Word: islets
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Lonely little Kwajalein Island, a 600-acre islet in the central Pacific, has known more than its share of excitement. World War II bombing raids left it almost bare of vegetation. In 1954 it was the first refuge of 82 inhabitants of nearby Rongelap, who were evacuated, their hair falling out in patches, after an H-bomb test had sprinkled their home with radioactive residue. When the radioactivity on Rongelap died down, the refugees returned and Kwajalein quieted down. But last week it was busier than ever as a task force prepared to test the Nike Zeus, the U.S. Army...
...from the bustle and night life of the big cities, The Netherlands is still dotted with some of the world's dourest Calvinist communities. Among its grimmest is the former islet of Urk (pop. 5,500), a fishing village on the Zuider Zee. On Sundays, Urkers still separate their hens from the roosters, turn their paintings to the wall, read only one book (the Bible), take only one processional walk (to church). Doing anything else is sinful. For years life in Urk was pretty routine, and the town constable's daily report invariably read: "Nothing has happened." That...
Filibusters and rebellions roil the Caribbean ; neighboring British colonies move toward independence; nationalism flourishes. Amidst it all, the French West Indies-Martinique, Guadeloupe and their islet dependencies-glide ever closer to full membership in Charles de Gaulle's French Community...
Buntism derives from Sergeant Matthew Bunt, a British Marine who was two years a castaway on an uninhabited Pacific islet early in the igth century. When prim Captain Overton of H.M.S. Achilles stopped by, Marine Bunt, greeting him on the beach, showed some outer symptoms of extreme Buntism-"a paunch that hung over the belt of his tattered drawers, and cheeks which shook." But Captain Overton did not recognize the signs. "Show me round your little kingdom, Sergeant Crusoe," ordered the captain, "the stockaded hut and the wheat patch and the goat pen, and so on. This promises...
...British ships hove to off the Pacific islet Más a Tierra, one day in 1709, and prepared to take on fresh water. When the crew glimpsed flashing lights on the supposedly uninhabited island, an armed small boat was sent in to investigate. Awaiting the sailors on the beach, waving his arms and dancing, was an extraordinary figure "cloth'd in Goat-Skins, who look'd wilder than the first Owners of them. He had been [cast away] on the Island Four Years and four Months . . His name was Alexander Selkirk, a Scotch...