Two
things make Nauru unique—it is the world's smallest republic, and
its economy has been based on bird poop! |
| Nauru during WWII |
With
just 8 square miles (or 21 square kilometers) of land and not too
much more than nine thousand residents, Nauru is a small island in
the South Pacific Ocean. It was settled by Micronesian and Polynesian
people, and it was taken over by the German Empire in the late 1800s
and by Japan during World War II. In between the World Wars and after
WWII, it entered into trusteeship of Australia, New Zealand, and the
United Kingdom. On this date in 1968, it was granted independence.
 |
| Phosphate fields of Nauru |
Nauru
had its heyday because of an unusual resource: bird droppings! For
thousands of years, bird droppings called guano mixed with marine
sediments and formed natural fertilizers from phosphate rocks.
Unfortunately, the mining of this resource was of the strip-mine
variety, and so the fertile land was depleted and the landscape
destroyed. For a while the island made a mini-boom from illegal money
laundering, but international pressure and government officials
cracked down on that “industry.” Now the island is quite poor and
dependent on aid from Australia. Once called “Pleasant Island” by
British visitors, the island is now struggling to regain a reputation
as being pleasant.
According
to the Nauru tourism website, people can enjoy deep-sea fishing,
swimming, and scuba diving. But there hasn't been a lot of tourist
development on the island. There is one airport, and flights only
come in once a week. There seems to be only two hotels and only a few
restaurants. (In comparison, my little hometown, which is just a
rather boring suburban town in Southern California, is more than
three times larger than Nauru in land area, has more than seven times
the population, and has at least five hotels.)
Also
on this date:
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