7 Island Wonders of the World: Most Amazing, Mysterious, Remote and More
Did you know that one in every ten people in the world lives on an island? There is even a word for a “craze or a strong attraction to islands”
- islomania! From places of paradise to the last refuge of pirates each
of these islands has set at least one world record and some have
stories that are truly stranger than fiction. From the greatest and
grandest to the most remote, mysterious, deadly and least populated,
here are seven amazing islands from around the world.
The Pitcairn islands are best known for being the home of the descendants of the HMS Bountymutineers
and the Tahitians who accompanied them, an event retold in numerous
books and films. Due to infighting, famine and disease, many of the
initial compliment of the island perished. Today, Pitcairn boasts only
50 inhabitants (from nine families) and is also notable for being the
least populated jurisdiction in the world. The wreck of the HMS Bounty
is still visible underwater off the shores of the main inhabited
island, and the Tahitian/European descendants speak a unique language:
a mix of Tahitian and English known as Pitkern.
Palmyra is the quintessential combination of classic island stereotypes. It is simultaneously a kind of desert island paradise as well as a mysterious source of superstition.
Its long strange history includes buried pirate treasure, tragic
deaths, shipwrecks, military use and abandonment and a recent grizzly
double-murder of a vacationing couple. Some believe the island to be
cursed, but even rationalists are astonished at the number of bizarre
happenings that have plagued the island since its discovery in the
1700s. It remains currently the only unorganized incorporated U.S.
territory.
Bouvet is the remotest uninhabited island in the world.
Is roughly 75 square miles of surface is mostly covered by glaciers and
and very little survives on the island aside from moss, seals, seabirds
and penguins. However, the island has been at the center of some
peculiar mysteries. An early discoverer of the island documented second
island nearby that was never seen again. In the 1960s an abandoned
lifeboat was found on the island, though nothing was ever seen of its
passenger. In the above satellite images, it can only be picked out by
spotting disturbances in the weather patterns.
Tristan da Cunha is the remotest group of inhabited islands in the world,
thouand of miles from South America and South Africa deep in the
Atlantic Ocean. Among other strange native species, the Inaccessible
Island is home to the smallest living flightless bird. Only 272 people
live on the islands. The islands have seen there share of troubles,
having been blamed for dozens of shipwrecks over the centuries. More
recently, the populace had to be temporarily evacuated in the 1960s
during a volcanic eruption that destroyed multiple buildings on the
island.
