Possibly Christopher Columbus sighted it on November 11 in 1493. True or not, the island was named after St. Martin of Tours, whose day that is. The Spanish didn’t settle the island, but the French and Dutch did, and after getting Spain to call it quits in 1644 they divvied up the 37 square miles between them. The Dutch call their southern share Sint Maarten, and the northern part is Saint Martin.Visitors get the advantage of both cultures, although the Dutch has been diluted to almost non-existent. At some point during World War II the American military realized that both France and the Netherlands were under control of the Germans, and in 1943 they built an air base on the Dutch side. This s
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