Blue Lagoon Island

Blue Lagoon Island is a private island located 5 km (three miles) from Nassau, Bahamas and serves as a local tourist attraction.

History

Prior to the late 19th century the island's lagoon was a salt marsh and was referred to legally as Salt Cay. The Island became a stopover for pirates and privateers who used the island to cull salt from the lagoon to preserve their food and as a rest stop while they waited for permission to enter Nassau Harbour.

In 1875, Charles King-Harmon, an Englishman who was later knighted and became Governor of Cyprus, bought the island from the British Crown for 35 Pounds. He owned it for 11 years, until he sold it to a Bahamian, Sir Augustus John Adderley, for 105 British Pounds. Adderley kept it for six years. Two Americans who wanted to cultivate corn and vegetables offered him 145 Pounds. The farming effort failed and in 1902 they sold it to Abraham Van Winkle for a ten Pounds loss (135 British Pounds).

Van Winkle hired hundreds of laborers to dredge out the salt marsh and blasted a cut into the lagoon from the sea, planted 5,000 palm trees and built over a mile of meandering concrete paths. He later imported a zoo of monkeys, peacocks, turkeys, pheasants, parrots, and iguanas to populate the paradise garden. He shared the island with the public by bringing guests over on his boat at a rate of $1 per person.

Lagoon Island

Lagoon Island is the northernmost of the Léonie Islands, lying in the entrance to Ryder Bay on the southeast side of Adelaide Island, Antarctica. It was discovered by the French Antarctic Expedition, 1908–10, under Jean-Baptiste Charcot. The island was charted by the British Graham Land Expedition under John Rymill in February 1936 and was so named because with the island on its west side it forms a lagoon.

See also

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Geological Survey document "Lagoon Island" (content from the Geographic Names Information System).

Blue Lagoon

Blue Lagoon may refer to:

Places

Fiction

Other

List of former Dreamworld attractions

The following is a list of attractions that previously existed at the Dreamworld amusement park on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Themed areas

Blue Lagoon

Blue Lagoon was Dreamworld's water park until it closed in April 2006. It opened in 1983 with a large pool, a children's pool and 3 water slides. The Aqualoop Flume was a body slide which featured several helices before a splashdown in the main pool.Krakatoa's Revenge was the second slide to launch directly off the mountain. This tube slide was terrain based and weaved its way down the mountain before a splashdown in the main pool. The third slide was the Toboggan. It was launched from a separate tower attached to the mountain. Riders would sit on a hard plastic toboggan and would plunge down a steep drop and stop in a specially designed pool. Blue Lagoon's closure was just months before WhiteWater World opened as a separate ticketed complex adjacent to Dreamworld. The area has since been used for various temporary scare attractions in addition to The Dream Room function centre.

Blue Lagoon (geothermal spa)

The Blue Lagoon (Icelandic: Bláa lónið) geothermal spa is one of the most visited attractions in Iceland. The spa is located in a lava field in Grindavík on the Reykjanes Peninsula, southwestern Iceland. Bláa lónið is situated approximately 20 km (12 mi) from the Keflavík International Airport and 39 km (24 mi) from the capital city of Reykjavík, roughly a 20 minute drive from the airport and a 50 minute drive from Reykjavík.

Description

The warm waters are rich in minerals like silica and sulfur and bathing in the Blue Lagoon is reputed to help some people suffering from skin diseases such as psoriasis. The water temperature in the bathing and swimming area of the lagoon averages 37–39 °C (99–102 °F). The Blue Lagoon also operates a research and development facility to help find cures for other skin ailments using the mineral-rich water.

The lagoon is a man-made lagoon which is fed by the water output of the nearby geothermal power plant Svartsengi and is renewed every two days. Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in.