History
After 1562 the whole of the Alphonse group (Alphonse, St. François and Bijoutier) are collectively named on Portuguese charts as San Francisco. Chevalier Alphonse de Pontevez commanding the French frigate Le Lys visited on 27 June 1730 and gave the islands his own name. The following day he visited and named the neighbouring island of St François possibly following the former Portuguese name for the group. A small hotel has been built on Alphonse Island specialising in fly fishing.
Read more about this topic: Alphonse Atoll
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)