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Culture · Geography · Health · History · Mathematics · Natural sciences · Philosophy · Religion · Society · Technology
The primary use of the term Oceania is to describe a continental region (like Europe or Africa) that lies between Asia and the Americas, with Australia as the major land mass. The name Oceania is used, rather than Australasia, because unlike the other continental groupings, it is the ocean rather than the continent that links the nations together. Oceania is the smallest continental grouping in land area and the second smallest, after Antarctica, in population.
French Polynesia has a moderately developed economy, which is dependent on imported goods, tourism, and the financial assistance of mainland France. Tourist facilities are well developed on the major islands.
Polynesian navigation was a system of navigation used by Polynesians to routinely make long voyages across thousands of miles of open ocean. Navigators traveled to small inhabited islands using only their own senses and knowledge passed by oral tradition from navigator to apprentice.
In order to locate directions at various times of day and year, navigators memorized important facts: the motion of specific stars, and where they would rise and set on the horizon; weather; times of travel; wildlife species; directions of swells on the ocean, and how the crew would feel their motion; colors of the sea and sky; and angles for approaching harbors.
These wayfinding techniques along with outrigger canoe construction methods, were kept as guild secrets. Generally each island maintained a guild of navigators who had very high status; in times of famine or difficulty these navigators could trade for aid or evacuate people to neighboring islands.
- 20 August: The Pacific Islands Forum meets in Niue and elects Tuiloma Neroni Slade as the Secretary-General of the organisation for the next three years.
- 1 August: George Tupou V is crowned as the 23rd Monarch of Tonga.
- 29 July: George Tupou V of Tonga announces that he will give up most of his day-to-day control over the government and be guided by the Prime Minister in matters of governance.
- 25 July: Kapiliele Faupala is crowned King of Uvea. He is one of three kings in Wallis and Futuna.
- 21 July: A United States Air Force B-52 bomber crashes near Guam in the western Pacific Ocean.
- 19 June: Toke Talagi becomes Premier of Niue, elected by 14 votes to five.
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To see Wikipedia in one of the other languages used in Oceania:
