Atlantis was a legendary island that sank beneath the waves, according to Plato.

While many have searched for it, the story of the island is generally believed to be fiction.

However, I learned today that in the modern era, there was an island instantaneously lost. Or, more accurately, blown up.

In 1952 the US government tested the first nuclear fusion bomb, ‘Ivy Mike’ on the island of Elugelab in the Enewetak Atoll. The bomb was so powerful it reduced the island to an underwater crater that was visible from space.

This is what the atoll looked like before;

and this is what it looked like after

as Wikipedia (source for these photos) puts it ‘note crater on left’.