History
The island was first sighted in 1820 by the Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, who named the island for his ship Vostok (the name means "East" in Russian). Vostok was claimed under the Guano Act of 1856, but was never mined for phosphate. It is unknown whether the island has ever been inhabited at all, though the presence of rats suggests that ancient Polynesians might have visited there, at least. No evidence of permanent settlement has ever been discovered.
Vostok formed part of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, until becoming a part of newly-independent Kiribati in 1979. American claims on the island were vacated in the Treaty of Tarawa in that same year.
Vostok Island is currently designated as the Vostok Island Wildlife Sanctuary. Its isolated nature means it is rarely visited, save by the occasional scientist or yachter. Passengers aboard the Ocean Princess see it on the ships route from French Polynesia to Hawaii. Landing is said to be difficult, and no harbor or anchorage exists.
Read more about this topic: Vostok Island
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)