| Wrangel Island |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT WRANGEL ISLAND | |
| arctic islands | |
| east siberian sea | |
| chukchi sea | |
| islands of russia | |
| world heritage sites in russia | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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Wrangel Island ( in the Arctic Ocean , between the Chukchi and East Siberian Sea s, and belonging to the Russian Federation . Wrangel Island lies across the 180° Meridian . The International Date Line is displaced eastwards at this latitude to avoid the island as well as Chukotka on the Russian mainland. The island is about 125 kilometers (78 miles) wide and 7300 square kilometers (2800 square miles) in area. The highest point on the island is Sovetskaya Mountain (1096 meters, or 3596 feet). NATURE The rocky island has a Weather station, a single permanent human settlement, and is a breeding ground for Polar Bear s (having the highest density of dens in the world), Seal s and Lemming s. During the Summer it is visited by many types of Bird s. During the last Ice Age , Mammoth s lived on Wrangel Island. It has been shown that mammoths survived on Wrangel Island until 1700 B.C. which is the most recent survival of any known mammoth population. However, due to limited food supply, they were much smaller than the typical mammoth. Its flora includes 417 species of plants, double that of any other arctic tundra territory of comparable size and more than any other Arctic island. For these reasons the island was proclaimed the northernmost World Heritage Site in 2004 . HISTORY The island is named for Baron Ferdinand Wrangel ( 1797 – 1870 ) who, after hearing of stories of an island at Wrangel Island's Coordinates from some Chukchi , set off on an expedition ( 1820 – 1824 ) to discover the island, with no success. In 1849 , Henry Kellett , captain of HMS ''Herald'' , landed on and named Herald Island , and thought he saw another island to the west; thereafter it was indicated on British Admiralty charts as "Kellett Land". In August 1867 , Thomas Long, an American Whaling captain, "approached it as near as fifteen miles. I have named this northern land Wrangell {Link without Title} Land ... as an appropriate tribute to the memory of a man who spent three consecutive years north of latitude 68°, and demonstrated the problem of this open polar sea forty-five years ago, although others of much later date have endeavored to claim the merit of this discovery." In 1879 , George W. DeLong , commanding USS Jeanette led an expedition attempting to reach the North Pole , expecting to go by the "east side of Kellett land", which he thought extended far into the Arctic. His ship became locked in the Polar Ice Pack and drifted eastward within sight of Wrangel before being crushed and sunk. The first known landing on Wrangel Island took place on August 12 , 1881 , by a party from the USRC ''Corwin'' . The expedition, under the command of Calvin L. Hooper , was seeking the ''Jeannette'' and two missing Whalers in addition to general exploration. It included Naturalist John Muir , who published the first description of Wrangel Island. In 1911 , a group of Russians made a landing on the island and in 1914, the survivors of the ill-equipped Canadian Arctic Expedition, organised by Vilhjalmur Stefansson , were marooned there for nine months after their ship, the '' Karluk '', was crushed in the ice pack. The survivors were rescued after Captain Robert Bartlett walked to Siberia to summon help. In 1921 , Vilhjalmur Stefansson sent 5 settlers (1 Canadian, 3 American, and 1 Inuit ) in a speculative attempt to claim the island for Canada . In 1923 the sole survivor of this expedition, the Inuit Ada Blackjack, was rescued. The rescue ship left another party of 13 (American Charles Wells and 12 Inuits). In 1924 the Soviet Union removed the members of this settlement and established the settlement that survives to this day on the island. TRIVIA In the 1930s the Wrangel island became a scene of a bizarre criminal story when it got under arbitrary rule of its appointed governor Konstantin Semenchuk who controlled the local populace and his own staff by open extortion and murder. He forbade the local Eskimos to hunt Walruses which put them at stake of hunger while collecting proviant for himself. He then got involved in some mysterious deaths of his opponents, i.e. the local doctor. The subsequent Moscow trial in June 1936 sentenced Semenchuk to death for "banditry" and violation of Soviet law {Link without Title} . EXTERNAL LINKS
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