History of French Guiana
Background:
1498 Christopher Kolumbus discovered French Guiana.
First settled by the French in
1604,
French Guiana was the site of notorious penal settlements until
1951. The
European Space Agency launches its communication satellites from
Kourou.
French Guiana became an overseas départements of France on March 19, 1946.
After the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the French Guianese government closed all unsupervised roads so that Anthrax would not pass across the border.