History
European settlement began with the Spanish settlement of Santa Catarina island in 1542. The Portuguese took control in 1675 and established the captaincy of Santa Catarina in 1738.
Large numbers of European immigrants, especially from Germany, began arriving early in the nineteenth century. Immigrants from Italy, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Japan and other parts of Europe followed. These immigrants created an abundance of small, family-held farms, many of which continue to exist in the interior of the state.
Late in March 2004, the state was hit by the first hurricane ever recorded in the South Atlantic. Because there is no naming system for such an event in Brazil, Brazilian meteorologists called it Cyclone Catarina, after the state.
Read more about this topic: Santa Catarina (state)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)