Short answers, pulled from the story.
Saint Lucia earned the nickname "Helen of the West" because Britain and France fought over the island fourteen times, frequently changing control, much as the mythological Helen of Troy was the cause of prolonged conflict between warring powers. Britain finally secured the island permanently under the Treaty of Paris in 1814.
Saint Lucia became an independent state on the 22nd of February 1979, under Prime Minister Sir John Compton of the United Workers Party. The island remained a Commonwealth realm, keeping the British monarch as head of state and represented locally by a governor-general.
Two Saint Lucians have won Nobel Prizes: Sir Arthur Lewis, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. Saint Lucia has the highest ratio of Nobel laureates to total population of any sovereign country in the world.
The Sulphur Springs in Saint Lucia is the world's only drive-in volcano. It is part of the Soufriere Volcanic Centre in the southwest of the island, within the Qualibou depression, a structure roughly 10 kilometres in diameter that formed as recently as 100,000 years ago.
The Arawaks are the first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia, believed to have arrived from northern South America around 200-400 AD. They called the island Louanalao, meaning "Island of the Iguanas." The Kalinago arrived around 800 AD and seized control, renaming the island Hewanorra, meaning "there where iguanas are found."
Julien Alfred won Saint Lucia's first-ever Olympic medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. She took gold in the women's 100 metres with a time of 10.72 seconds.