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Navassa Island

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Navassa Island (French: La Navase, Haitian Kreyòl: Lanavaz or Lavash) is a small, uninhabited island in the Caribbean Sea, and is an unorganized unincorporated territory of the United States, which administers it through the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The island is also claimed by Haiti, which claims to have had sovereignty over Navassa since 1801.

It is said that in 1504, Christopher Columbus, stranded on Jamaica, sent some crew members by canoe to Hispaniola for help. They ran into the island on the way, but it had no water. They called it Navaza (from "nava-" meaning plain, or field), and it was avoided by mariners for the next 350 years.

For statistical purposes it is one of the US Minor Outlying Islands.

For more details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navassa_Island


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