Strange Islands Part 3

North Brother Island

reivax from Washington, DC, USA

   Uninhabited until 1885, North Brother Island became the site of Riverside Hospital which was founded to treat and isolate victims of smallpox and eventually other diseases. June 15, 1904, the island was the site of the wreck of the General Slocum. It was a steamship which burned and over 1,000 people died either from the fire on board the ship or from drowning before the ship made it to the island's shores. Typhoid Mary was confined to North Brother Island for over two decades until she died there in 1938. After World War II, the island housed war veterans who until the nationwide housing shortage abated and then the island was once again abandoned. In the 1950s, heroin addicts were brought to the island and locked in a room until they were clean.  Many thought they were being held against their will as wall graffiti attests to.

   The island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public. Most of the original hospital buildings are deteriorated and in danger of collapse and a dense forest now grows over the ruins. From the 1980s through the early 2000s, one of the largest nesting colonies of Black-crowned Night Herons was there. As of 2008 the Black-crowned Night Herons also have abandoned the island for reasons unknown.

Population: 0

Plum Island

Another island of interest in New York, Plum Island is off the Eastern end of Long Island. Following the Spanish American War in 1899, Plum Island was purchased by the United States Government for approximately $90,000. Once home to the Army Chemical Corps, in 1954 the United States Department of Agriculture established the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Because of the nature of the research at the facility, access to the island is restricted. The facility may  be moved but there have been many theories about the strange experiments that may have taken place here over the years. Unidentified species of animals have been seen and photographed washing up on the shores of Eastern Long Island for years and many suspect that these creatures originated at Plum Island.

Population: Unknown

Exclaves, Oblasts and Other Geopolitical Oddities Part 2

Killcohook, Delaware

Killcohook, at Finn's Point, is one of two places in Delaware that shares a land border with New Jersey. The Twelve-Mile Circle, a colonial era agreement, defined the border of the 2 states as being along the low water mark on the New Jersey shore of the river. Later, the land on which the refuge lies falls was created by land fill and so it falls within Delaware territory. Killcohook consists primarily of marshland, and there was an emphasis on breeding of migratory waterfowl. The American Black Duck was singled out for protection in Killcohook.  The U.S. Congress revoked its status as a wildlife refuge in 1998 by and currently it is being used as a disposal facility by the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

Population: 0

Comment: I like the wildlife refuge idea better than the dumping ground. I think that it should be developed somehow, maybe as a weird resort or secret town or something.

Marble Hill, Manhattan

Marble Hill is the northernmost neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. Due to the re-routing of the Harlem River through the Harlem Ship Canal, it is politically part of Manhattan/New York County but it is located on the North American mainland and has a land border with The Bronx. It is rather small with a land area of just 0.1183 square miles.

Population:  8,463 (2010)

Population Density: 70,525 people per square mile.


Comment: I like the idea of an area of Manhattan which has single family homes.

Yakutsk, Russia

Winter in Yakutsk

With an extreme subarctic climate, Yakutsk has the coldest winter temperatures for any city. Average monthly temperatures are −38.6 °C (−37.5 °F) in January. The coldest temperatures ever recorded on the planet outside Antarctica were at the Yana River which is northeast of Yakutsk. 

Comment: I just checked and right now the actual air temperature in Yakutsk is -54 °F.

Population: 269,601

Strange Islands Part 2

Aogashima

Source: Amusing Planet.com

Aogashima is a volcanic Japanese island in the Philippine Sea which is inhabited. Despite only having around 200 residents they have their own alcoholic drink called Aochu.

Population: 205











Kotelny

Source:  Keith Edkins on en.wikipedia

One of the Anzhu Islands subgroup of the New Siberian Islands located between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea in the Russian Arctic. Kotelny is administratively and municipally part of Bulunsky District (That's a very uniteresting fact). Part of Jules Verne's novel César Cascabel (1890) takes place on Kotelny Island. Apparently one person lives there.

Population: 1 (as of 2012).





Heard Island

Among the most remote places on Earth, Heard Island and McDonald Islands are located approximately 4,099 km (2,547 mi) southwest of Perth, Australia.They are an Australian external territory and volcanic group of barren Antarctic islands. Heard Island is named for Captain John Heard, an American sailor on the ship Oriental, sighted Heard Island on 25 November 1853, en route from Boston to Melbourne.

Population: 0

Migingo

Migingo is a 2,000-square-metre (0.49-acre; 0.20-hectare) densely built up island in Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa. Most of the population consists of fishermen and fish traders, who are served by four pubs, a number of brothels, and a pharmacy on the island.

Population: 131 (2009)

Sword Fight Between 2 Women Somewhere in the Far East

Unknown Time of Night

Sunrise

New Breed

Prora

source: Wusel007

Prora is a beach resort on the island of Rügen, Germany. It is known for the enormous Nazi-planned tourist structures. It was built between 1936 and 1939 as a Strength Through Joy project. There are eight identical buildings, and they were planned as a holiday resort but they were never used for this purpose. It has a formal heritage listing as a striking example of Third Reich architecture.

Cabin in Winter

A Thoreauvian escape in the woods of Northern, NJ. A place of contemplation, music appreciation, meditation, reading and writing.

Exclaves, Oblasts and Other Geopolitical Oddities Part 1

Point Roberts, Washington State

Point Roberts, WA is a town located on the southernmost tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, south of Delta, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver, and can be reached by land from the rest of the United States only by traveling through Canada. 

My Comment: So you need a passport to drive out of town?

Population: 1,300

Liberty Island

Liberty Island is located in the New York Bay and is surrounded by the waters of Jersey City, NJ. The island falls under the jurisdiction of New York City, though. Historical developments have caused to be an exclave of New York in New Jersey. 

Population: One large statue that came over from France in the 1800s.




Naxcivan

source: Artaxiad at en.wikipedia

A landlocked exclave of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Naxcivan region covers 5,500 km² (2,071 sq mi) bordering Armenia, Iran and Turkey. 

My Comment: This may be the least interesting thing on this list.

Population: 410,000

Kaliningrad

The Kaliningrad Oblast was the northern part of historical East Prussia, which was an exclave of Germany from World War I until 1945. It was then occupied by the Soviet Union and was later annexed by Soviet Union under border changes promulgated in the Potsdam Agreement. Most of its indigenous German population were killed or fled westward. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union it became an exclave of Russia. 

Population: 941,000



Saint Pierre and Miquelon

The only remnant of the former colonial empire of New France that's still under French control. The islands are situated at the entrance of Fortune Bay near the southern coast of Newfoundland.

Population: 5,774

Strange Islands Part 1

Redonda

The Caribbean island of Redonda resembles one very large rock at a distance.

Population: Uninhabited, except by seabirds and a herd of feral goats that manage to survive on the poor grazing on top of the island.




Diego Garcia

The Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia is an island used exclusively as a base by the US military. The former inhabitants of the island were all deported in 1971.

Population: At any given time, 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops and civilian support staff live on the island.

Attu Island

Attu Island is the westernmost point of land relative to Alaska, the United States, and North America.

Population: Currently uninhabited.

Ellesmere Island

source: Paul Gierszewski

Ellesmere Island is the world's tenth largest island and has the northernmost point in Canada.

Population: 146 in 2008.

Hans Island

source: Toubletap 

Hans Island is a barren knoll between Ellesmere Island and Greenland and is claimed by both Canada and Denmark.

My Comment: People in Canada actually threatened to boycott Danish pastries over the dispute. It doesn't exactly look like paradise to me.

Population: Uninhabited.

Socotra

source: Boris Khvostichenko

Part of Yemen and located in the Indian Ocean, Socotra is very isolated and a third of its plant life is found nowhere else on the planet. It has been called the most alien-looking place on Earth.

Population: 42,842 in 2004.

Sketchart 1

Pyramidica

A display of dangerous energy

Why do I persist with such senselessness? Oh why?

The Hues of the 1970s

Grandma in the parking lot of the apartment building we lived in across from Hartford hospital in CT in the late 1970s. The colors speak volumes on that decade.

The 1970s dining room without a table for some reason in Park Ridge, NJ. Grandpa is sitting there along with an unknown baby which looks like it could be my younger brother.

Me, my brother and mother in some piney wooded area in 1979.

Watching 1970s TV in an unknown location.

Were bright, cheery colors outlawed in the 1970s? Grandparents on Ridge Ave in Park Ridge, NJ getting in or out of the Dodge which was some off-color gold I think. I remember riding in this fine automobile that was stiflingly hot inside during the summer, proclaiming how much I hated dents in cars while secretly wanting a car with dents in it for some strange reason. To this day I cannot understand what I was thinking.

Failed Ideas Part 1

Today I heard about a failed colony in Paraguay called Nueva Germania. It was started by Friedrich Nietzsche's sister's husband in the 1800s to be some Utopian Aryan settlement in the jungle. It had something to do with the ideas of Richard Wagner. It didn't work out so well and some guy is trying to revive it now.

Random Phrases Part 1

"Even if the sun comes out these days,

the sky is gray"

Started typing in random phrases into the image search on the Internet

Just to see what the hell comes up

I've linked to one of those images for each that caught my attention

Things such as:

“Asiatic Commotion”

“Naive Simplicity”

“Modern Scholars”

“Greatest Achievement”

“Penetrating Arguments”

“Final Word of Warning”

Flashnight