Gilbert and Ellice Islands French captain Louis Duperrey was the first to map the whole Gilbert Islands archipelago. He commanded "La Coquille" on its circumnavigation of the earth (1822–1825). Funafuti atoll was named Ellice's Island after Edward Ellice, a British politician and merchant, by Captain Arent de Peyster, who sighted the islands in 1819 sailing on the ship "Rebecca". Ellice owned the cargo of the ship. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands, of what is now Tuvalu, after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were formerly designated an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code "GE"
Postage stamps and postal history of the Marshall Islands used from 1914 to 1944. The islands became part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific in 1947 and used U.S. stamps until 1984. Marshall Islands has issued stamps since achieving postal independence in 1984. The website of the U.S. Pacific Islands Bulletin is now: https://sites.google.com/site/pacificislanditems/united-states-pacific-islands-bulletin Postage stamps and postal history of the Marshall Islands This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of the Marshall Islands. The "Republic of the Marshall Islands" (RMI) is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date