Most people who dream of buying their own island probably never get around to it. But Brendon Grimshaw did. In 1962, a British newspaper editor bought a nearly deserted scrap of land in the Seychelles called Moyenne Island for £8,000, a price often translated today to around $10,000 to $11,000, according to a report by All That's Interesting.
There was no electricity on the island and no running water, and according to the same report, there were only four trees left standing on it. Grimshaw spent the next 46 years transforming the barren plot into what is today widely recognized as the world's smallest national park.
A midnight decision that changed everything
Grimshaw was not chasing a vanity project. According to BBC Travel, he had worked his way up to editing newspapers in East Africa before visiting Seychelles on holiday in 1962, in search of a new chapter in life. On what he thought would be his last day in the country, a stranger on the street asked whether he wanted to buy an island.
That day, Grimshaw toured Moyenne for the first time and by that night had agreed to buy it. The island had been deserted since 1915. Weeds and rats had taken over, and, according to BBC Travel, the undergrowth was so thick that fallen coconuts apparently never even hit the ground.
