English captain John Strong made the first recorded landing on the uninhabited archipelago in 1690, and he named the sound between the two main islands after Viscount Falkland, a British naval official. The name was later applied to the whole island group. France, Britain, and Spain settled the islands in the late 18th century, but the British maintained their claim to the Falklands throughout. Argentina began asserting a claim to the Falklands (which they referred to as the Malvinas) in 1820 and attempted to found a settlement on East Falkland, but the British expelled them in 1833. For more than a century, Argentina continued to dispute Britain’s hold on the islands, and the matter was taken up by the United Nations in 1964. Discussions were ongoing in 1982 when Argentina’s military government launched an invasion of the islands that ended 10 weeks later with the surrender of all Argentine occupying forces to British troops. In 2013 a referendum was held to determine the political status of the islands, and 99 percent of Falklanders voted to maintain their status as an overseas territory of the United Kingdom.
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