The island, preferably uninhabited, is a wonderful secluded place, a paradise for exotic lovers. You can bury looted piastres and jewelry on it if you are a pirate. You can buy it and, putting on your coast guard, enjoy the sunsets, sunrises, if you are a millionaire. And you can include survival quests in the route if you are tired of a well-fed life and are looking for thrills. However, not all islands are so impeccable, and behind the beautiful façade, ominous and even chilling secrets can be hidden. Migrant islands, landfill islands, test sites. Away from romance! An unforgettable journey across islands with a badly tarnished reputation awaits you.
Sable, Canada - Wandering Island
An island in the North Atlantic appears and disappears to settle in a new place. In fact, this is a sand dune about 40 kilometers long and no more than a kilometer wide, from a bird's eye view it looks like a crescent moon. Since the discovery of the island by the Portuguese in the 16th century, at least 300 shipwrecks have occurred in its waters: the Atlantic currents constantly change the shape of the giant dune, forcing it to migrate.
Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands - Deadly Beauty
The once beautiful coral atoll became world famous in the 1950s for nuclear weapons testing. In total, about 70 charges were detonated in the Marshall Islands, of which 23 were detonated directly on Bikini (on the ground, under water or in the air). Oddly enough, there are people on the atoll: despite the still off-scale radiation levels, scientists regularly monitor what is left of the soil and coral, trying to find ways to deactivate the deadly isotopes.
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Madagascar - Scotland is saving the world
At the beginning of the 18th century, the east coast of the island of Madagascar was a real pirate confederation that threatened the entire Indian Ocean. The British, Dutch and Portuguese defended their ships with all their might, loaded with goods from the Asian colonies, and desperately sought to defeat the pirate freemen, but to no avail. The attack was delivered to the pirates from a completely unexpected side. A Scottish merchant's ship with a cargo of beer and rum arrived in Madagascar. The pirates decided not to pay for such tempting goods and confiscated them. In the midst of the grand feast, they began to die in terrible agony. Few teetotal contemporaries reported that at least five hundred people died. Probably the cunning Scotsman was selling methyl alcohol under the guise of rum. Be that as it may, one merchant ship did more to fight piracy,than all three military fleets of the then maritime superpowers.
Tilafushi, Maldives - The Other Side of Paradise
The Maldives is a tropical paradise on earth, with crystal clear waters lapped by sparkling white sand beaches. This beauty cannot but attract tourists from all over the world (more than 10 thousand people come to the islands every week). But where there are people, there is garbage. I had to create an artificial dump island. It employs about 150 people, sorting waste, dividing it into those that can be recycled, which can be sold for recycling, and which simply need to be incinerated. The task itself is not an easy one, and considering that more than 330 tons of garbage are received on the island per day, it is not surprising that the choice is often made in favor of incineration. Nature does not like it when plastic, batteries, drowned cell phones and the like are burned on a tropical island, throwing the burnt remains into the ocean.
Tiburon, Gulf of California - Gold is bad for health
The largest Mexican island off the coast of California is a hilly desert inhabited by venomous snakes and Seri Indians. Since the discovery of the island by the Spaniards, it was believed that it was also fabulously rich in gold and precious stones, and this attracted the Americans. The history of Arizona gold digger Tom Grindell has reached us in detail, who in the spring of 1903 with a small team went to Tiburon and promised to return in the fall. This did not happen, and Tom's brother went in search of the next spring. The Indians hid, leaving human hands strung on sticks on their temples. The strap from the backpack, which retained the owner's initials, determined that the victims were not Tom and his people. Tom's remains were found a few years later, identified by crumpled scraps of letters. Half a century later, a scientific expedition went to the island to find out who the Seri Indians are and how dangerous they are. The scientists met polite, friendly natives who willingly introduced them to their way of life. "Yes, it used to happen that people were fried and eaten, but, I confess, we liked the smell more than the taste." Now it's over: the Mexican government has said that if another visitor mysteriously disappears on the island, the entire tribe will be destroyed.that if another visitor mysteriously disappears on the island, the entire tribe will be destroyed.that if another visitor mysteriously disappears on the island, the entire tribe will be destroyed.
Gruinard, North Scotland - The Island of Bad Luck
At the height of World War II, Great Britain decided that since Germany and Japan were developing and testing bacteriological weapons, the same could and should be done. An island off the coast of Scotland was chosen as a testing ground. Fifty sheep were brought there, a bomb was dropped … The effect was great, and not only for the unfortunate sheep. The war ended and the anthrax-infested island continued to ooze miasma into Scotland. When several sheep that had long died in the rear were washed ashore, the alarm was sounded not only by local residents, but also by scientists and the military had to carry out a large-scale operation to clean up the territory. It is curious that after the "cleaning" with formaldehyde, the Ministry of Defense proposed to store nuclear waste on this island of bad luck. On the territory of Russia there is a "twin" of Gruinard - the Renaissance island in the former Aral Sea. In Soviet times, a variety of biological weapons were tested there. The island was leveled to the ground not because of experiments, but due to the drying up of the sea, but even now there are no signs of life within a radius of more than a hundred kilometers.
San Servolo, Gulf of Venice - Island of Heartache
The darkest of the islands in the Venetian lagoon is not the cemetery island of San Michele, but the madhouse-museum of San Servolo. In the 18th century, a military hospital was built there, which soon became a psychiatric hospital under the auspices of the monastic order of St. John, who had specialized in medicine since the early Middle Ages. Even in the 19th century, the concepts of medicine were quite peculiar by modern standards: for example, moral pacification, an analogue of "psychoanalysis", was accompanied by confession and soothing massage - followed by brutal procedures up to the point of electroshock. The museum exposition vividly resembles a horror movie.
Brown Island, Virginia, USA - Beware of fire
Ammunition depots are always dangerous, and in wartime they are doubly dangerous. They were always tried to keep them away from cities, and during the American Civil War, Southerners cleared Brown Island off the coast of Virginia, setting up a weapons factory there in wooden barracks. In the spring of 1863, the inevitable happened: a young Irish worker, Mary Ryan, shaking out the fuses from a wooden box, dropped one of them. The explosion immediately destroyed the entire warehouse - hundreds of thousands of ammunition and the constant powder suspension in the air literally wiped it off the face of the earth, along with the workers. Oddly enough, the culprit of the tragedy, who was in the very center of the fireball, survived and was able to confess. Less than a month later, the warehouse was rebuilt, and the number of people wishing to get a job there exceeded the number of vacancies.
Solovki - Monks and prisoners
Founded on the remote Solovetsky Islands, the medieval monastery gradually acquired a new, gloomy quality: from the time of Ivan the Terrible, it gradually became a prison, and the monks - jailers. Under the king, they were exiled there for treason, blasphemy and vagrancy. In the Civil War, White Guards were sent to Solovki, and with the founding of the GULAG in the 1930s, Solovki became synonymous with a concentration camp for all segments of the population. Solovki often overcrowded, and it was time for mass executions.
Nazino, Tomsk region - Cannibal Island named after Stalin
In 1933, a Siberian taiga island on the Ob River in the Tomsk region became a place for the shipment of "socially harmful and declassed elements." With the introduction of the passport system, about 100 thousand people were evicted from the cities of the Soviet Union, mostly homeless and criminals. Some were unlucky enough to be left on a deserted island in the middle of one of the widest Siberian rivers without food, warm clothing, or even matches. The river water was not drinkable. Soon, out of 6,000 exiles, 2,000 survived. Not everyone died a natural death: in less than a month, the community had disintegrated so much that cannibalism became the norm.