Rose Atoll – Named in 1819 after explorer Rose de Freycinet
Rose Atoll, known to the people of the Manu'a Islands as Motu O Manu, "Bird Island", owes its English name to French navigator Louis de Freycinet, who sighted it in 1819 and named it after his wife Rose – one of the first women to sail around the world and the first to tell her own story of the voyage. A century earlier, in 1722, Jacob Roggeveen had passed by and dismissed it as a "useless island". In 1969 the Apollo 10 astronauts splashed down in the ocean nearby. Today this tiny, uninhabited atoll is a protected wildlife refuge and the southernmost point of the United States. Do you have memories, photos or stories connected to Rose Atoll? Share them with the community!