Talk:Malden Island

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I came by chance to this tiny island in Google Earth and it trapped my attention for being at the very center o Pacific Ocean. Then I came here to see if someone would have cared to write something about it, but to my utter surprise there was here a whole lesson about it. I want hartly congratulate its author for such a careful article about a so small and lost piece of land. Capitão Mor (Wikipedia in Portughese) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.43.38.237 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Time of landing on Malden Island on July 30, 1825

This is a tremendously-well written, accurate and concise telling of the discovery of the discovery of Malden Island. I can add to that information the fact that the islands were first sighted at 7:40 AM on the 30th, and the whaling boat and party landed in the early afternoon that day, during rainy and squally weather. (I know this only because I've got Captain Anson's original log in manuscript of the voyage sitting on my desk at the moment).

Dan Lewis, Ph.D. Curator of American Historical Manuscripts The Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108 dlewis@huntington.org

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.223.156.194 (talk • contribs).

I feel that further research is needed to verify the actual date when Captain Anson discovered the island. A previous version of this article said, "Malden was discovered on 30 July 1825 (not 29 July, as incorrectly reported in some sources)" [1] Currently, this article has a cited source that it was the 29th. But if Captain Anson's original log stored at The Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens says "7:40 AM on the 30th" I don't know why there is a difference unless there was some sort of time difference between GMT/UTC and the time zone he was using. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 12:06, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

The correct date is 30 July, as the article originally stated. This is confirmed by the logbooks of Byron and Malden and the diaries of Bloxam, Dampier and Macrae. 67.168.94.5 17:45, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image

Am I the only one to notice a resemblance to Iraq? I suppose if you look hard enough, you could probably find other islands with similar shapes. It just so happens that I've refferred to Iraq as a "South Pacific Island Nation" as a way of pointing out the fallacy of the notion that the war is somehow a distraction from the larger war on terror. Sorry to bring in politics and something so off-topic, but the resemblance did occur to me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.254.114.69 (talk • contribs).

I never noticed a resemblance to Iraq because the picture of the island here is upside down. Viewed rightside up the resemblance isn't apparent. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.160.109.205 (talk • contribs).

Shouldn't this image be rotated so that north is up? I thought that was conventional. The latitude/longitude is also out - should be lat=-4.01784129334, lon=-154.925176134 Or has Google got it wrong? Paul venter 08:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Radioactive?

I notice that Malden was used as a testing site for nuclear weapons? Would there still be any trace of the "toxins" still be evident on the island, therefore making it unsafe to live on? FrunkSpace (talk) 08:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The nuclear devices were detonated at high altitude and were not expected to significantly contaminate the island. Although the British military personnel then encamped on the island were evacuated prior to each test, the camp was reoccupied immediately (within a few hours) afterward. In the years following the tests at Malden both British and American personnel lived on the island while conducting meteorological observations in connection with later nuclear tests at Christmas Island. 71.231.47.146 (talk) 01:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC)