Historical Tidbits Archives – Page 2 of 58

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!

The tectonic plates underneath Iceland, great write-up of the Laki Fissure Eruption.

April 6, 2026April 9, 2026

F is for Fiji

Courtesy Countryreports.co, Fiji is east of Australia. (Islands are not as close together as they may seem.)

Fast Facts

Named for: Fiji is the Anglicized pronunciation of the Tongan pronunciation of the indigenous’ name Viti.
Capital: Suva
Long/Lat: 18.1S/178.3 E (almost in the West), 5500 mi, 10 hours west
Population: 926,000 (14 Castro Valley’s worth)
Size: 7000 sq mi of land (411 CVs) but 75,000 sq mi total territory, 332 islands
Avg temp in April: 89 F/31 C, tropics!
Median household income: $6000 annually
Ethnicity: 57% indigenous Fijians, 38% Indo-Fijians
Main industries: Tourism, sugar cane, gold

Fiji is not a particularly small island, compared with others that we’ll see later, however, it is the smallest country beginning with F. It’s actually two big islands, plus 330 other small islands, some with and some without people. Plus, technically, a lot of water in between.

Beaches and mountains on the two largest islands, Viti Levu and Vanau Levu.

We might, perhaps, be tiring of the pronunciation issue. Fiji is called that because that’s what Captain Cook heard the Tongans call it, i.e., the name is not what the people who live there call it. But since their language isn’t ours anyway, they may not care how we butcher their name. They know who they are. Also, it always pleases me to remember that the arrogant colonizer Cook ended up clubbed to death because he opened fire on indigenous Hawai’ians who thought he had given them his boats. He said, “No, I take them back, you savages,” and they said, “Yeah, well you shot one of us, but while you’re reloading your fire stick, we avenge all our island brothers.” *whomp*

April 4, 2026April 9, 2026

D is for Dominica

Dominica circled in red, graphic by Aoeuidhtns.

Named for: Sunday, the day Columbus sailed by
Capital: Roseau
Long/Lat: 15.2 N/61.2 W, 4000 miles or 8 hours east of Castro Valley
Population: 72,000, 1.1 CVs
Size: 290 sq mi, 10 CVs (less dense)
Avg temp in April: 87 F/23 C phew!
Median household income: ~$4,000
Ethnicity: 85% Afro-Dominican, 4% Kalinago/Caribe, <1% European
Main industries: Small agriculture, growing financial services (offshore banking/tax havens)

Dominica, fortunately, stopped practicing cannibalism. If they ever did, which is doubtful. Even so, historians as late as the 1960s were still tossing off lines like, “By the middle of the sixteenth century, however, the Caribs had almost ceased eating Christian Europeans, for on one occasion all who had dined on a Spanish friar had fallen deathly ill or died.”

Dominica is the fourth small country in my A-Z series, another island and definitely not the last. It was named by Columbus on his second journey to the New World, the first island he sailed by on Sunday, November 3, 1493. Not a very enterprising name, since Dominica means Sunday. The naming conventions here seem particularly uninspired. Columbus also named islands Ferdinanda, Isabela, Juana (their daughter), and San Salvador (Holy Savior). I suppose we should be lucky he didn’t just number them, or Jamaica would be Dieciocho.