| Just read Lost Islands by Henry Stommel. It's a history of all those islands which were reported by early explorers (sometimes by more than one explorer) only for no-one to be able to find them since. A fascinating read.
They can be classified as follows:
- Sightings of real islands but recorded in the wrong place (mainly due to difficulties in determining longitude until accurate chronometers became available).
- Sightings of solid-looking cloud formations or dirty icebergs (the last time the latter happened was in 1980!).
- Invented by unscrupulous explorers.
- Unexplained: just possibly some genuinely were there and disappeared as a result of volcanic or tectonic activity.
It's rather like the study of UFOs!
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