THE PAGE TURNS

April 12, 2026April 12, 2026

K is for Kiribati

Kiribati is a group of multiple island clusters: Gilbert, Phoenix, and Line Islands (Adobe stock photo)

Fast Facts

Named for: Gilbert Islands (Thomas Gilbert) and Christmas Island (named by Cook)
Capital: Tarawa (upper left)
Long/Lat: 1.3 N/173.2 E, 4800 miles & 14 hours west of Castro Valley, though there is no direct route. You can fly through Honolulu.
Population: 116,000 or 2x Castro Valleys
Size: 313 sq mi, or only 18 Castro Valleys (not counting the water)
Avg temp in April: 87 F/31 C
Median household income: $4,400 annual
Ethnicity: Gilbertese (from Kiribati), but ancestors were Melanesian, Micronesian & Polynesian
Main industries: Fish, ~~phosphate~~, tourism

The Kiribati Islands are the indigenous people’s way to pronounce “Gilbert,” as these were originally called the Gilbert Islands after Thomas Gilbert in 1788. Gilbert worked for the British East India Company, and the Brits were all over, colonizing “New South Wales” (Australia) and scooping up as many islands as they could claim. Look! that one looks like a Phoenix. Let’s call it Phoenix Islands. Look! it’s Christmas day, so we’ll call that one Christmas Island. How about Gilbert for these and Ellice for those?

April 10, 2026April 10, 2026

J is for Jersey

Fast Facts

Named for: Geirr or jarl, Spear or Earl’s island (-ey)
Capital (and only town): St. Helier
Long/Lat: 49.1 N/2.6 W (just inside Greenwich Mean), 8000 mi 10 hrs East of Castro Valley
Population: 103,000, 1.5 CVs
Size: 46 sq mi, 3 CVs (just my size)
Avg temp in April: 57 F/16 F
Median household income: $55,000 (island=expensive)
Ethnicity: 44% Jersey/31% British/9% Portuguese/3% Polish
Main industries: Offshore finance, tourism (season), some cows

Jersey is not a country–boot it out of the list! Not so fast, though. My other options of Jamaica, Japan, and Jordan are all too big and too well known. So let’s take Jersey on, fully acknowledging that this thing is not like the others. It will have to do now and later, for X, anyway.

That’s a lot of places for only 50 sq mi. Photo from geo-ref.net.

Jersey is a self-governing island in the English Channel, owned by the British Crown but not part of the UK. Its citizens are British citizens, but not UK citizens. The nearby island of Guernsey (made famous in that book Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society which is a romance involving Nazis) carries the same status. Been to Guernsey–beautiful place! Haven’t been to Jersey. I mean, it’s cheating, but Jersey might look like Guernsey…

April 9, 2026April 10, 2026

I is for Iceland

Iceland, just hanging out near the top of the world. Graphic by Hayden120 & Nuclear Vacuum.

Fast Facts

Note: Starting today, I am adding world capitals to the facts list. I have revised prior days’ as well because we should know how to spell Reykjavik and Tegucigalpa.

Named by: Flóki Vilgerðarson, who saw ice caps in Iceland. Earlier names included Snæland (Snowland) and Garðarshólmur (Garoar’s island, mine all mine!)
Capital: Reykjavik
Long/Lat: 64.1 N/21.2 W, 4200 mi and 8 hrs east of Castro valley
Population: 394,000 or only 6x CVs
Size: 39,800 sq mi or 2350 CVs, not population dense
Avg temp in April: 39 F/4 C brrr
Median household income: $55,000 because stuff is expensive in Iceland
Ethnicity: 86% Icelander, 7% Polish
Main industries: Fishing, tourism, aluminum

So many volcanoes! Hekla, Eldgjá, Herðubreið, Eldfell, and Laki, whose 1783 eruption wiped out a quarter of the population. This is what happens when a country emerges out of the ocean rift between two tectonic plates, as the Eurasian plate and Mid-Atlantic plate are moving away from each other. You get Iceland.

A fourth-grade view of geology would point out that all the continents used to be huddled together in Pangaea, and, over a LOOOOONG time, they’ve been separating. The Atlantic Ocean’s getting bigger, and the Pacific, smaller. One of the points of separation goes through Iceland, which is only about 14 million years old. Proto-humans began at 3 mya, so Iceland is just a little older than we are. No wonder it’s still got acne!