A glimpse of the abandoned island where the lighthouse keeper went mad, raped and executed his neighbors
An island in the Pacific Ocean that was once used for mining guano - a chain of seabirds and bats - was abandoned after all its male inhabitants perished, except for the lighthouse keeper who declared himself "king" and began a rape and murder spree of the remaining women.
Here are all the details about the dark history of Clipperton Island
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31/07/2022
Sunday, July 31, 2022, 00:18 Updated: 00:34
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Aerial view of Clipperton Atoll (PhillipColla)
A small, abandoned island in the Pacific Ocean is generating a lot of curiosity online after its chilling history was recently revealed.
In 1917, after all the male inhabitants of the island perished, the lighthouse keeper - the only man left - lost his mind, called himself "King" and began raping and murdering the women of the island - until he was murdered by one of the surviving women.
Clipperton is an atoll (a type of ring-shaped island that is actually a coral reef surrounding a shallow lagoon) tiny and abandoned in the sovereignty of France with an area of 6 square kilometers, a maximum height of 29 meters and it lies 1,280 kilometers southwest of Mexico.
In the past, the atoll was called "Passion Island", since two French frigates officially discovered it on April 2, 1711, which is Good Friday - the day of Christ's Passion.
It was given its official name by an English pirate named John Clipperton, who fought in the War of the Spanish Succession and used the island as a hiding place and as a base for his raids on foreign ships.
Many believe he buried his treasure there.
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The tropical island had rich deposits of guano - an accumulation of bird and bat excrement that can be used as fertilizer - and in 1856 the US declared it a failure under the Guano Islands Act. France joined the demand for ownership of it and in 1897 Mexico sent a warship to annex the island and build a colony there In
1906, it was the turn of the British, when the British Pacific Island Company acquired the rights to mine guano on the island, which led - in cooperation with the Mexican government - to the construction of a lighthouse, a railroad and a labor camp. By 1914, about 100 men, women and children lived on the island. The governor Clipperton's first and only captain was Ramon Arno.
The tragedy began with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, when the population of Clipperton stopped receiving essential food supplies from Acapulco and its residents were left without food and water - and found their deaths from scurvy or starvation.
The US battleship Lexington visited Clipperton in late 1915 and offered to evacuate all residents, a proposal the governor refused.
He later regretted this and drowned in 1917 when he went out on a raft towards a passing ship in an attempt to call for help.
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By 1917 all the men living on the island had died, except for the lighthouse keeper Victoriano Alvarez.
Alvarez and 15 women and children remained on the island.
He quickly lost his mind, declared himself the "king of the island" and began abusing the women, enslaving, raping and murdering some of them until he was left with only three wives and eight children.
One of the survivors, Thirza Rendon, murdered him and put an end to his reign of terror.
On July 18, 1917, the US Navy ship Yorktown rescued the remaining women and children, a few days after Alvarez's death.
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Watch the full story about the island:
The United States briefly occupied Clipperton after the end of World War II, but since then it has remained uninhabited French territory with only occasional visits from scientists, fishermen and, unintentionally, a number of stowaways.
The famous diver Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his crew, along with one Some of the children rescued in 1917 visited the atoll in the 1970s to film the television documentary Clipperton: The Island Time Forgot.In 2005, Colombian author Laura Restrepo published a fictionalized account of Arno's time on Passion Island.
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