Language · c. 500–800 CE
The Lucayans named themselves island people.
Did you know that the word Lucayan comes from the Spanish Lucayos, itself adapted from the islanders' own name Lukku-Cairi, "people of the islands", after Taíno settlers paddled dugout canoes north from Hispaniola or Cuba?
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Science · c. 776–992 CE
A tooth unlocked Lucayan ancestry.
Did you know that DNA extracted from the tooth of a Lucayan woman buried in Preacher's Cave on Eleuthera, dated to about 776–992 CE, has given scientists a rare direct genetic glimpse of the vanished Lucayan people?
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Heritage · c. 1000
Lucayan pots were tempered with conch shell.
Did you know that the Lucayans' most common pottery, known today as Palmetto Ware, was made from local red clay tempered with burnt conch shell and was usually left completely undecorated?
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Myth or fact · 12 October 1492
Columbus's landfall island is still disputed.
Did you know that historians still argue over where Columbus first landed on 12 October 1492: the island now called San Salvador is the traditional choice, but the National Geographic Society has argued for remote Samana Cay instead?
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Society · 1500
Vespucci enslaved 232 Lucayans in 1500.
Did you know that in 1500 Amerigo Vespucci, the navigator whose name became "America", carried off 232 Lucayans as captives, one of the first large slave raids on the Bahamas?
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Science · 1513
Ponce de León met the Gulf Stream.
Did you know that while sailing northwest through the Bahamas in 1513, Juan Ponce de León's fleet met a powerful current on 8 April, the first known European encounter with the Gulf Stream?
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Society · by 1520
Only eleven Lucayans were left by 1520.
Did you know that by 1520 Spanish slavers, who prized Lucayans as pearl divers off Cubagua, had so emptied the Bahamas that only eleven Lucayans were found, leaving the islands uninhabited for about 130 years?
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Language · 1648
Eleuthera means freedom.
Did you know that Eleuthera takes its name from the Greek word for freedom, chosen by William Sayle's Puritan settlers whose Articles and Orders promised religious liberty and might have created the first democratic state in the New World?
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Heritage · 1648
A cave thanksgiving lasted a century.
Did you know that the first Eleutheran Adventurers were wrecked on the reef later called the Devil's Backbone, sheltered in Preacher's Cave, and held a thanksgiving service there on the anniversary every year for the next century?
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Economy · c. 1650
Bahamian wood once helped fund Harvard.
Did you know that the struggling Eleuthera colony loaded a ship with brasiletto wood and sent it to Boston so that the proceeds could be donated to Harvard College, repaying New England's help?
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Firsts · 1670
Eleuthera's founder later governed South Carolina.
Did you know that William Sayle, founder of the Eleuthera settlement, went on to become the first governor of South Carolina in March 1670 while in his eighties, dying in office the following year?
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Heritage · 1695
Nassau was once Charles Town.
Did you know that Nassau was originally called Charles Town, burned to the ground in a 1684 Spanish raid, and was rebuilt in 1695 under Governor Nicholas Trott with a new name honouring King William III of Orange-Nassau?
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Society · 1713
Pirates outnumbered settlers in Nassau.
Did you know that by about 1715 the Governor of Bermuda reckoned that more than 1,000 pirates were based in Nassau, far outnumbering the town's mere hundred or so settlers, in what became known as the Republic of Pirates?
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Heritage · 1718
A pirate-hunter's motto lasted 255 years.
Did you know that Woodes Rogers, the governor who expelled the pirates in 1718, had earlier rescued the castaway Alexander Selkirk, and that his motto "Piracy expelled, commerce restored" stayed on the colony's seal until 1973?
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Firsts · 1729
Parliament first met in a private house.
Did you know that the Bahamian parliament traces its origin to 29 September 1729, when twenty-four members gathered at the house of Samuel Lawford to form the colony's first House of Assembly?
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Firsts · 3–4 March 1776
US Marines made their first landing at Nassau.
Did you know that the first amphibious landing by what would become the United States Marine Corps took place at Nassau in March 1776, when about 200 Continental Marines seized Fort Montagu and its gunpowder?
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Heritage · May 1782
The Bahamas briefly became Spanish in 1782.
Did you know that Spain captured Nassau without a formal siege in May 1782, sending Havana's governor Juan Manuel Cagigal with some 2,500 troops and taking the British garrison of about 600 prisoner?
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Myth or fact · 17 April 1783
Nassau was recaptured after the war ended.
Did you know that 24-year-old Loyalist Andrew Deveaux retook Nassau from about 600 Spanish soldiers in April 1783 without a shot fired, unaware the peace treaty had already returned the Bahamas to Britain?
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Society · 1783–1785
Loyalists tripled the population.
Did you know that after the American Revolution, Loyalist refugees and the enslaved people they brought caused the sparse population of the Bahamas to triple within just a few years, transforming islands like Abaco and Exuma?
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Heritage · 1789
Nassau's biggest fort never saw battle.
Did you know that Nassau's Fort Charlotte, built around 1789 under Governor Lord Dunmore, the former royal governor of Virginia, has never been used in battle?
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Heritage · 1793–1794
Enslaved people carved the Queen's Staircase.
Did you know that Nassau's Queen's Staircase, 102 feet high with 65 steps, was cut from solid limestone by about 600 enslaved people in 1793–1794 and later named in honour of Queen Victoria?
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Society · 1831
A village for freed Africans.
Did you know that Adelaide on New Providence was founded in 1831 by Governor Sir James Carmichael-Smyth as one of several settlements for freed Africans, and bears the name of King William IV's queen, Adelaide?
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Society · 1 August 1834
Freedom in 1834 came with a catch.
Did you know that slavery in the Bahamas ended on 1 August 1834, yet most freed people were bound into unpaid "apprenticeship" until 1838, and that the 1834 date is remembered in the Emancipation Day holiday on the first Monday of August?
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Society · November 1841
A slave ship mutiny ended in Nassau.
Did you know that in November 1841 enslaved Americans led by Madison Washington seized the brig Creole and sailed to Nassau, where 128 people gained freedom in what has been called the most successful slave revolt in US history?
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Economy · 1856
Shipwrecks were the Bahamas' biggest business.
Did you know that in 1856 the Bahamas licensed 302 vessels and 2,679 men as wreckers, and that salvaged cargo landed at Nassau that year was worth more than half of all the colony's imports?
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Economy · 1861–1865
Nassau was the Confederacy's back door.
Did you know that during the American Civil War 588 blockade runners sailed from Nassau into the Confederacy, a 48-hour dash to Charleston, while 397 ran the other way carrying cotton bound for Liverpool?
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Records · 1863
Hope Town's lighthouse is still hand-cranked.
Did you know that the candy-striped Elbow Reef Lighthouse at Hope Town, lit in 1863, still burns kerosene and has a weight mechanism that must be hand-cranked every few hours, making it one of the last manual lighthouses in the world?
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Myth or fact · 1920–1923
The real McCoy ran rum from Bimini.
Did you know that Prohibition-era rum runner William McCoy, whose undiluted liquor is often wrongly credited with the phrase "the real McCoy", shipped spirits from Nassau and Bimini until the US Coast Guard caught him in 1923?
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Geography · 1925–1926
Two islands swapped names in 1926.
Did you know that in 1925 the Bahamas decided to rename Watling's Island as San Salvador to honour Columbus's landfall, a change that took effect on 6 May 1926 and stripped the old San Salvador name from Cat Island?
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Culture · 1935–1937
Hemingway's Bimini years fed his fiction.
Did you know that Ernest Hemingway lived on Bimini from 1935 to 1937, staying at the Compleat Angler Hotel and working on To Have and Have Not, and that a Bimini marlin allegedly inspired The Old Man and the Sea?
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Heritage · 1940–1945
An ex-king governed the Bahamas.
Did you know that the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII, served as Governor of the Bahamas from 1940 to 1945 and privately dismissed the islands as "a third-class British colony"?
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Society · 1 June 1942
Unequal wages sparked a wartime riot.
Did you know that the 1942 Burma Road riot in Nassau erupted because Bahamian labourers building a wartime airfield were paid 4 shillings a day while American workers on the same project received 8?
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Myth or fact · 8 July 1943
Nassau's most famous murder is unsolved.
Did you know that the 1943 murder of gold-mining millionaire Sir Harry Oakes, found burned and strewn with mattress feathers in his Nassau home, has never been solved after his son-in-law was acquitted?
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Records · 1956
A record-setting editor fought segregation.
Did you know that the 1956 anti-discrimination resolution outlawing racial bars in hotels and restaurants was introduced by Étienne Dupuch, whom Guinness World Records named the longest-serving newspaper editor?
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Society · 26 November 1962
More votes, far fewer seats.
Did you know that in the 1962 election, the first under universal suffrage, the PLP won 44 percent of the vote but only 8 seats, while the United Bahamian Party took 18 seats with 36 percent?
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Culture · 1964
Hollywood's trailblazer grew up on Cat Island.
Did you know that Sidney Poitier, the first Black man to win the Best Actor Oscar in 1964, was born prematurely in Miami but raised on Cat Island, and later served as Bahamian ambassador to Japan?
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Sport · 1964
A Bahamian sailor lived to be 100.
Did you know that Durward Knowles, who sailed for Britain at the 1948 Olympics, won the Bahamas' 1964 Star-class gold in Tokyo and lived to 100, becoming the oldest living Olympic champion?
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Society · 27 April 1965
Pindling threw the mace out the window.
Did you know that on Black Tuesday, 27 April 1965, opposition leader Lynden Pindling seized the Speaker's mace and hurled it out of a House of Assembly window onto the street to protest unfair constituency boundaries?
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Economy · 1966
The Bahamas has a three-dollar bill.
Did you know that when the Bahamian dollar replaced the pound in 1966, the country issued a rare three-dollar note because $3 roughly equalled one old pound, alongside a square 15-cent coin and a scalloped 10-cent coin?
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Society · 10 January 1967
Two MPs decided majority rule.
Did you know that majority rule arrived on 10 January 1967 after the PLP and the United Bahamian Party tied at 18 seats each, and the Labour MP Randol Fawkes and the independent Alvin Braynen backed Pindling to form the government?
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Myth or fact · 2 September 1968
Bimini's 'Atlantis' road is natural rock.
Did you know that the Bimini Road, a 0.8-kilometre line of stone blocks found off North Bimini in September 1968 and hailed by some as part of Atlantis, is considered by geologists to be natural beachrock?
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Culture · 10 July 1973
The anthem was chosen by contest.
Did you know that the national anthem "March On, Bahamaland", with both words and music by Timothy Gibson, won a national contest and was among the first things performed at the midnight flag-raising on 10 July 1973?
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Society · 1978–1982
A cartel once owned an Exuma island.
Did you know that Colombian drug lord Carlos Lehder turned Norman's Cay in the Exumas into a cocaine hub from 1978 to about 1982, lengthening its airstrip to 1,000 metres and guarding it with armed men and dogs?
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Heritage · 10 May 1980
Cuban jets sank a Bahamian patrol boat.
Did you know that on 10 May 1980 two Cuban MiG-21s sank the patrol boat HMBS Flamingo off Ragged Island, killing four Bahamian marines, and Cuba eventually paid $10 million in compensation?
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Heritage · 16–22 October 1985
The Nassau Accord targeted apartheid.
Did you know that at the 1985 Commonwealth summit hosted at Lyford Cay near Nassau, leaders signed the Nassau Accord calling on South Africa to dismantle apartheid and created the Eminent Persons Group?
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Society · August 1992
Pindling's gracious 1992 concession.
Did you know that when Hubert Ingraham's FNM ended Lynden Pindling's 25 years in power in August 1992, Pindling conceded with the words "the voice of the people, is the voice of God"?
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Records · 11 December 1998
Atlantis hosts a giant marine habitat.
Did you know that Atlantis on Paradise Island, which officially opened with its Royal Towers on 11 December 1998, claims the world's largest open-air marine habitat, holding more than 65,000 animals from 250 species?
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Sport · 30 September 2000
The Golden Girls won relay gold.
Did you know that the Bahamas' "Golden Girls" — Sevatheda Fynes, Chandra Sturrup, Pauline Davis-Thompson and Debbie Ferguson — won the 4 × 100 metres relay at the Sydney 2000 Olympics and are honoured with a mural at Nassau's airport?
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Culture · 2001
The Baha Men's hit came from Trinidad.
Did you know that "Who Let the Dogs Out", the Bahamian group Baha Men's global hit that won the 2001 Grammy for Best Dance Recording, was originally written and released in 1998 by Trinidadian musician Anslem Douglas?
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Sport · 10 August 2012
The Bahamas outran the USA in 2012.
Did you know that at the London 2012 Olympics the Bahamas beat the United States by 0.33 seconds to win the men's 4 × 400 metres relay in a national record of 2:56.72?
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Nature · 1–3 September 2019
Dorian stalled over Grand Bahama.
Did you know that Hurricane Dorian, with 185 mph winds the strongest hurricane to strike the Bahamas since records began in 1851, stalled for about a day over Grand Bahama in September 2019?
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Society · 12 May 2026
Davis broke a 30-year one-term streak.
Did you know that in the snap election of 12 May 2026 Philip Davis's PLP won 33 of 41 seats, making him the first Bahamian prime minister re-elected for a second consecutive term since Hubert Ingraham in 1997?
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Geography ·
700 islands, but most live on one.
Did you know that the Bahamas is made up of some 700 islands and roughly 2,400 cays spread over about 470,000 square kilometres of ocean, yet nearly three-quarters of Bahamians live on New Providence?
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Language ·
Only two countries officially start with 'The'.
Did you know that The Bahamas is one of only two countries whose official short name begins with the definite article "The", the other being The Gambia in West Africa?
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Records ·
Dean's Blue Hole plunges 202 metres.
Did you know that Dean's Blue Hole near Clarence Town on Long Island plunges about 202 metres, making it the world's third-deepest known blue hole and a venue where freedivers have set world records?
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Nature ·
Andros is the blue hole capital.
Did you know that Andros, at about 6,000 square kilometres by far the largest Bahamian island, is flanked by a 225-kilometre barrier reef and holds the world's largest collection of blue holes, with 178 on land alone?
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Nature ·
The national bird's biggest colony is on Inagua.
Did you know that Inagua National Park, covering some 890 square kilometres of Great Inagua, shelters the world's largest breeding colony of West Indian flamingos, the Bahamas' national bird, now numbering over 50,000?
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Nature ·
Abaco's parrots nest underground.
Did you know that the Bahama parrots of Abaco, unlike almost all other parrots, nest underground in limestone solution holes, a habit that shelters their eggs from the island's frequent pine-forest wildfires?
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Myth or fact ·
No one knows how the pigs got there.
Did you know that the famous swimming pigs of Big Major Cay in the Exumas, numbering about fifty to sixty, have no verified origin story, with theories ranging from shipwreck survivors to a tourism scheme?
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Culture ·
Conch is on the coat of arms.
Did you know that the queen conch, eaten raw in conch salad or fried as cracked conch and fritters, is so central to Bahamian life that a conch shell appears on the national coat of arms?
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Language ·
Bahamian dialect is Gullah's cousin.
Did you know that Bahamian Creole, spoken natively by about 250,000 people, is closely linked to the Gullah language of South Carolina and often drops or adds the letter h, so "harm" and "arm" sound alike?
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Culture ·
Junkanoo's name is a mystery.
Did you know that the name Junkanoo, the goatskin-drum and cowbell street parade held on Boxing Day and New Year's Day, may come from a folk hero called John Canoe or from the French gens inconnus, "unknown people"?
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Culture ·
Bahamian music is played on a saw.
Did you know that rake-and-scrape, the Bahamas' traditional dance music, takes its rasping sound from an ordinary hand saw scraped like an instrument alongside drums, guitar, banjo and accordion?
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Myth or fact ·
Andros's sprite may be an extinct owl.
Did you know that the chickcharney, Andros's red-eyed, three-toed forest sprite that blesses or curses travellers, may be a folk memory of Tyto pollens, an extinct metre-tall owl that once lived alongside early islanders?
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Myth or fact ·
The lusca lurks in Andros's blue holes.
Did you know that the lusca, a legendary half-shark, half-octopus said to lurk in the blue holes of Andros and drag down divers, takes its name from a clipped form of Mollusca?
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Geography ·
The country's summit is just 63 metres.
Did you know that the highest point in the Bahamas, Mount Alvernia on Cat Island, rises only about 63 metres and is crowned by a tiny hermitage built by the priest-architect John Hawes, known as Fra Jerome?
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