Phosphate mining in Nauru Wikipedia
First discovery of phosphate. In 1896, a cargo officer for the Pacific Islands Company on the Lady M, Henry Denson, found a strangelooking rock on Nauru during a brief stop on the originally believed it to be a piece of petrified, according to legend, had planned on making children''s marbles from it but, as fate would have it, it ended up as a door stop in the company''s ...