The Guano Islands Act allowed the US to make many claims

Passed in 1856, the Guano Islands Act allowed any U.S. citizen to claim for the United States any unclaimed, uninhabited island with significant guano deposits. Claims were made across the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-NDSource: A digest of international law, v. 1 by John Basset Moore, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1906 Download imageCreated with Datawrapper