1974 Gilbert and Ellice Islands general election 1974 Gilbert and Ellice Islands general election General elections were held in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands on 4 April 1974. All candidates ran as independents. The system of government was changed again prior to the 1974 elections; the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Order 1974 replaced the Legislative Council with a 31-member House of Assembly, including 28 elected members and three ex officio members. A Council of Ministers replaced the Executive Council, and consisted of the Chief Minister elected by the House of Assembly and six ministers. Following the elections, Naboua Ratieta was appointed the territory's first Chief Minister. When
Endemism in the Hawaiian Islands was critical to the formulation of his theory of evolution is far exceeded in the more isolated Hawaiian Islands. The relatively short time that the existing main islands of the archipelago have been above the surface of the ocean (less than 10 million years) is only a fraction of time span over which biological colonization and evolution have occurred in the archipelago. High, volcanic islands have existed in the Pacific far longer, extending in a chain to the northwest; these once mountainous islands are now reduced to submerged banks and coral atolls. Midway Atoll, for example, formed as a volcanic