January 26, 2005

Wallops Island

Wallops Island is Virginia's designated Spaceport. It was named for John Wallop, a 17th-century surveyor who began patenting land on Virginia's eastern shore in the 1660's. In 1672 he received a Crown Patent of the 13-square-kilometer island from King Charles II, and in his will John Wallop referred to "my island formerly called Keeckotank." It was also known as Accocomoson or Occocomoson Island, but has borne the name "Wallops Island" for more than 260 years.

Source: "Origins of NASA Names" by Wells, Whiteley, and Karegeannes, NASA SP-4402, 1976

Posted by: Ted at 12:04 PM | category: Space Program
No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 92 words, total size 1 kb.

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
20kb generated in CPU 0.0131, elapsed 0.0837 seconds.
68 queries taking 0.0764 seconds, 153 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.