First recorded sighting of Wotho Atoll by Europeans was by the Spanish expedition of
Miguel López de Legazpi on 12 January 1565. They were charted as
Las Hermanas (The Sisters in Spanish). It is likely that it had been visited earlier, in between December 1542 and January 1543, by the Spanish expedition of
Ruy López de Villalobos. The atoll was later also known as
Schantz Islands after
Johan Eberhard von Schantz, who rediscovered the islands on his circumnavigation of the globe on the
Imperial Russian Navy ship
America in 1835. Wotho Atoll was claimed by the
German Empire along with the rest of the Marshall Islands in 1885. After World War I, the island came under the
South Seas Mandate of the
Empire of Japan. At the end of World War II, it came under the control of the United States as part of the
Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands until the independence of the Marshall Islands in 1986. from Wotho Atoll of Wotho Atoll ==Education==