Tristan da Cunha: The Remotest Inhabited Island

MessageToEagle.com

9 years ago

MessageToEagle.com – Tristan da Cunha is a 38-square-mile volcanic outpost and the remotest inhabited island in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

It’s situated 1,510 miles southwest of its nearest neighbor, St. Helena, and 1,950 miles west of Africa. Discovered by the Portuguese admiral of the same name in 1506, and settled in 1810, the isle belongs to Great Britain and has a few hundred residents.

Life in Tristan da Cunha has strong family loyalties and high moral standards. The island is self supporting with a thriving economy, the people well provided for with income tax less than a pound per annum. Serious crime is unknown, unemployment is virtually non-existent. In 1961 a dramatic volcanic eruption forced the evacuation of the entire island, They were taken to what we glibly refer to as ‘civilization’. Almost all chose to return to the island when the the eruption was over.

Coming in a close second – and often wrongly cited as the most distant land – is Easter Island, located 1,260 miles east of its nearest neighbor, Pitcairn Island, and 2,300 miles west of South America.

The mountainous 64-square-mile island was settled around the 5th century, supposedly by people who were lost at sea. They had no contact with the outside world for more than a millennium, giving them plenty of time to construct more than 1,000 enormous stone figures, called moai, for which the island is most famous.

On Easter Sunday, 1722, however, Dutch settlers moved in and gave the island its name. Today, 2,000 people inhabit the Chilean territory. They share one paved road, a small airport, and a few hours of television per day.

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SeaWiFS Project