Very beautiful and very dangerous places on the planet

Gryuinard Island, Scotland

During World War II it became a testing ground for biological weapons testing. On the island were brought sheep and thrown off a bomb anthrax. Sheep killed and completely destroyed the plague in the ’80s, the Gulf of the entire island with formaldehyde.

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Gruinard Island is a small, oval-shaped Scottish island approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) long by 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) wide, located in Gruinard Bay, about halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool. At its closest point to the mainland it is just over 1.1 kilometres (0.68 mi) offshore. The island was made dangerous for all mammals by experiments with the anthrax bacterium, until it was decontaminated in the late 20th century.

The island was mentioned by Dean Munro who travelled the area in the mid 16th century. He wrote that it was Clan MacKenzie territory, was “full of woods”, (a striking comparison with its treelessness today) and that it was “guid for fostering of thieves and rebellis”.

The population was recorded as six in 1881, but Gruinard has been uninhabited since the 1920s.

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