughout the year, frequently turning to snow in the winter, especially in Scotland, the mountains of Wales, and northern England. The western side of Britain is much wetter than the eastern: average rainfall varies from more than 5,000 mm in the western Highlands of Scotland, to less than 500 mm in parts of East Anglia in England.

The population of United Kingdom is more than 56 mln people, but it is one of the world’s leading commercial and industrialized nations. In terms of gross national product (GNP) it ranks fifth in the world, with Italy, after the United States, Japan, Germany, and France.

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