Word: nauru
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Many a pygmy-size paradise of late has attained the badge of nationhood -such as Cyprus, Rwanda, Burundi, Zan zibar. But all stand as giants beside a midget that last week clamored to join the gang: the Pacific island of Nauru...
...coral-and-palm flyspeck 1,300 miles northeast of Australia, Nauru has an area of 8½ square miles and a population of 2,700. Only 100 years ago, it was a virtually unknown battleground of savages who guzzled coconut toddy and sported necklaces of human teeth; in 1852 the Nauruans inhospitably chopped up the entire crew of the visiting American brig, India. Since the turn of the century, however, life for the islanders has been one long enchanted evening...
...Taxes. In 1900 a British engineer assayed a Nauru rock being used as a doorstop in his Sydney office, discovered that the island was richly overlaid with phosphate. With Britain, Australia and New Zealand extracting the deposits, royalties have showered down on the Nauruans to the tune of half a million dollars a year. Today the dark-skinned natives pay no taxes but enjoy schools, hospitals, running water, electric lights and movies...
...years ago, it became evident that the phosphate would run out before long. Nauru's three concessionaires and the U.N., of which the island is a trusteeship, rushed solicitously to the rescue. Last year Australia took the natives' head chief, Hammer deRoburt, to look over Australia's Curtis Island off the Queensland coast, offered to underwrite a $22.4 million resettlement of the Nauruans there. Curtis Island is larger than Nauru, has abundant supplies of fish offshore, and its wildlife would even permit the Nauruans to pursue their favorite pastime of taming noddies and frigate birds...
WITH her engines grinding at a rowboat's pace and her crew peering anxiously at debris in the water, the U.S. destroyer Boyd slipped in toward Japanese-held Nauru Island on the morning of Dec. 8, 1943. A U.S. fighter pilot had been- shot down within point-blank range of the island shore batteries, and the Boyd was bent on rescuing him. Suddenly, two 6-in. shells crashed into the forward .engine room, destroying half of the ship's power. Shellburst jets of water blossomed everywhere. The Boyd's skipper, Lieut. Commander Ulysses Simpson Grant Sharp...