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Jamaica is an island
nation situated in the northern Caribbean Sea and was named after the
Arawkan word Xaymaca, which means 'land of wood and water'. The
Arawaks are believed to be the original inhabitants of the island.
It was sighted by
Christopher Columbus in 1494 and was a Spanish colony from 1509 until
1655, when Great Britain took control of the island.
The Jamaican flag was
designed by a bipartisan committee of the Jamaican House of
Representatives and was adopted upon independence from Great Britain on the 6th of August 1962.
The original design for the Jamaican flag, a horizontal striped pattern using the same colours as the current flag, was rejected because of its similarity to the then flag of Tanganyika, now
part of Tanzania. |
