Sailing around the equator under a blazing South Pacific sun, Captain Brown and his crew unexpectedly spotted a little Island. It was an uninhabited, and just a few miles across, but it still needed a name.
On this day August 21st, in 1821, Captain Brown and his crew named the 1.75 square miles coral island Jarvis Island, in honor of the Jarvis family, who commissioned their trip.
Jarvis Island was a lagoon which dried up and turned it into a coral Island. In 1858, there was an endeavor to mine the island for its massive amounts of Guano. Guano is none other than bird and bat excrement: naturally high in nitrogen and phosphorous, it makes an excellent fertilizer. Guano can also be used to make gunpowder. In 1879 the Island was abandoned, and is mostly uninhabited to this day.