Country profile
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
South America · Latin America and the Caribbean · Americas
GS · SGS
- Capital
- King Edward Point
- Population
- 0
- Area
- 3,903 km²
Events
Ballots from South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
The latest elections, referendums, and opinion polls from South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Community totals are not official results.
No published ballots yet
No public ballots yet
Check back later or explore the global feed.
World Factbook
Country background
A concise introduction to South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, together with notes on how power and law are organized, to put local ballots in context.
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands lie approximately 1,000 km east of the Falkland Islands and have been under British administration since 1908 -- except for a brief period in 1982 when Argentina occupied them. Grytviken, on South Georgia, was a 19th- and early 20th-century whaling station. Famed explorer Ernest SHACKLETON stopped there in 1914 en route to his ill-fated attempt to cross Antarctica on foot.
He returned some 20 months later with a few companions in a small boat and arranged a successful rescue for the rest of his crew, which was stranded off the Antarctic Peninsula. He died in 1922 on a subsequent expedition and is buried in Grytviken. Today, the station houses scientists from the British Antarctic Survey.
Recognizing the importance of preserving the marine stocks in adjacent waters, the UK extended the exclusive fishing zone in 1993, from 12 nm to 200 nm around each island.