Back in 1956, a honeymoon cruise went spectacularly wrong off the coast of Fiji. The Juno, a schooner full of starry-eyed newlyweds, hit a reef and sank in ten minutes. Thirty-two people, including eleven honeymoon couples, washed up on a tiny, uninhabited speck of sand locals called Honeymoon Island.
They were stranded for sixteen days with no food, no shelter, and—horrifyingly—no way to charge their phones. Okay, so phones weren’t invented yet, but you get the agony. They survived on rainwater, raw fish, and the occasional coconut, all while trying not to strangle the person they had just promised to love forever.
The Survivors: A Love Scorecard
Out of the eleven couples, ten remained married for the rest of their lives. That’s a 91% success rate—better than most marriages that didn’t involve fighting over a crab. The only couple that divorced? They split up years later, but not because of the island. Apparently, he forgot to take out the trash one too many times. Priorities, people.
Meanwhile, the most famous pair, Tom and Jean Jones, stayed married for 47 years. Jean once joked that after surviving a shipwreck together, “nothing—not even his snoring—could drive us apart.” Tom countered that she was the one who ate the last coconut. Playful insults: the real foundation of love.
