Sandy Island (Île de Sable)
"The 25 km island charted for 236 years until Australian marine geologists 'un-discovered' it in 2012"
First recorded by Captain James Cook on the *Resolution* in 1774 and confirmed by the French whaler *Velocity* in 1876, Sandy Island appeared in British Admiralty charts, National Geographic atlases, and Google Maps until 2012.
Cartographic Origin Story
Likely a massive floating pumice raft produced by an underwater volcanic eruption (such as Tonga's volcanoes), which navigators mistook for a permanent sandy coastline.
The definitive case study in digital cartographic inertia: digitized shoreline databases copied historical hydrographic charts into modern vector maps without ground-truthing.
Scientific Disproof or Geological Fate
In November 2012, the Australian research vessel *RV Southern Surveyor* sailed directly to the coordinates and recorded ocean floor depths of over 1,400 meters with no landmass in sight.