Giant Mutant Carnivorous Mice 2: a little flavor of the most remote places on Earth

artist Frank Stella's rendition

of the Inaccessible Island rail,
the world's smallest flightless bird.

Okay ... Gough Island is the place with the giant mutant carnivorous predator mice. It belongs to a group of islands in the South Atlantic that are often called The Most Remote Places on Earth. And here's who first discovered them (and named one of them after himself, although he didn't set foot on it).

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The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition

Cunha, Tristão da

(trshtouN´ dä k´ny), c. 1460 - 1514?, Portuguese navigator [and Admiral]. His most important voyage was undertaken in 1506, when he set out with 15 ships for India.

He discovered three volcanic islands in the South Atlantic, one of which is named for him.

After taking Socotra off Arabia, in the hope of establishing control over the Red Sea, he went on to India, while Afonso de Albuquerque, under secret royal orders, detached part of the fleet. On his return to Portugal, Tristão da Cunha carried out a diplomatic mission at the papal court. A son, Nuno da Cunha, 1487 - 1539, was governor of India and captured Basra in 1529.

Copyright © 2001-05 Columbia University Press.

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more from http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/archives/024874.html

The Head Heeb (Jonathan Edelstein) is a lawyer from New York; he acquired the nickname Head Heeb during his service with the New York State Army National Guard. When the Jewish chaplain retired, that made Edelstein the only Jew in his Army unit -- so the chaplain told him he was henceforth The Head Heeb.

But here's some filched stuff about a Tristan da Cunha school's voyage to an even more Remote Place.

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May 04, 2004
Field trip

Where do students from the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha go for field trips? To an even more remote island, of course:

[Students] from St. Mary’s School in Edinburgh, Tristan da Cunha [...] have gone to the head of the class as far as landing on remote Islands. Nicole Glass, Kirsty Green, Glenda Swain and Sasha Green have stepped ashore on Inaccessible Island -- a place rarely visited by adults, let alone school children. As a matter of fact, it is a first ever landing on that island by students.

More pictures of the field trip (on which the students were chaperoned by a teacher and a concerned parent) can be found here. The attraction: the Inaccessible Island Rail -- "a flightless bird endemic to that island only."

Posted by jonathan at May 4, 2004 11:28 AM in World Affairs

What an adorable little endangered bird

Posted by: Norbizness at May 4, 2004 12:55 PM

Here's a more abstract interpretation. [see painting at top of this post]

Posted by: Jonathan Edelstein at May 4, 2004 01:05 PM

You can't help but be be fascinated by an island with placenames such as "Where The Pig Fell Off".

The Inaccessible Island Rail as smallest flightless bird would have been edged out by the Stephens Island Wren, but for the light house keeper's cat.

Posted by: Tim at May 4, 2004 09:21 PM

You can't help but be be fascinated by an island with placenames such as "Where The Pig Fell Off."

There are also places on Tristan called Ridge where the Goat Jump Off and Where Times fell off Gulch (Times was a dog). Evidently, livestock doing high dives off plateaus are memorable events for Tristanians.

More Tristan geographic trivia: there's an East and West Jew's Point (named after a Jew rescued from a shipwrecked freighter in 1856) but no present-day Jewish community. This makes Tristan one of the few places with no Jews (St. Helena apparently has some); maybe I should emigrate there.

This site has a glossary of Tristanian dialect and place-names. Reminds me quite a bit of Pitcairn.

Posted by: Jonathan Edelstein at May 4, 2004 11:38 PM