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St. Matthew Island (phantom Island)
__NOTOC__ St Matthew Island (french: Île Saint-Mathieu) is a phantom island once thought to lie roughly one thousand kilometers northeast of Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. It appeared on navigational charts until as late as the early twentieth century. It was supposedly located at approximately 2°S 8°W, and was alleged to have been discovered by the Portuguese on St. Matthew's Day 1516. It was shown and named on several maps going back to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and it was supposedly visited by García Jofre de Loaísa on 20 October 1525 while on a voyage to the Moluccas. It appeared on early Portuguese charts and world maps, and appears on Ortelius' 1570 map of the African continent '' Africae Tabula Nova''. It thereafter regularly featured on charts and maps, and though it began to disappear from standard charts starting in the early nineteenth century, it was not completely removed from charts until the early twentieth century. Peter Mund ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phantom Island
A phantom island is a purported island which was included on maps for a period of time, but was later found not to exist. They usually originate from the reports of early sailors exploring new regions, and are commonly the result of navigational errors, mistaken observations, unverified misinformation, or deliberate fabrication. Some have remained on maps for centuries before being "un-discovered." Unlike lost lands, which are claimed (or known) to have once existed but to have been swallowed by the sea or otherwise destroyed, a phantom island is one that is claimed to exist contemporaneously, but later found not to have existed in the first place (or found not to be an island, as with the Island of California). Examples Some may have been purely mythical, such as the Isle of Demons near Newfoundland, which may have been based on local legends of a haunted island. The far-northern island of Thule was reported to exist by 4th century BCE Greek explorer Pytheas, but informati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
League (unit)
A league is a unit of length. It was common in Europe and Latin America, but is no longer an official unit in any nation. Derived from an ancient Celtic unit and adopted by the Romans as the ''leuga'', the league became a common unit of measurement throughout western Europe. It may have originally represented, roughly, the distance a person could walk in an hour. Since the Middle Ages, many values have been specified in several countries. Different definitions Ancient Rome The league was used in Ancient Rome, defined as 1½ Roman miles (7,500 Roman feet, modern 2.2 km or 1.4 miles). The origin is the ''leuga Gallica'' ''(also: leuca Callica)'', the league of Gaul. Argentina The Argentine league (''legua'') is or 6,666 ''varas'': 1 ''vara'' is . English-speaking world On land, the league is most commonly defined as three miles (4.83km), though the length of a mile could vary from place to place and depending on the era. At sea, a league is . English usage also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thompson Island (South Atlantic)
Thompson Island was a phantom island in the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic. It was thought to be about north-northeast of Bouvet Island, a small Norway, Norwegian Dependent territory, dependency between South Africa and Antarctica. History The island was first reported and named by Whaler, whaling ship Sea captain, captain George Norris in 1825, supposedly the same day as sighting and landing on Bouvet Island, erroneously thinking the island to be undiscovered and naming it Liverpool Island. The last reported sighting was in 1893. When, however, the German Empire, German Survey vessel, survey ship ''Valdivia'' fixed the position of Bouvet in 1898, it then looked for Thompson, but did not find it. If Thompson ever existed, it is probable that it disappeared in a Volcano, volcanic eruption sometime in the 1890s, though in 1997 it was reported that the sea depth at the supposed location is greater than , rendering the existence of a submarine volcano all but impossible. Thompson ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saxemberg Island
Saxemberg or Saxemburg Island was a phantom island believed to have existed in the South Atlantic. It appeared intermittently on charts between the 17th and the 19th centuries. Saxemberg was reportedly discovered by Netherlands, Dutch seafarer John Lindestz Lindeman in 1670. Lindeman reported the island's Geographic coordinate system, coordinates as . Lindeman made a sketch which depicted the island as being low lying, but with a somewhat pointed mountain in the middle. Other sketches, of unidentified authorship, presented a more detailed view of Saxemberg. Major General Alexander Beatson, a resident of St. Helena, reported that he had drawings of the island depicting different forms of plant life. Another resident of St Helena, James Wathen, wrote a book where he surmised that Ascension Island, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha, Gough Island, Gough, and Saxemberg constituted an island chain extending in length and in breadth. Despite Lindeman's original report, many sailors were app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Longitude
Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east–west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek letter lambda (λ). Meridians are semicircular lines running from pole to pole that connect points with the same longitude. The prime meridian defines 0° longitude; by convention the International Reference Meridian for the Earth passes near the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England on the island of Great Britain. Positive longitudes are east of the prime meridian, and negative ones are west. Because of the Earth's rotation, there is a close connection between longitude and time measurement. Scientifically precise local time varies with longitude: a difference of 15° longitude corresponds to a one-hour difference in local time, due to the differing position in relation to the Sun. Comparing local time to an absolute measure of time allows ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latitude
In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pole, with 0° at the Equator. Lines of constant latitude, or ''parallels'', run east–west as circles parallel to the equator. Latitude and ''longitude'' are used together as a coordinate pair to specify a location on the surface of the Earth. On its own, the term "latitude" normally refers to the ''geodetic latitude'' as defined below. Briefly, the geodetic latitude of a point is the angle formed between the vector perpendicular (or ''normal'') to the ellipsoidal surface from the point, and the plane of the equator. Background Two levels of abstraction are employed in the definitions of latitude and longitude. In the first step the physical surface is modeled by the geoid, a surface which approximates the mean sea level over the ocean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annobón Province
Annobón ( es, Provincia de Annobón; pt, Ano-Bom), and formerly as ''Anno Bom'' and ''Annabona'', is a province (smallest province in both area and population) of Equatorial Guinea consisting of the island of Annobón, formerly also Pigalu and Pagalu, and its associated islets in the Gulf of Guinea. According to the 2015 census, Annobón had 5,314 inhabitants, a small population increase from the 5,008 registered by the 2001 census. The official language is Spanish but most of the inhabitants speak a creole form of Portuguese. The island's main industries are fishing and forestry. Annobón is the only island of the country located in the Southern Hemisphere of the Atlantic Ocean. The provincial capital is San Antonio de Palé on the north side of the island; the other town is Mabana, formerly known as San Pedro. The roadstead is relatively safe, and some passing vessels take advantage of it in order to obtain water and fresh provisions, of which Annobón has offered an abund ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Cadwallader Adams
Reverend Henry Cadwallader Adams (4 November 1817 – 17 October 1899) was a 19th-century English cleric, schoolmaster and writer of children's novels. He was the grandson of Simon Adams of Ansty Hall, Warwickshire. He was educated at Westminster School, Winchester College, Balliol College (1835) and Magdalen College, Oxford (1836), becoming a fellow of Magdalen in 1843. After some time as a Commoner Tutor at Winchester, in 1855 he became chaplain of Bromley College, an almshouse for the widows of clergy. Works Fiction Adams wrote children's novels, specialising in tales of Victorian Public School life and adventures in far-flung parts of Empire. His novels included: * ''The Cherry-stones, or Charlton School'' (1851) * ''Who Did It?, or Holmwood Priory. A Schoolboy's Tale'' (1852) * ''Sivan the Sleeper'' (1857) * ''Schoolboy Honour; a tale of Halminster College'' (1861) * ''The Indian Boy'' (1865) * ''Balderscourt, or Holiday Tales'' (1866) * ''Falconshurst; or, Birthday tal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Voyage Of James Cook
The second voyage of James Cook, from 1772 to 1775, commissioned by the British government with advice from the Royal Society, was designed to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible to finally determine whether there was any great southern landmass, or Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south, and he charted almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia, yet Terra Australis was believed to lie further south. Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that this massive southern continent should exist. After a delay brought about by the botanist Joseph Banks' unreasonable demands, the ships ''Resolution'' and ''Adventure'' were fitted for the voyage and set sail for the Antarctic in July 1772. On 17 January 1773, ''Resolution'' was the first ship to venture south of the Antarctic Circle, which she did twice more on this voyage. The fin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Mundy
Peter Mundy ( fl. 1597 – 1667) was a seventeenth-century British factor, merchant trader, traveller and writer. He was the first Briton to record, in his ''Itinerarium Mundi'' ('Itinerary of the World'), tasting '' Chaa'' (tea) in China and travelled extensively in Asia, Russia and Europe. Life Mundy came from Penryn in south Cornwall. In 1609 he accompanied his father, a pilchard trader to Rouen across the Channel in Normandy, and was then sent to Gascony to learn French. In May 1611 he went as a cabin-boy in a merchant ship, and gradually rose in life until he became of independent circumstances. He visited Constantinople, returning to London and overland via Bulgaria, Sarajevo, Split, Venice, Chambéry and Paris with the English Ambassador Paul Pindar, and afterwards made a journey to Spain as a clerk in the employ of Richard Wyche. Following Wyche's death and a brief spell in the family Pilchard business, he returned to London and obtained employment on account of his l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kilometre
The kilometre ( SI symbol: km; or ), spelt kilometer in American English, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousand metres (kilo- being the SI prefix for ). It is now the measurement unit used for expressing distances between geographical places on land in most of the world; notable exceptions are the United States and the United Kingdom where the statute mile is the unit used. The abbreviations k or K (pronounced ) are commonly used to represent kilometre, but are not recommended by the BIPM. A slang term for the kilometre in the US, UK, and Canadian militaries is ''klick''. Pronunciation There are two common pronunciations for the word. # # The first pronunciation follows a pattern in English whereby metric units are pronounced with the stress on the first syllable (as in kilogram, kilojoule and kilohertz) and the pronunciation of the actual base unit does not change irrespective of the prefix (as in centimetre, millimetre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
