`` Even when the islands were under German mandate before World War 1,, Europeans gave Eromonga a wide berth.

To Serenissimus such tribes as the Cossacks of the Don or those ex-bandits the Zaporogian Cossacks ( in whose islands along the lower Dnieper the Polish novelist Sienkiewicz would one day place With Fire And Sword ) were just elements for enforced resettlement in, say, Bessarabia, where, as `` the faithful of the Black Sea borders '', he could use their presence as bargaining points in the Czarina's territorial claims against Turkey.

In the Delaware River, three long islands were overgrown with greening trees and underbrush.

When they were first occupied, the present-day islands including Milos with its important obsidian production were probably still connected to the mainland.

* Aran Islands: These islands off the west coast of Ireland, ( not to be confused with the Isle of Arran in Scotland's Firth of Clyde ), were unsuitable for arable farming because they were too rocky.

In 1868 there were about 15, 000 Ainu in Hokkaido, 2000 in Sakhalin, and around 100 in the Kurile islands.

The Ainu were distributed in the northern and central islands of Japan, from Sakhalin island in the north to the Kuril islands and the island of Hokkaidō and Northern Honshū, although some investigators place their former range as throughout Honshū and as far north as the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula in what is now Cape Lopatka.

The Andaman and Nicobar islands were later occupied by Japan during World War II.

The islands were nominally put under the authority of the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind ( Provisional Government of Free India ) headed by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

The Spotted Deer Axis axis, the Barking Deer and the sambar were all introduced to the Andaman islands, though the sambar did not survive.

Because unlike the Hawaiians, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, the Filipinos were willing to fight for their independence, Carnegie believed that the conquest of the islands is a denial of the fundamental democratic principle, and he also urged William McKinley to withdraw American troops and allow the Filipinos to live with their independence.

For according to them, there were seven islands in that sea in their time, sacred to Persephone, and also three others of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Hades, another to Ammon, and another one between them to Poseidon, the extent of which was a thousand stadia ; and the inhabitants of it — they add — preserved the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-wise been sacred to Poseidon.

The islands were the scene of the Battle of the Aegates Islands of 241 BC, in which the Carthaginian fleet was defeated by C. Lutatius Catulus ; the engagement ended the First Punic War.

With the end of western Roman power, the islands, to the extent that they were governed at all, were part of territories of Goths, Vandals, Saracens, before the Normans fortified Favignana in 1081.

The islands belonged to the Pallavicini-Rusconi family of Genoa until 1874, when they were bought by the Florio family of Palermo.

* Structures ; Ruins of palaces, palatial villas, houses, built dome-or cist-graves and fortifications ( Aegean islands, Greek mainland and northwestern Anatolia ), but not distinct temples ; small shrines, however, and temene ( religious enclosures, remains of one of which were probably found at Petsofa near Palaikastro by J. L. Myres in 1904 ) are represented on intaglios and frescoes.

Certain central Aegean islands, Antiparos, Ios, Amorgos, Syros and Siphnos, were all found to be singularly rich in evidence of the Middle-Aegean period.

This is corroborated by Benedict of Peterborough's graphic account of Greece, as it was in 1191, where he states that many of the islands were uninhabited from fear of pirates and that Aegina, along with Salamis and Makronesos, were their strongholds.

The Virgin Islands were first settled by the Arawak from South America around 100 BC ( though there is some evidence of Amerindian presence on the islands as far back as 1500 BC ).

While Amerindians from Patagonia could have visited the Falklands, the islands were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans.

The islands had no native trees when discovered but there is some ambiguous evidence of past forestation, that may be due to wood being transported by oceanic currents from Patagonia.

Though definite proof is lacking, there is evidence that the islands were first discovered by an unrecorded Portuguese expedition before Magellan set sail.

Philip II ordered Legazpi to take possession of all lands and islands discovered.

Alvise Cadamosto explored the Atlantic coast of Africa and discovered several islands of the Cape Verde archipelago between 1455 and 1456.

The initial Micronesian population, which remains the overwhelming majority today, was visited by Polynesian and Melanesian invaders before the first European sailors discovered the islands in the 16th century.

The islands were discovered by the Breton-French navigator Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec on 12 February 1772.

Spanish-sponsored explorers discovered both the leeward ( Alonso de Ojeda, 1499 ) and windward ( Christopher Columbus, 1493 ) island groups, but Spain founded settlements only in the leeward islands.

The oldest evidence of human existence in the Ryukyu islands was discovered in Naha and Yaese.

When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Western Hemisphere, they discovered that around the islands of Cubagua and Margarita, some 200 km north of the Venezuelan coast, was an extensive pearl bed ( a bed of pearl oysters ).

After the islands were discovered by Fernão do Pó, Portuguese navigators explored the islands and decided they would be a good location for bases to trade with the mainland.

On 25 November 1981 a force of mercenaries led by " Mad " Mike Hoare attempted to take over the islands, but were discovered at the airport.

Captain James Cook discovered the southern eight islands of the Sandwich Islands Group in 1775, although he lumped the southernmost three together, and their status as separate islands was not established until 1820 by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen.

The northern three islands were discovered by Bellingshausen in 1819.

Oil reserves discovered in the later 20th century in the seas both east and west of Shetland have provided a much needed alternative source of income for the islands.

Initially discovered by Ferdinand Magellan's expedition in 1520, the islands were not settled by people of European descent until the second half of the 19th century at the height of the sheep farming and gold rush booms.

To write it he visited the Danish king Svend Estridson, who had knowledge of the northern lands and told him of the " islands " discovered by Norse sailors far out in the Atlantic, of which Vinland was the most remote.

The islands became part of the historical record of the wider world when Persian traders discovered them and used them as a base for voyages between the Middle East, India, and Africa.

* The last islands of Polynesia are discovered and inhabited.

One of the early settlements discovered in Bahrain suggests that Sennacherib, king of Assyria ( 707 – 681 BC ) attacked northeast Arabia and captured the Bahrain islands.

Later Byron discovered islands of the Tuamotus, Tokelau and the Gilbert Islands, and visited Tinian in the Northern Marianas Islands.

The former was named for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, on the day of which the island was discovered ; the latter was probably named for the ship sailed by the islands ' discoverer, Gavriil Pribilof.

The islands were first visited by Europeans in 1786 by Gavriil Pribylov, who discovered the fur seal ( Callorhinus ursinus ) rookeries for which they became famous, and thus became Russian territory.