Before Europeans discovered other oceans, the term " ocean " itself was synonymous with the waters beyond the Strait of Gibraltar that we now know as the Atlantic.

Returning to the fleet at the Tagus in late April 1798, he was ordered to collect the squadron stationed at Gibraltar and sail for the Ligurian Sea.

Peuple Souverain also remained at Gibraltar: the ship was deemed too badly damaged for the Atlantic voyage to Britain and so was converted to a guardship under the name of HMS Guerrier.

Flavius and the Book of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons ; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, separating it from North Africa, to the Don, separating it from Asia.

Mousterian deposits found at Gorham's Cave, which are associated with Neanderthals in Europe, have been dated to as recently as 28, 000 to 24, 000 BP, leading to suggestions that Gibraltar was one of the last places of Neanderthal habitation.

While the rest of Europe was cooling, the area around Gibraltar back then resembled a European Serengeti.

The Romans visited Gibraltar, but no permanent settlement was established.

Following the fall of the Roman Empire, Gibraltar was occupied by the Vandals and later the Goths kingdoms.

The Gibraltar area and the rest of the South Iberian Peninsula was part of the Byzantine Empire during the second part of the 6th century, later reverting to the Visigoth Kingdom.

It was here that Gibraltar was named.

* 1231-After the collapse of the Almohad Empire, Gibraltar was taken by Ibn Hud, Taifa emir of Murcia.

This was the First Siege of Gibraltar.

* 1310 31 January – Gibraltar was granted its first Charter by the king Ferdinand IV of Castile.

* 1316-Gibraltar was unsuccessfully besieged by the Nasrid caid Yahya ( Second Siege of Gibraltar ).

It was again unsuccessful, mainly due to the arrival of the Black Death, which decimated the besiegers, causing the death of the king ( Fifth Siege of Gibraltar ).

Possibly as a condition of the alliance or as reward for Muhammad's successful expedition to Africa, Gibraltar was handed over to the Nasrids of Granada.

However, his attack was repelled and Castilian forces suffer heavy losses ( Seventh Siege of Gibraltar ).

Henry IV restored the charter granted to Gibraltar in 1310 and took two additional measures: the lands previously belonging to Algeciras ( destroyed in 1369 ) were granted to Gibraltar ; and the status of collegiate church was solicited from the pope Pius II and granted to the parish church of Saint Mary the Crowned (), now the Cathedral of St. Mary the Crowned, on the site of the old main Moorish Mosque.

* 1463-In a tour through Andalusia, Henry IV was the first Christian monarch to visit Gibraltar.

* 1470 20 December – A new charter was granted to the town of Gibraltar, now a nobiliary town, based in the Antequera charter.

* 1502 10 July – By a Royal Warrant passed in Toledo by Isabella I of Castile, Gibraltar was granted its coat of arms: " An escutcheon on which the upper two thirds shall be a white field and on the said field set a red castle, and below the said castle, on the other third of the escutcheon, which must be a red field in which there must be a white line between the castle and the said red field, there shall be a golden key which hangs by a chain from the said castle, as are here figured ".

It was Gibraltar's first hospital, and remained on the same site serving the people of Gibraltar for almost four and a half centuries.

Subsequently, fibre links into the FLAG cable system ( which had a landing point in Estepona, about 50 km from Gibraltar ) were established and along with microwave links to Morocco giving Gibraltar a resilient communications infrastructure.

Gibtelecom is also a partner in the EIG cable system, which will have a landing point in Gibraltar.

He preferred to wait in Gibraltar for the results of the landing.

Migrating bee populations formed the original colonies of bee in western Europe, landing to eventually populate the continent from Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar.

On 7 June 1867, he left Gibraltar, reached the Cape of Good Hope on 24 July and paid a royal visit to Cape Town on 24 August 1867 after landing at Simon's Town a while earlier.

The last raids on Gibraltar were done during the 1943 Allied landing in Algeria, when those bombers even managed to hit the port of Oran successfully.

As the nearest port available for carrying out repairs and landing his wounded men was Gibraltar, Byng's plan was to sail there, repair his ships, and try once again to get extra forces before returning to Fort St Philip.

After raiding down the Spanish coast and fighting their way through Gibraltar, Björn and Hastein pillaged the south of France, where his fleet over-wintered, before landing in Italy where they captured the coastal city of Pisa.

GB Airways Airbus A320 landing at Gibraltar Airport.

Since it has been called La Caleta for much longer than it has ever been called Catalan Bay, the second theory and the most probably just in 1704 on the capture of Gibraltar by an Anglo-Dutch combined operation, that expedition landing in that place around 350 Catalans followers of Charles of Austria, third theory suggests that the latter could simply be an English mispronunciation of Caleta.

File: GB_Airways_aircraft_landing_at_Gibraltar_Airport. jpg | British Airways aircraft landing at Gibraltar International Airport.

* 1942 September – A small group of Gibraltarians, who remained in the town serving in the British Army, joined a mechanic official, Albert Risso, to create ' The Gibraltarians Association ', the starting point of what became the Association for the Advancement of Civil Rights ( officially established in December that year ), the first political party in Gibraltar.

The shallow Camarinal Sill of the Strait of Gibraltar, which forms the shallowest point within the strait, acts to limit mixing between the cold, less saline Atlantic water and the warm Mediterranean waters.

The Moslem wave, already a thousand miles from its starting point in Gibraltar — to say nothing about its base in al-Qayrawan — had already spent itself and reached a natural limit.

* Under the command of Punicus and then Cesarus, the Lusitani, a Hispanic tribe, reach a point near modern day Gibraltar.

The county's highest point is Gibraltar Rock at 1, 247 feet above sea level.

It also appears in the English place name Skegness-' beard point ', from the way in which a series of tombolos forms, towards the nearby Gibraltar Point.

The regiment was then stationed at Gibraltar, where he remained until he was made captain in the 75th in January 1778, at which point he then returned to Britain.

Tarifa is the most important whale watching town in the Strait of Gibraltar ; this gateway to the Mediterranean Sea is also a central point in between the colder waters to the North and the tropical waters off of Africa: a good route for migrating cetaceans.

After leaving Gibraltar, the ship began leaking again to the point that it could go no farther than Bermuda, where the model was stored until other transportation could be arranged.

At this point he might still have assumed that his work in France was a temporary measure and that he would, in his turn, make his way to Gibraltar and resume his original naval service.

When also considering British control over the strategic fortress of Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean, Ireland, Spain, France, and Portugal are the only European countries that have direct access to the Atlantic Ocean in a way that cannot be easily blocked at a choke point by the Royal Navy.

Gibraltar, which is still a British overseas territory to this day, became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean.

When also considering British control over the strategic fortress of Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean, Spain ( northern coast ), France ( Atlantic coast ) and Portugal are the only mainland European nations that have direct access to the Atlantic ocean in a way that cannot be easily blocked at a choke point by the Royal Navy.

Five kilometres southeast of Maungaturoto is the antipodean point of Gibraltar.

The first leg took just over two weeks to reach Gibraltar, the official starting point for the Blue Water Round the World Rally.

The reserve extends for a distance of about along the coast, from the southern end of Skegness to the northern corner of The Wash ( Gibraltar Point itself is at the southernmost tip, and marks the point where the North Sea coast turns southwest towards Boston ).

Europa Point ( Spanish and Llanito: Punta de Europa or Punta Europa ), is the southernmost point of Gibraltar.

The battle of Gibraltar in 1476 has been identified as an important transition point in northern naval warfare.

Gibraltar Island became a lookout point for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry in the fight against the British during the War of 1812.

As a result, the lookout point on Gibraltar Island became known as Perry's Lookout.