“First colonized by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1583, St John’s has ever since been an important outpost of the Americas. Home port of the vast Grand Banks cod fishing fleet, it was here, on Signal Hill, that Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless message in 1901, and from here Alcock and Brown took off to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919.”