13 Forbidden Islands and Their Deadly Secrets
And Their Deadly Secrets
No man’s land is an island
Occupied, off-limits, or cursed: Some seemingly idyllic locales should be given a wide berth, but if you dare to venture ashore, a hair-raising adventure may be in store…
KING ÁLVAREZ’S REIGN OF TERROR
The number of islands on Earth is so big that no one knows for sure exactly how many there are. Some of them, such as Greenland, Borneo, and Madagascar, are huge. Others are tiny: Just Enough Room Island, for example, which spans 3,300 square feet, is the world’s smallest inhabited island. It lies in the Saint Lawrence River on the New York side of the U.s.-canadian border. As The Washington Post had once noted, “One misstep and you’re swimming.”
Out of the world’s innumerable islands only around 11,000 are actually inhabited, and some of the ones that previously were no longer have any residents today. Given how isolated many of them are, islands have often served as the setting of ghastly crimes, and notable among them is the Northern Pacific island of Clipperton. It was named for John Clipperton, a pirate who made the 2.3-square-mile atoll his 18th-century hideout. The ribbon of land was later disputed between France and
Mexico, and it was in Mexican hands with about 100 men, women, and children living there when World War I erupted in 1914. By the next year most of the residents had left or died, and by 1917 lighthouse keeper Victoriano Álvarez was the last adult male on the island. He proclaimed himself king over the remaining 15 women and children, initiating a reign of terror, rape, and murder that only ended when one of his “subjects,” the widow of the previous garrison commander, killed him. Fortunately for the four women and seven children who remained, the patrolling Navy gunship USS Yorktown soon appeared on the horizon, picked up the survivors, and took them to safety. Under the authority of France today, Clipperton has now been dropped from the list of inhabited islands.