The Diomede Islands (; ), also known in Russia as Gvozdev Islands (), consist of two rocky,

mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge, or hill, bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and standing distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks, such as shales, capped by a ...

-like islands: * The Russian island of

Big Diomede Big Diomede Island or Tomorrow Island (; Ratmanov Island, ; ) is the western island of the two Diomede Islands in the middle of the Bering Strait. The island is home to a Russian military base which is located midway along the island's North sh ...

(part of Chukotka), also known as ', ''Inaliq'', ''Nunarbuk'' or Ratmanov Island * The U.S. island of Little Diomede (part of

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

) or ', also known as Krusenstern Island The Diomede Islands are located in the middle of the

Bering Strait The Bering Strait ( , ; ) is a strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, separating the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. The present Russia–United States maritime boundary is at 168° 58' ...

between mainland Alaska and

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. If marginal seas are considered, they are the northernmost islands in the Pacific Ocean. To the north is the

Chukchi Sea The Chukchi Sea (, ), sometimes referred to as the Chuuk Sea, Chukotsk Sea or the Sea of Chukotsk, is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is bounded on the west by the Long Strait, off Wrangel Island, and in the east by Point Barrow, Alaska, ...

, and to the south is the

Bering Sea The Bering Sea ( , ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre, p=ˈbʲerʲɪnɡəvə ˈmorʲe) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasse ...

. Fairway Rock, to the southeast, is also Alaskan but generally not seen as part of the Diomede Islands. Because they are separated by the

International Date Line The International Date Line (IDL) is the line extending between the South and North Poles that is the boundary between one calendar day and the next. It passes through the Pacific Ocean, roughly following the 180.0° line of longitude and de ...

, Big Diomede is almost a day ahead of Little Diomede, but not completely; due to locally defined time zones, Big Diomede is only 21 hours ahead of Little Diomede (20 in summer). Because of this, the islands are sometimes called Tomorrow Island (Big Diomede) and Yesterday Island (Little Diomede).

Etymology

The islands are named for the Greek

Saint Diomedes Saint Diomedes of Tarsus (Diomede) (Ancient Greek, Greek: Διομήδης ὁ Ταρσεύς, d. between 298 and 311 AD) is venerated as a Greek people, Greek Christianity, Christian saint and martyr, one of the Holy Unmercenaries. Life Diomedes ...

; Danish-born Russian navigator

Vitus Bering Vitus Jonassen Bering ( , , ; baptised 5 August 1681 – 19 December 1741),All dates are here given in the Julian calendar, which was in use throughout Russia at the time. also known as Ivan Ivanovich Bering (), was a Danish-born Russia ...

sighted the Diomede Islands on 16 August ( O.S., 27 August N.S.) 1728, the day on which the

Russian Orthodox Church The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

celebrates the memory of the saint.

Location

The islands are separated by an international border, which also defines the

in that area, about from each island, at 168°58'37"W. The two islands are about apart at their closest points. The small habitation on Little Diomede Island is centered on the west side of the island at the village of Diomede. Big Diomede Island is the easternmost point of Russia. The Diomede Islands are often mentioned as likely intermediate stops for the hypothetical bridge or tunnel ( Bering Strait crossing) spanning the

. An ice bridge usually spans the distance between these two islands in winter. At these times, it is theoretically possible (although not legal, since travel between the two islands is forbidden) to walk between the United States and Russia.

History

The islands were once mountain tops in the central portion of the land mass known as the

Bering land bridge Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72° north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of the ...

. The first European to reach the Bering Strait was the Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev in 1648. He reported two islands whose natives had bone lip ornaments, but it is not certain that these were the Diomedes. Danish navigator Vitus Bering discovered the Diomede Islands while leading a Russian expedition on 16 August (O.S., 26 August N.S.) 1728, the day when the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of the martyr St. Diomede (hence, the name of the islands). In 1732, a Russian geodesist, Mikhail Gvozdev, determined the longitude and latitude of the two islands. The text of the 1867 treaty between the United States and Russia, which finalized the

Alaska Purchase The Alaska Purchase was the purchase of Russian colonization of North America, Alaska from the Russian Empire by the United States for a sum of $7.2 million in 1867 (equivalent to $ million in ). On May 15 of that year, the United St ...

, uses the islands to designate the boundary between the two nations: the border separates "equidistantly Krusenstern Island, or Ignaluk, from Ratmanov Island, or Nunarbuk, and heads northward infinitely until it disappears completely in the Arctic Ocean". During the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

, that gap constituted the border between the United States and the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, and became known as the " Ice Curtain". In 1987, however, Lynne Cox swam from one island to the other and was congratulated by both

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

and

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...

for her feat. In the summer of 1995, British television actor and documentary presenter

Michael Palin Sir Michael Edward Palin (; born 5 May 1943) is an English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. He received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, BAFTA Fellowship in 2013 and was knig ...

started his counterclockwise circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim, encompassing 18 countries, on Little Diomede Island, as part of the BBC series '' Full Circle''. He intended to set foot on it again at the end of his eight-month trek but could not because of rough seas. Big Diomede Island was traditionally the easternmost landmass before the International Date Line and the first to ring in a new year if using local

solar time Solar time is a calculation of the passage of time based on the position of the Sun in the sky. The fundamental unit of solar time is the day, based on the synodic rotation period. Traditionally, there are three types of time reckoning based ...

. When using official time, however, a large area in eastern Russia and New Zealand also share the same time zone. New Zealand also has

daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time (Daylight saving time in the United States, United States and Daylight saving time in Canada, Canada), or summer time (British Summer Time, United Kingdom, ...

in effect during late December, but Russia does not (see

time in New Zealand Time in New Zealand is divided by law into two standard time, standard time zones. The main islands use New Zealand Standard Time (NZST), 12 hours in advance of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) / Military time zone, military M (Mike), while ...

and time in Russia). This became moot in 1995, however, when the International Date Line was moved to the east of

Kiribati Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, and more than half live on Tarawa. The st ...

, and that country's easternmost time zone ( GMT+14) is now the world's earliest. After establishing a military base there in 1948, the Soviet government relocated the indigenous population of Big Diomede Island to mainland Russia. The island is now inhabited only by military units. Little Diomede had an Inupiat population of 170, which had declined to 115 at the 2010 census, entirely in the village site of Diomede, Alaska on the west side of the island, though the island as a whole comprises the city of Diomede. This village has a school, a post office, and a store. Some residents are famous for their ivory carving. When weather permits, commercial air contact is maintained with the island as part of the US Essential Air Service.

Notes

References

External links