Discovered in the 1500s, the Galápagos Islands hold a ton of interesting and dark historical facts:
Charles Darwin’s visit to the Galápagos Islands in 1835 aboard the HMS Beagle inspired his theory of natural selection. He came up with his theory after observing finches with varied beak shapes across islands.
During his 1684 Pacific voyage, the pirate William Ambrosia Cowley anchored at Black Beach on Floreana Island (part of the Galápagos Islands). His crew killed 500 giant tortoises in a single month, stacking their shells like pottery and storing the meat in barrels of brine. It helped them sustain long voyages at sea.
For 100 years, Lonesome George lived in solitude as the last Pinta Island tortoise, becoming the last of his species. Scientists attempted to preserve his lineage by matching him with a similar species of females from the neighboring Wolf Volcano, but his eggs never hatched.
The Galápagos Islands formed via volcanic hotspots. The volcano Fernandina erupted as recently as 2020, with lava flows reshaping the landscape.
On November 19, 1934, Baroness Eloise Wagner de Bosquet and her lover Robert Philippson vanished from Floreana Island (part of the Galápagos) after their neighbor Friedrich Ritter discovered fresh bloodstains on their cabin floor. Their disappearance followed months of escalating tension with other settlers over the Baroness’s self-proclaimed status as “Empress of Galapagos.” The murder mystery was never solved.
In 1813, a crew of American whalers boiled 14 giant tortoises alive in copper cauldrons on Santiago Island. They extracted 30 gallons of golden oil from their fat to fuel their ship’s navigation lanterns—a common practice that slashed the Galapagos tortoise population from 250,000 to just 3,000 in a single century.
During World War II, the U.S. military converted Baltra Island in the Galápagos into Strategic Air Base Beta, constructing a 5,000-foot runway with crushed volcanic rock in 1942. Today, the rusted remains of three B-24 bomber engines and a half-buried radar station persist among the black lava fields.
Whalers established a wooden barrel on Floreana (Galápagos Islands) as an informal mail drop; visitors still use this tradition today.
On the Galápagos Islands, a German settler, Heinz Wittmer, preserved his wife Margret’s skin in 1959. After her death from cancer, witnesses reported seeing a tanned section of human leather displayed in the family’s cliffside home.
An Española Island tortoise named Diego fathered over 800 offspring. He single handedly saved his subspecies from extinction by 2020.
During a failed escape attempt in 1952 on Ecuador’s Penal Colony, three inmates tunneled through a lava tube for six days using only sardine cans as shovels. Ironically, they emerged inside the warden’s personal bathroom while he was taking his morning bath.
In 1923, Norwegian settlers aboard the schooner Ulva arrived at Floreana Island with 40 crates of pickled herring and dreams of a Galápagos paradise, only to discover that their “freshwater spring” was a brackish puddle that killed their crops and left them eating cacti to survive.
Native to the Galápagos Islands, Flightless Cormorants evolved to lose their ability to fly over thousands of years. They developed powerful legs and dense bones that helped them dive up to 150 feet deep to hunt octopuses and eels.
Spanish Bishop Tomás de Berlanga discovered the Galápagos Islands while sailing to Peru in 1535 with 115 men aboard a 160-ton caravel. However, they drifted aimlessly for nine days in a dead calm before stumbling upon the Galápagos Islands—his crew resorted to squeezing juice from prickly pear cactus pads to survive.
Invasive goats devoured vegetation on the Galápagos Islands, leading to a $10 million project (1997–2006). Where the government had to use sharpshooters to eliminate 80,000 goats.