16 lost islands

__________________
‘In 1947, British engineers destroyed the North Sea island of Heligoland (home of a Nazi naval fortification) with the help of 4000 tons of wartime ammunition. The blast — the largest single non-nuclear explosive detonation until the 1985 Minor Scale detonation at White Sands Missile Range — released about 3.2 kilotons of TNT-equivalent energy.’ — gizmodo

____________________
‘Michael J. Oliver, American citizen born in Lithuania, fond of numismatics, decided once to found a new nation. He got in touch with British authorities to put up a tax-free state in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and of course failed with this. He found in an atlas that there were two atolls in formation at the north of the territory of Tonga, known as Minerva since a ship named this way had wrecked because of them. Oliver and a friend, Morris Bud Davis, bought a ship in May 1972, engaged some men, and with this brought some sand on Minerva, to make it become a real island. When there was enough sand to make it possible to walk on Minerva, they proclaimed the Republic, Davis becoming president, and Olivier making money with the coins (with goddess Minerva) he made for his state. Tuphou IV of Tonga was rather unhappy to see this republic be born in his kingdom, and sent the Tongan army there, where the soldiers took the flags of the new republic and replaced them with the Tongan flag. The battle was soon resolved when an ocean storm washed away the island’s sand and submerged the atoll underwater for the next ten years. The reef continues to pop up every 10 years, do its stuff, and then go down again. That island falls under Tongan jurisdiction; as soon as it is up, the king orders the Tongan flag to be planted there. Sometimes it’s too late…’ — crwflags.com

_____________________
‘With a name like Dead Man’s Island, you might think that the small protrusion of rock was doomed all along. But the tiny island at the entrance to the San Pedro harbor was so steeped in romantic lore that many Southern Californians — powerless to stop the dynamite and steam shovels — greeted its demise in 1928 with sorrow. Dead Man’s Island was named for the shallow graves dug into its flat top. Various legends give different accounts of who was buried first: the last male survivor of San Nicolas Island, an Indian named Black Hawk; an English sailor who died while anchored at San Pedro; a smuggler who washed ashore on the island and died there of thirst or hunger. No one knows for certain which (if any) is true, but it’s clear that by the 1830s the local, Spanish-speaking population knew the outcrop as Isla de Los Muertos. In photos, it appears deceptively small; in fact, it measured at least 800 feet long and 250 feet wide. Rising 55 feet above the surface and separated from the San Pedro bluffs by nearly a mile of open water, Dead Man’s Island was the bay’s most conspicuous landform. Unfortunately, tidal forces started carving away at the island. As crumbling rock exposed buried coffins, the bodies were moved — the six servicemen to the Presidio in San Francisco, and the civilians to San Pedro’s Harbor View Cemetery. As part of a program of extensive harbor improvements, the U.S. government decided to remove the island wholesale in 1928.’ — KCET

____________________
‘The phantom Sandy Island has been blamed on an error by the crew of a whaling ship from 1876, the Velocity, which originally recorded the land mass, known as Sandy Island, midway between Australia and the French-governed New Caledonia. Though the island has existed on maps for hundreds of years, a group of Australian scientists went searching for it in the Coral Sea last month and could not find it. Shaun Higgins, a pictorial librarian at Auckland Museum who was intrigued by the mystery, now believes he has solved the case. He says the ship’s master aboard the Velocity reported a series of “heavy breakers” and some “sandy islets” on an admiralty chart and that the unusual features spotted by the crew were copied over time as an island. “As far as I can tell, the island was recorded by the whaling ship the Velocity,” Mr Higgins told ABC radio. “My supposition is that they simply recorded a hazard at the time. They might have recorded a low-lying reef or thought they saw a reef. They could have been in the wrong place. There is all number of possibilities. But what we do have is a dotted shape on the map that’s been recorded at that time and it appears it’s simply been copied over time.”’ — The Telegraph

______________________
‘Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara Island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years’ time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction. Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and its disappearing neighbor Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas.’ — The Independent

_____________________
‘Rose Island was a short-lived micronation on a platform in the Adriatic Sea, seven miles off the coast of Rimini, Italy. In 1964, Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa built the 400-meter-square platform, supported by nine strong pylons on the seabed. Reportedly, this platform eventually housed a restaurant, a bar, a night club, a souvenir shop, a post office, and perhaps a radio station. The artificial island declared independence on 24 June 1968, under the Esperanto name “Insulo de la Rozoj”. Stamps, currency, and a flag were produced. The Italian government sent troops to crush the rebellion. Two carabinieri and two inspectors of finances landed on the “Isole delle Rose” and took over the just-born state. The platform’s Council of Government sent a telegram to protest against the violation of its sovereignty, and the injury inflicted on local tourism by such a military occupation, but this was ignored. The island was destroyed by the Italian Navy.’ — crwflags.com

______________________
‘Bermeja, a tiny uninhabited island to the northwest of the Yucatán Peninsula, seems to have disappeared. One century, it’s sitting pretty at 22°33′ N, 91°22 E in the Gulf of Mexico; the next, it’s vanished, confounding maritime investigations and aerial surveys alike. And the Mexican people want to know where it went. Theories abound regarding Bermeja’s mysterious fate. Was it a casualty of global warming and rising sea levels? Did an underwater earthquake shake it clean off the radar? Or did the CIA blow it up, as conspiracy theorists suggest, with a view to expanding US sovereignty in the oil-rich Gulf? In 1997 the Mexican and US governments negotiated a treaty to divide Hoyos de Dona, a stretch of international waters taking in the area where Bermeja was once believed to be located. Seized by a renewed interest in the long-lost island’s existence, the Mexican government sent an expedition out to find it. The search yielded nothing and the treaty was signed. Three official investigations took place in 2009. All three used the most whizz-bang technologies at their disposal, leaving no wave unturned and no depth unplunged. Yet Bermeja remained elusive. According to Irasema Alcántara, from the Geography Institute at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), “We’ve encountered documents containing very precise descriptions of Bermeja’s existence. There are photographs taken of the island that look like no other island within a thousand miles. On this basis we firmly believe that the island did or even does exist.”‘ — Lonely Planet

_____________________
‘Pleasure Island was an amusement park located in Wakefield, Massachusetts. The park, billed as the “Disneyland of the Northeast”, was in business from 1959 to 1969. During its short existence it went through several owners and was financially handicapped by New England’s relatively short summers. Covering 80 acres (320,000 m2), the park featured a plethora of rides and other attractions, including the Space Rocket ride, the Pirate Ride, the Moby-Dick ride (which featured a spouting mechanical whale rising from the depths), the Wreck of the Hesperus (dark ride), the Old Chisholm Trail (dark ride), theme restaurants, a shopping area, an arcade, mini-golf (from 1967), a carousel, Monkey Island, and many others. Actors would stage mock gunfights in the Western City or threaten to attack riders on the boat rides. The park’s “Old Smokey Line” was a narrow-gauge railroad using equipment leased from the Edaville Railroad. Another park feature was the Show Bowl, where performers such as Ricky Nelson, Michael Landon, The Modernaires, the Three Stooges, Clayton Moore, Don Ameche, and Cesar Romero appeared.’ — collaged

____________________
‘Whale Skate Island in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands was a tiny dot of land in the vast Pacific, about 10 to 15 acres in size. It was covered with vegetation, nesting seabirds, Hawaiian monk seals and turtles laying eggs. It no longer exists. “That island in the course of 20 years has completely disappeared,” said Beth Flint, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist for the Pacific Remote Island Refuges. “It washed away.”‘ — heatisonline.org

__________________
‘The World, the ambitiously-constructed archipelago of islands shaped like the countries of the globe, is sinking back into the sea, according to evidence cited before a property tribunal. The islands were intended to be developed with tailor-made hotel complexes and luxury villas, and sold to millionaires. They are off the coast of Dubai and accessible by yacht or motor boat. Now their sands are eroding and the navigational channels between them are silting up, the British lawyer for a company bringing a case against the state-run developer, Nakheel, has told judges. “The islands are gradually falling back into the sea,” Richard Wilmot-Smith QC, for Penguin Marine, said. The evidence showed “erosion and deterioration of The World islands”, he added. With all but one of the islands still uninhabited – Greenland – and that one a showpiece owned by the ruler of Dubai, most of the development plans have been brought to a crashing halt by the financial crisis. Penguin claim that work on the islands has “effectively stopped”. Mr Wilmot-Smith described the project as “dead”.’ — The Telegraph

__________________
‘Holland Island was originally settled in the 1600s, taking its name from early colonist Daniel Holland, the original purchaser of the property from the Dorchester County Sheriff. By 1850, the first community of fishing and farming families developed on the island. By 1910, the island had about 360 residents, making it one of the largest inhabited islands in the Chesapeake Bay. The island community had 70 homes, stores and other buildings. It had its own post office, two-room school with two teachers, a church, baseball team, community center, and a doctor. The wind and tide began to seriously erode the west side of the island, where most of the houses were located, in 1914. This forced the inhabitants to move to the mainland. Many disassembled their houses and other structures and took them to the mainland, predominantly Crisfield. Attempts to protect the island by building stone walls were unsuccessful. The last family left the island in 1918, when a tropical storm damaged the island’s church. A few of the former residents continued living on the island during the fishing season until 1922, when the church was moved to Fairmount, Maryland. In October 2010, the last remaining house on Holland Island, built in 1888, collapsed.’ — collaged

_________________
With its lagoon, sandy beach and ramshackle wooden buildings, Challis Island looks like the perfect place for a pirate to hide from the law. But this island is in land-locked Cambridgeshire, not the Caribbean. And its multi-millionaire owner James Challis may be forced to walk the plank – by planners – because he did not apply for permission to build the island’s fantasy village. They have ordered him to pull it all down. Mr Challis, 29, spent several million pounds creating the artificial island in the middle of the lake on his family’s country estate five miles north of Cambridge, and transforming it into his own pirate-themed paradise. Mr Challis said it had been created in memory of his grandfather John Dickerson, who acquired the 60-acre site in the 1970s for the extraction of sand and gravel. Mr Dickerson had started work on converting the lake into an area to be used for recreation by his family and had built a boat house there, but he died in 1999. The family is expected to hear the fate of the island within weeks. South Cambridgeshire district council said: “We appreciate Mr. Challis’s efforts and creativity, but the law is the law, and I’m sorry to say that the destruction of his fantasy island is all but assured.”‘ — Daily Mail

_____________________
‘Deshima, known as Dejima in Japanese, was a small artificial island in Nagasaki Bay (approximately 150 feet by 500 feet) on the southwestern Japanese island of Kyushu. From 1641 to 1845, Deshima served as the sole conduit of trade between Europe and Japan, and during the period of self-imposed Japanese seclusion (approximately 1639-1854) was Japan’s only major link to the European world. Though Dutch merchants were generally confined to the island, it nonetheless served as a conduit of considerable culture exchange in both directions. The exchanges ranged from hydrangeas to knowledge of electricity and paralleled a similar exchange passing between the Japanese and Chinese merchants, who were also permitted to trade at Deshima under similar controlled circumstances. It was destroyed during the modernization of Nagasaki harbor in the 20th century.’ — World History Connected

____________________
DragonLegend2013: I just finish winning a battle in dinosaur island and collected some bones, after an hour in my iPad the game reload and the island is not there anymore. Is there a bug? Can someone advise? Thanks

Balgruff: Check your storage, maybe you accidentally bought everything and it’s in your storage now. Either that, or it’s cause the iOS version is reportably unstable.

DragonLegend2013: I had check the storage, it is not inside. Try resetting my iPad and still not inside. Please can you help? I need dinosaur island to win the dinosaur dragon. Thanks.

CaseyBarker: That happened to me also please someone help i want to get the dinosaurs

RubyDiamond: There are Dinosaur Island in iOS device ? Why i don’t know it… it don’t shown up ?

CaseyBarker: Guys if someone knows whats happening please post any info you have I can’t figure out how to get the island back

_____________________
‘The British explorer Richard Sowa built his own floating island off the east coast of Mexico in 1998. Spiral Island was created from more than 250,000 plastic bottles collected in large fishing nets. Sowa put a bamboo flooring over the bottles, and carried sand and plants onto Spiral Island. The empty, lightweight bottles floated on the top of the Gulf of Mexico and supported Sowa’s home and garden. Spiral Island was destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Emily.’ — NatGeo

____________________
‘Map-readers knew about Brazil long before America was discovered; but they didn’t think of it as a giant country on a distant continent. Brazil, also known by the name Hy-Brasil, was a small, mist-shrouded island in the North Atlantic, not too far off Ireland’s west coast. Only, Hy-Brasil never existed. Shown here on a Mercator map dating from 1623, it was one of many phantom islands that haunted marine cartography, sometimes for centuries, before more accurate observational techniques (and ultimately satellite photography) eliminated them all. Hy-Brasil’s first recorded appearance on a map dates from around 1325, as Bracile on a portolan map. In 1497, Spanish diplomat Pedro de Ayala reports home that John Cabot, the first European to visit North America since the Vikings in the 11th century, had made his journey with “the men from Bristol who found Brasil.” Sometimes fantasy became indistinguishable from fact. Hy-Brasil was rumoured to be continuously obscured by mist, except for one day every seven years. It must have been on one of those days in 1674 that captain John Nisbet, piercing a sea fog, anchored before the island, and sent a party of four ashore. The amazed sailors spent an entire day on Hy-Brasil, meeting an wizened old man – an Irish monk? – who provided them with gold and silver. A follow-up expedition by a captain Alexander Johnson also found Hy-Brasil, and confirmed captain Nisbet’s findings. But thereafter, Hy-Brasil reverted to its elusive self. When shown on the map, its location was usually to the west or southwest of Ireland, but Hy-Brasil has also been located in the Azores, and shown as either one or two separate islands. As it’s very hard to disprove a negative, Hy-Brasil’s unfindability per se did not cause it to disappear off the map – only to shrink. When last observed on a nautical chart, as late as 1865, it had become the diminutive Brasil Rock. The phantom island’s last appeareance took place in 1872, seven years after its removal from official nautical charts. The traveller T.J. Westropp, having already seen the island twice before, had brought a shipload of witnesses (including his mother) to verify his sighting of Hy-Brasil. The party did indeed see the island appear – and then disappear, never to be seen again. A fitting end for a phantom island.’ — big think.com

*

p.s. Hey. ** tomk, Hi. Yeah, it’s a thrill to see your novel being so well received. I remember how long and hard you worked on it and your worries about it during the writing. An amazing success story. I’ve never been to Miami. The only places I’ve been in Florida are Orlando to do the amusement parks and some beach town on the panhandle where they’d filmed ‘The Truman Show’. So you tell me the scoop once you’re a familiar. The Song Cave book, which I think is out now, is a collection of interviews from Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm show. Oh, yeah, about Quorn? That’s pretty alluring, I must say. On the search. Thanks, T ** Steve Erickson, I hope you enjoyed his work. Editing is going extremely well. We’re on our 4th cut of the film, and it’s getting very close to being locked in. So far I’m fine with sleeping and so on. Planning to see ‘Asteroid City’ this weekend. I just read about that documentary somewhere. Everyone, Steve E has reviewed a new documentary film about MIDNIGHT COWBOY here. ** _Black_Acrylic, Very pleased that his spell worked on you. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I’ve got optimism to spare so anytime you need some, I’m your oyster. Yes, re: shitstorm. The last time I talked about such things here the person in question found out and threw a fit that made things even worse, so I should stay relatively mum, but, yes, it never ends. That could be a useful love, say if you’re holding a piece of toast or if you are in proximity to someone truly horrible. Love making your day in Austria so pleasant it makes ‘The Sound of Music’ seem like ‘Hellraiser’, G. ** Misanthrope, So people say. The animation in the trailer irritates me, but I am going to try. Hope you secured the appointment. Oops: modem. ** Jamie, Hi, J. Good. Editing is going really well. I’m glad you liked the films so much. Nice screening there, for sure. I’m going to investigate those films. Sweet. I’m doing nothing apart from editing and just eating and doing a little blog/email. I saw Sparks live, and they were sublime. I’m going to get out and do shit this weekend. Great about the football novella! Sunken love, me. ** Jeff J, Hi. Hm, no, I don’t think I have favorites. I think just kind of like them in general. Okay, great about Saturday. I know ‘Clean/Shaven’, but I think that’s his only film of his that I know. Safdie Bros, ugh. Interesting to see the possible source though. ** Nick., Hi, Nick.! Awesome about your day. I’m just editing practically nonstop. Great stuff, but unfortunately not very interesting in description. Stay great until next visit. ** Cody Goodnight, I’m good. I think you can just test any of them. They’re short, best to watch a few in a row. The Wharton: nice. She’s terrific. Big fave of Bret Easton Ellis. Yes, I’ve read a few. I did a post on one of her books. I’m too rushing this morning to go find it. Great day! ** Brian, Hey, Brian. Cool about the funds. Understood. I think ‘Annette’, as interesting as it is, might be Carax’s least good film. He’s generally really strong. I definitely recommend investigating his work. Yeah, funny about the sentence replication. This blog is a trip. ** Right. I’m hoping you would like to read about islands that died today. See you tomorrow.