Fine. You're not invited https://t.co/oTPtZwM5s2
— Republic of Kiribati (@KiribatiGov) February 19, 2024
The Republic of Kiribati (pronounced "Kirr-ih-bass") is a nation consisting of 32 islands stretching across 1.3 million square miles of water in the central Pacific Ocean. The social media manager for the government has had a lively week responding to a viral tweet about the names of villages on the island of Kiritimati.
Emmanuel Rougier, an early 20th Century French priest and entrepreneur, provided the names of the villages when he leased the island.
While ultimately entertaining, you need to understand that we're the ones that now have to explain to our boss memes like this, why everyone is talking about a fruit, what Minions are, and what the word phallic means. https://t.co/LfVP8VgUj6
— Republic of Kiribati (@KiribatiGov) February 20, 2024
Not everyone appreciates his choices.
Yes, the stone throw would have been metaphorical. The record for a thrown object is 428 meters.
I went to the school library, pulled out the big world atlas, and looked up maps containing both "London" and "Paris." That is how I first learned of Christmas Island (not labeled Kiritimati on that old map). The scale told me they were over mile apart, but I figured it was a metaphorical stone throw, so that's what I submitted as my answer.
I did not win, and as i recall they did not publish the answers, so I'll never know if that answer was right. Still, it meant when I saw the map here on Neatorama I recognized it immediately, along with a memory of my jr. high library reference room. Neat!
The island was first permanently populated as a coconut plantation. The village of Poland was named in honor of one of the plantation managers, who was from Poland. There's a lot more interesting stuff at Wikipedia.