1587 – a group of English settlers arriving on Roanoke Island, off the coast of nowadays North Carolina, intending to form the first permanent English settlement (one attempt was unsuccessful some time ago)

late 1857 – John White, governor of the new colony, sailed back to England to get some supplies, however, a naval war between England and Spain prevented him from going back immediately

August 1590 - White finally returned to Roanoke, where he had left his family and the other settlers, but he found no trace of the colony or its inhabitants, and few clues to what might have happened, apart from a single word—“Croatoan”—carved into a wooden post (“Croatoan” was the name of an island south of Roanoke that was home to a Native American tribe of the same name, now Hatteras Island)

Investigations into the fate of the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke have continued over the centuries, but no one has come up with a satisfactory answer.