The mysterious island of Palmyra. Palmyra Island in the Pacific Ocean: coordinates, area, photo, description

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Palmyra Island… Paradise on Earth, or a killer monster?

At first glance, this beautiful place almost heaven on earth. Everything is here: beautiful landscapes,wonderful climate, magnificent nature, wonderful beaches, azure sea ... But everything is so simple. What secrets does this island hide from us?

History of Palmyra Island.

The history of this atoll island began when a tragic event in 1798 helped discover this atoll, one and a half thousand kilometers to the south. Hawaiian Islands, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The American ship "Betsy" ran into the reefs here. The sharks ate almost everyone on the ship. Only ten people made it to shore. Only three survived. And they talked about the mysterious death of the rest.

The island was called Palmyra, put on the map and forgot about this story. And Four years later, another American ship called “Palmyra” sank here. Then there were the Spaniards. They mapped underwater reefs so that there would be no more crashes here. But after drawing the reefs on the map, they could no longer be found.

During the Second World War, an American garrison was stationed on Palmyra Island. The soldiers said that after a few days of staying on the island, people began to have an unbridled fear of an unknown danger. There were cases of suicides and fights with a fatal outcome. The survivors were happy to leave this "paradise" island in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

In the future, there were many who wanted to unravel the mystery of the island of Palmyra, but few survived. And those who remained told all about the same mysterious disappearances and violent (seemingly) deaths.

Palmyra is considered a US territory. They even have coins with the image of the island (like our anniversary ones).

To date, those wishing to visit this beautiful island almost none. Yes, and a visit to Palmyra Island since 2011. permitted only with permission from the US Department of Conservation.

It is said that the United States has begun to export radioactive waste here. Many scary, sometimes fabulous, mystical stories keep appearing. But the mystery of the island still remains unsolved.

There are many mysterious places on Earth. Although the palm among anomalous zones our planet rightfully belongs Bermuda Triangle, a small island of Palmyra, lost in pacific ocean, can compete with him.

Palmyra is located about 1000 miles southeast of the Hawaiian Islands. This place seems to be a real paradise: untouched nature, lush tropical vegetation, lagoons and reefs in which life is in full swing... And at the same time, a feeling of misfortune is in the air...

The history of Palmyra is a chain of tragic events. In 1798, the American ship Betsy, heading from America to Asia, ran into reefs near an uncharted island. People who tried to swim to the island drowned or were eaten by sharks. Those who miraculously escaped later said that they would not agree to return “to this damned land” under any circumstances. During the two months of their stay there, out of ten people, only three remained. Survivors claimed that everyone else was killed by the island, which in fact is a "living creature, vile creature." Nevertheless, the location of the island was fixed on the map, and in 1802 it became known as Palmyra after the name of the ship that crashed off its coast.

In 1816, the Spanish caravel "Espiranta", heading to Peru, fell into a sudden terrible storm. Carried by the wind, she ran into the reefs and began to slowly sink. The storm subsided immediately. The crew took on board a passing Brazilian ship. The captain of the Espiranta carefully put the coordinates of all the reefs on the map, but sailing in the same place a year later, they were not found.

In 1870, the American ship "Angel" disappeared off the coast of Palmyra. The corpses of the team members were later found on this island. All of them died a violent death. But who killed them is unknown. Sailors still claim today that Palmyra is cursed place and it is best to avoid it. Mershan Marin, a passionate yachtsman and scientist, absolutely agrees with them. He believes that Palmyra has the aura of a living being, and very strong and undeniably black; but at the same time, the island attracts like a magnet or a powerful drug. Marin notes that Palmyra has many oddities and mysteries. The weather there changes almost instantly. Nature is beautiful, but the magnificent lagoons are teeming with sharks, the fish is inedible, as the algae in these places emit special harmful substances. A lot of insects, among them huge mosquitoes, as well as poisonous lizards, crabs and other unpleasant living creatures.

In 1940, the island was taken under US jurisdiction. And during World War II, it was used by the US government to attack Japan. Joe Brown, one of the soldiers of the garrison stationed there in war time, says that, having arrived in Palmyra, he considered himself lucky, since the place where he was to serve looked like a real paradise. But the reality turned out to be far from so beautiful. “Everyone on the island was scared,” Brau recalls. - Some were afraid to approach the water, because it seemed to them that they would certainly be swallowed by sharks. Others assured that if they did not leave the island right now, something terrible would happen. There were several mysterious suicides among the soldiers of the garrison. In addition, the island aroused incomprehensible anger in people. The soldiers quarreled, there were fights and murders.” One day, an enemy plane was shot down over Palmyra, which began to smoke and, falling, disappeared behind the palm trees. The military tried to find the wreckage of the plane, but found nothing, although they searched the entire island. After the war, he again became uninhabited, but continued to attract sailors.

In 1974 Trem Hughes and his wife Melanie went to Palmyra on their yacht. At first, Hughes kept in touch by radio with controllers in the Hawaiian Islands. Then the connection was cut off, and the authorities decided to send a rescue boat in search of the missing yacht. Soon she was discovered near Palmyra. But there were no people on it. A few days later, the bodies of the spouses were found in the sand near the water. They were dismembered and stacked in a special way. Who and why committed this crime is unknown.

Palmyra Island in the Pacific Ocean
Early 1990 mysterious Island visited by amateur yachtsman Norman Sanders and three of his friends. “I did not believe the rumors about the strange things happening on the island,” Sanders later said. - But I had to make sure in my own skin that Palmyra is one of the most mysterious places on Earth. We approached the island at night. I was not on deck, but I immediately felt that we were close. A strange melancholy and loneliness seized me ... The sun rose, and a small crew gathered on deck.

This atoll is located a thousand nautical miles from the Hawaiian Islands, so beloved by tourists. At first glance, the island looks like paradise, which seems to have everything for a happy and carefree life and recreation: a wonderful climate, magnificent nature, wonderful beaches, azure sea ...

But soon people realized that Palmyra is some kind of mystical predator, which itself has the consciousness of a killer, and also keeps its henchmen in the form of terrible sharks, poisonous lizards, numerous mosquitoes, and so on only in order not to leave a person, trapped on the island, not a single chance to survive.

From the history of the killer island

It all started with the fact that back in 1798, the American ship "Betsy" landed on the reefs near this "paradise island". Bloodthirsty sharks immediately attacked people who were in the water, as if they were waiting for this feast. Survivors later recalled that marine predators began circling around the ship even before it was wrecked.

Ten lucky ones still managed to swim to shore. And although a rescue ship soon sailed to the island, he picked up only three surviving members of the Betsy crew, who told such horrors about this atoll that many did not even believe in their horror stories.

Mysterious Island put on the map and began to call Palmyra since 1802, when an American ship with that name sank near it. For a long time, sailors could not understand why ships crashed near this, in general, quiet place with a coastal bottom favorable for navigation. However, the Spanish caravel Esperanta, which crashed in 1816 near Palmyra, clarified something. As the captain of the caravel described that crash, a storm suddenly broke out not far from the island, which carried their ship onto the reefs. The crew of the Esperanta was picked up by a Brazilian ship passing by, but the Spanish captain tried to put the coordinates of the reef on the map so that no one would break into them in the future. What was his surprise when, a year later, sailing in this place, he did not find any reefs.

In 1870, the American ship Angel was wrecked near Palmyra. True, no one knows for sure what happened to him. The ship simply disappeared, and later the corpses of its crew were found on the island. Who or what killed people remains unknown, since no one has ever lived on the atoll.

Our time has not cleared up the mystery of the island

Palmyra From the beginning of the twentieth century, the island of Palmyra officially becomes a possession of the United States. When did the second World War, the Americans placed a military garrison here. As one of the soldiers of this unit, Joe Brau, wrote in his memoirs, at first they thought that they were very lucky - not a place, but simply a paradise. But the joy was premature. A few days later, all the soldiers were seized with causeless fear. I wanted, Bri wrote, to get out of this as soon as possible. creepy place otherwise something bad will happen to you. Everyone became nervous and angry, fights broke out between the soldiers, which often ended in death. Yes, and suicide began to occur with terrifying frequency.

One day, Joe recalls, they shot down an enemy plane that crashed on an island not far from them. But the soldiers could not find him, although they searched the entire atoll. After the war, the garrison left mystical island, and he again became deserted.

And in 1974, a married couple Melanie and Trem Hughes decided to visit him, who went here on their expensive yacht. For three days they told dispatchers by radio that they were living in Palmyra and that everything was fine with them. Then the connection stopped. Rescuers, who arrived here just a couple of days later, found the very carefully dismembered bodies of the Hughes spouses, and their remains were buried at different ends of the atoll. At the same time, things and all the jewelry remained untouched.

The last foray to the mystical island in order to study this mysterious place taken by the traveler and explorer Norman Sanders, who in 1990, together with three of the same daredevils, landed on the atoll, and this happened at night. According to Norman, they immediately felt fear and impending disaster. The researchers on Palmyra lasted only a week, although they planned to stay for two months. After a couple of days, they almost began to fight with each other, and one of them even made a suicide attempt. At the same time, for some unknown reason, for some reason, their on-board instruments began to malfunction, their computers failed ... In general, the guys fled from this damn place on April 24, but when they arrived home, it turned out that they somehow lost the whole day in some mysterious way. Well, at least they remained intact ...

At the end of the last century, the American authorities began to place on desert island radioactive waste, so those wishing to visit this terrible corner of the planet today can be counted on the fingers. And the military themselves, who bring deadly waste here, sometimes tell terrible things about the island, for example, about hordes of bloodthirsty rats that have bred on the atoll. True, the military mostly keep quiet, because a long language in their case can result in dismissal from service, or even worse ...

Attempts to explain the secrets of the mystical island

Palmyra Atoll is very similar to a living monster, so many researchers tend to consider it as such, that is, an island with its strong and destructive aura that lures and kills travelers.

But the researcher Mershan Marin believes that there is some mysterious, very evil creature on the island that can control not only the weather, reefs and even sharks, poisonous reptiles, as well as other aggressive living creatures, but also affects the minds of people, making their out-of-control zombies. Another version is a portal to another, very scary world for us. It is from there that all evil spirits break through here, which in some way can change our reality and kill people.

K0IR, K4UEE, K6MM, K9CT, K9NW, N2TU, N9TK, ND2T, W0GJ, W3OA, W8HC, WB9Z will be active from Palmyra Atoll (IOTA OC-085) 12 - 25 January 2016 as K5P.
They will operate on all HF bands.
QSL OQRS, direct:
Palmyra DXpedition, PO Box 73, Elmwood, IL, 61529, USA.
DXCC Country - Palmyra and Jarvis Islands.

K5P News January 18, 2016 K9CT/KH5

We know that we are behind schedule on 80m QSOs and have taken steps to improve our signal.
For this occasion, we brought a mast from Spiderbeam.
We put it as close to the water as possible and tuned the wire antenna to the 80m CW section and added some counterweights as well.
Follow our activity tonight. We have already managed to make several contacts with European stations, so this antenna is clearly working better.
73 Craig K9CT/KH5

K5P News January 18, 2016

If you made QSO with DXpedition K5P on 40m SSB on January 14th between 11.09 - 14.15 GMT, members of the expedition are requested to rework the QSOs, as they were made on unauthorized this region frequencies.

K5P News January 15, 2016

The antenna on 160 has been repaired and we will be active again on this band at sunset.
The SAL30 antenna is set to low bands.
All antennas work well and are installed near the water. The passage is very interesting, a lot of signals with a characteristic echo and a long path.
We have a 20m SVDA antenna pointing to Europe.
Good performance on 80, 40, 30 and 20m.
73 Craig K9CT/KH5.

K5P News January 12, 2016

K5P uploaded the first logs to Club Log.

Palmyra Atoll

Incorporated unorganized territory of the United States of America

Almost in the very center of the Pacific Ocean, a little south of the blessed Hawaiian Islands, there is a very small atoll of Palmyra, total area which, according to geographers, is only twelve square kilometers. At the same time, its land part occupies only less than four square kilometers, and the rest is the water surface.

Palmyra Atoll is, in fact, a certain number of islands concentrated on a very small area of the ocean. In total there are about fifty of them, and all of them are quite low, no more than two meters above the surface. coastline. Today, Palmyra Atoll is almost completely uninhabited: according to various statistics, from two to fifty people constantly live on it.

A Brief History of Palmyra

When this atoll was formed is not yet known for certain, but historians have accurately established that it was completely uninhabited until a small research flotilla led by American captain Edmund Fanning stumbled upon it in 1798. This group of ships was on its way to Asia, and on the way its flagship, the Betsy, was damaged. Thus, Palmyra became for Fanning and his companions that tiny piece of land to which they managed to land and put the ship in order.

Palmyra Atoll did not arouse much interest among its discoverers, however, in 1802, namely, on November 7 of this year, the British landed on it. They did not colonize it, because they did not consider it necessary.

In the middle of the 19th century, Hawaii, as you know, did not yet belong to the United States, and King Kamehameha IV reigned supreme. He decided that Palmyra should become part of his state, and organized an expedition there. In mid-April 1862, she was successful, but in 1889 the atoll was captured by Great Britain. This country owned Palmyra for a very short time, and in 1898 it came under the jurisdiction of the United States, and in 1912 it began to belong to it administratively.

During World War II, this atoll was actively used by the US armed forces as an air base: seaplanes splashed down in its lagoons, passing there necessary for combat operations against Japan. Maintenance, refueling, replenishment of ammunition. Until the middle of the 60s of the last century, copra was produced in small quantities in Palmyra, and somewhat later it acquired its modern status.

Palmyra Atoll. Author of the photo - Ethan Roth.

Nature and climate of Palmyra Atoll

Palmyra Atoll is of coral origin, and all the islands that make up it rise very little above sea level. They are covered with fairly dense shrubs and herbs, and there are also small groves of balsa wood, the wood of which is characterized by extremely low density, very small mass and, at the same time, sufficiently high strength.

As for the fauna of Palmyra, it is not rich, and is represented mainly by several varieties of tropical birds that have formed their colonies there. The climate of the atoll is hot, equatorial, the average annual air temperature there is about +30 °C.

Palmyra Atoll. international Airport atoll :-). Author of the photo - Ethan Roth.

What can you do in Palmyra?

Palmyra is not of particular interest to anyone, moreover. Only because there is absolutely no infrastructure on the islands of this atoll, with the exception of a single residential facility in which representatives of the American state live (and even then not always). It is now possible to visit Palmyra only with special permission from the American authorities, and even then only to those foreigners who can prove the need for this (for example, professional activities in the field of nature conservation). In addition, radio amateurs have every chance to get to this atoll.

This atoll is located a thousand nautical miles from the Hawaiian Islands, so beloved by tourists. At first glance, the island looks like a piece of paradise, which seems to have everything for a happy and carefree life and recreation: a wonderful climate, magnificent nature, wonderful beaches, azure sea ...

The mysterious island was put on the map and began to be called Palmyra since 1802, when an American ship with that name sank near it. For a long time, navigators could not understand why ships crash near this, in general, quiet place with a coastal bottom favorable for navigation. However, the Spanish caravel Esperanta, which crashed in 1816 near Palmyra, clarified something. As the captain of the caravel described that crash, a storm suddenly broke out not far from the island, which carried their ship onto the reefs. The crew of the Esperanta was picked up by a Brazilian ship passing by, but the Spanish captain tried to put the coordinates of the reef on the map so that no one would break into them in the future. What was his surprise when, a year later, sailing in this place, he did not find any reefs.

Our time has not cleared up the mystery of Palmyra Island

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Palmyra Island has officially become a possession of the United States. When the Second World War began, the Americans placed a military garrison here. As one of the soldiers of this unit, Joe Brau, wrote in his memoirs, at first they thought that they were very lucky - not a place, but simply a paradise. But the joy was premature. A few days later, all the soldiers were seized with causeless fear. I wanted, wrote Bri, to leave this terrible place as soon as possible, otherwise something irreparable would happen to you. Everyone became nervous and angry, fights broke out between the soldiers, which often ended in death. Yes, and suicide began to occur with terrifying frequency.

The last foray to the mystical island in order to study this mysterious place was made by the traveler and explorer Norman Sanders, who in 1990, together with three of the same daredevils, landed on the atoll, and this happened at night. According to Norman, they immediately felt fear and impending disaster. The researchers on Palmyra lasted only a week, although they planned to stay for two months. After a couple of days, they almost began to fight with each other, and one of them even made a suicide attempt. At the same time, for some unknown reason, for some reason, their on-board instruments began to malfunction, their computers failed ... In general, the guys fled from this damn place on April 24, but when they arrived home, it turned out that they somehow lost the whole day in some mysterious way. Well, at least they remained intact ...

At the end of the last century, the American authorities began to place radioactive waste on a desert island, so those who wish to visit this terrible corner of the planet today can be counted on the fingers. And the military themselves, who bring deadly waste here, sometimes tell terrible things about the island, for example, about hordes of bloodthirsty rats that have bred on the atoll. True, the military mostly keep quiet, because a long language in their case can result in dismissal from service, or even worse ...

Attempts to explain the secrets of the mystical island

Palmyra Atoll is very similar to a living monster, so many researchers tend to consider it as such, that is, an island with its strong and destructive aura that lures and kills travelers.

Another version is a portal to another, very scary world for us. It is from there that all evil spirits break through here, which in some way can change our reality and kill people.