3. Possessing a history of sheltering individuals stranded in the Pacific Ocean, Clipperton Island was briefly ruled over by a deranged lighthouse keeper under the moniker of King Álvarez
An uninhabited coral atoll in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Clipperton Island is an overseas territory of France located more than a thousand miles from any mainland and ten thousand kilometers from Paris. Measuring just 1,500 acres, the island was claimed by the French in 1858 but remained a matter of dispute for many years after Americans illegally settled on the land to mine for guano. By 1914, despite its isolated condition, approximately 100 people, including children, lived on the island. Dependent upon external resupply every two months from Acapulco, with the escalation of the Mexican Revolution the island was forsaken and forgotten.
By 1917, only one male inhabitant – the lighthouse keeper – remained alive, along with fifteen women and children. Proclaiming himself King Álvarez, the deranged man embarked upon a spree of rape and murder before he was killed by one of his victims. Rescued soon after, just eleven people survived the abandonment of the settlement. Not the last stranded persons to reside on Clipperton Island, in 1962 nine crewmen of the MV Monarch were shipwrecked for twenty-three days on the small atoll as were two American sailors for three weeks in 1998. In both cases, all the survivors were successfully rescued without major incident or violent psychotic coronations.