A tiny island was once hailed as one of the richest in the world before it went bankrupt. Nauru, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean is home to a mere 12,000 people, with a stunning coastline and beautiful beaches.
But the couple of hundreds visitors who go there each year may not be aware that the country enjoyed a brief period of immense wealth due to phosphate reserves originally discovered in the early 1900s. They were originally mined by colonial powers including Britain and Germany, but when Nauru eventually gained independence in the 1960s, it took control of the mines and used the resources to build a booming economy.
A New York Times report from 1982 said at the time that Nauru was the “smallest and wealthiest independent…