History
Jeannette Island, Henrietta Island, and Bennett Island were discovered in 1881 by the ill-fated Jeannette expedition, commanded by Lieutenant Commander George W. DeLong, USN. De Long claimed these islands for the U.S. The United States Department of State has asserted that claim has never been made by the United States to any of the islands, and the US recognizes it as Russian territory. though the United States Department of the Navy has asserted that Henrietta Island had been possessed. During 1916 the Russian ambassador in London issued an official notice to the effect that the Imperial government considered these islands were integral parts of the Russian Empire. This territorial claim was later maintained by the Soviet Union. A resolution of the Alaska State Senate in 1988 supported an American claim to the islands, but during 1994 the Alaska State Supreme Court ruled in D. Denardo v. State of Alaska that Bennett Island, along with several islands, is not part of Alaska.
In August 1901 Russian Arctic ship Zarya headed across the Laptev Sea, searching for the legendary Sannikov Land (Zemlya Sannikova) but was soon blocked by floating pack ice in the New Siberian Islands. During 1902 the attempts to reach Sannikov Land, deemed to be beyond the De Long Islands, continued while Zarya was trapped in fast ice. Leaving the ship, Russian Arctic explorer Baron Eduard Toll and three companions vanished forever in November 1902 in the while travelling away from Bennett Island towards the south on loose ice floes.
Vilkitsky Island (East Siberian Sea) and Zhokhov Island were discovered by Boris Vilkitsky during the Imperial Russian Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition he led in 1913 and 1914 respectively. They lie slightly further south (around 76°N), are unglaciated, and lower lying.
Henrietta was the site of a research station from 1937 to 1963.
Read more about this topic: De Long Islands
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)