Príncipe is the smaller, northern island of the country of São Tomé and Príncipe lying off the west coast of Africa. It has an area of 53 sq mi and a population of about 5,000. The island is a heavily eroded volcano believed to be over three million years old, surrounded by a number of smaller islands. The island was uninhabited when discovered by the Portuguese and named "Príncipe" (Prince's island) in honor of Alfonso, Prince of Portugal, his father's favorite.
Subsequently, the north and centre of the island were made into plantations, most of them formed by Portuguese colonialists using slave labour. These concentrated initially on producing sugar and later on cocoa, becoming the world's greatest cocoa producer. Since independence, these plantations have largely reverted to forest. Príncipe has one town, Santo António, and an airport as well as some villages. Few of them are connected to the small road network.
Príncipe was the site where Einstein's Theory of Relativity was experimentally proved successful by Arthur Stanley Eddington and his team during the total solar eclipse of May 29, 1919.
One of the things that General Relativity predicts is that light will bend around a massive object (such as the Sun). Newtonian gravity also predicts this. However, General Relativity predicts that light will bend twice as much as the value predicted by Newtonian gravity. If we can measure how much light bends around the Sun, then the value obtained will show which prediction was right: Einstein’s or Newton’s. There are plenty of light sources that can be used to see how much light bends when passing by a massive object; there are millions of stars that we can see in the night sky. The problem is the “night sky” bit of that last sentence. We see the stars at night when the Sun isn’t there. How can we check if the Sun is bending starlight when the Sun is too bright to allow the stars to be seen? Simple: run the experiment during a total eclipse. So, Eddington and his colleagues performed some calculations to find a suitable location to observe the next solar eclipse, and determined which stars would be close to the Sun during the eclipse. They calculated that the tiny island of Príncipe would be an excellent place from which to observe and photograph the next solar eclipse on 29 May 1919. Eddington himself would go to Príncipe and he also despatched one team to Sobral in Brazil
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One of Eddington's original plates of the 1919 eclipse
During World War I, Arthur Eddington was Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, which meant he was the first to receive a series of letters and papers regarding Einstein’s theory of general relativity. He and Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson organized two expeditions to observe a solar eclipse in 1919 to make the first empirical test of Einstein’s theory: the measurement of the deflection of light by the sun's gravitational field.
During the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 he took pictures of the stars in the region around the Sun. Eddington's observations published the next year confirmed Einstein's theory, and were hailed at the time as a conclusive proof of general relativity over the Newtonian model. The news was reported in newspapers all over the world as a major story.
It has been claimed that Eddington's observations were of poor quality, and that he had unjustly discounted simultaneous observations at Sobral, Brazil, which appeared closer to the Newtonian model, but a 1979 re-analysis with modern measuring equipment and contemporary software validated Eddington's results and conclusions. The quality of the 1919 results was indeed poor compared to later observations, but was sufficient to persuade contemporary astronomers.
Throughout this period, Eddington lectured on relativity, and was particularly well known for his ability to explain the concepts in lay terms as well as scientific. He collected many of these into the Mathematical Theory of Relativity in 1923, which Albert Einstein suggested was "the finest presentation of the subject in any language." An interesting anecdote well illustrates his humour and personal intellectual investment: Ludwik Silberstein, a physicist who thought of himself as an expert on relativity, approached Eddington at the Royal Society's (6 November) 1919 meeting, and claimed to be one of three men who actually understood the theory (Silberstein, of course, was including himself and Einstein as the other two). When Eddington refrained from replying, he insisted Arthur not be "so shy", whereupon Eddington replied, "Oh, no! I was wondering who the third one might be!"
Landing at the BomBom Island resort, we set off with a small group to walk to Santo Antonio, happy that transport would catch us up after a few hours and take us on if needed. It was hot and humid, but not unpleasant, and we had a nice long walk, before opting for the transport for the final couple of kilometres into Santo Antonio. This was one of the main roads on the island, where no asphalt roads existed.. We passed ruined plantations and the airport (which was being extended, so somebody is optimistic)
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Santo António is the main settlement of Príncipe Island in São Tomé and Príncipe and was colonial capital of Portuguese São Tomé and Príncipe from 1753 until 1852. It lies on the north east coast and the Palhota River. It serves as the capital of both Príncipe Province and Pagué District and has an estimated population of 1,200 residents. The town is known for its colonial architecture and for its churches, the largest of which is the main Roman Catholic church, begun in 1947. The town is also known for the Auto da Floripes play, which is done by the citizens and watched by people coming from all over the world.
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But really Santo Antonio does not feature much in the chronicles of history. The town is very poor and the original Portugeuse infrastructure is crumbling. There are very few shops, and virtually no tourists come here. We came upon David Stanley in a seafront bar, in fact the only seafront bar. He had just paid for 4 beers with a 5 Euro note - there was no change and the deal was 4 beers for the note. He hailed us and asked us to help him drink one or two of the bottles. We then hurried back to the main square to get the bus back to BomBom Island
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The Bombom Islet tourist resort on Principe island, was acquired in 2011 by South African millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, a software millionaire. The Bombom Islet was owned by the Netherland’s Rowmbont Swarbont and Mark Shuttleworth is the third owner of the tourist facilities, which were also built by a South African millionaire, Christopher Hellinger. Shuttleworth, 37, who was the first African to go into space, said he had other projects to carry out on the islands of Sao Tome and Principe, to which he is travelling for the third time.“My aim is to help develop eco-tourism, agriculture and a sustainable agri-forestry system, whilst creating jobs,” he said.
Mark Richard Shuttleworth is a South African entrepreneur who became the first citizen of an independent African country to travel to space as a tourist. Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd. and as of 2013, provides leadership for the Ubuntu operating system. He currently lives on the Isle of Man and holds dual citizenship of South Africa and the United Kingdom.
The resort was very pleasant, though not luxurious. I read suggestions that Shuttleworth had bought about 10% of the land on Principe, but I cannot get confirmation of that. The appeal of this resort would be to ex-pats living and working in West Africa, who want to get away from the bustle of the big African cities and relax. It was, to me, very similar to a number of Caribbean resorts that we have seen, and for a European, there whould not be enough to get you to venture all the way to Principe, which holds little in the way of tourist attractions other than a wonderful beach on which to sit and dream.