No man is an island, but there sure are a lot of them

It has been too long since I did an all-map-postcard post. While looking through a stack of cards in my collection, I noticed a number of islands scattered throughout. So, let's take a tour.

We'll start close to home, with the islands of Marth's Vineyard and Nantucket.



Interesting factoids: Martha's Vinyard is the 57th largest island in the United States and Nantucket is famous for being the subject of limericks.

Bermuda is a British territory in the North Atlantic, famous for popularizing a style of uniform shorts.



The Dominican Republic is on the good side of the island of Hispaniola. For the last forty years, they have been able to avoid most of the political turmoil that plagues their island-mate, Haiti.



Jamaica is the birthplace of the Rastafari movement and Reggae music, as well as some pretty good rum. Good jams, mon, good jams.



Christopher Columbus named the Virgin Islands afer Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Vírgenes, shortened to Las Vírgenes, after Saint Ursula and her 11,000 virgins. The islands are divided between the United States and the United Kingdom.







Across the Atlantic in the direction of north Africa lies Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands of Spain. (See more of my Canary Islands map postcards.) The island was formed about 5 million years ago by volcanic eruption. Today its economy depends heavily on tourism.





Finally, let's head over to the northern Aegean Sea. Across the millenia, the island of Thasos has been ruled by Phoenicians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Turks, and Bulgarians. Today it is part of the nation of Greece. The island has been strategicaly important because of deposits of lead, silver, gold, copper, calamine and iron.