Geography
| Island | acres | hectares |
|---|---|---|
| Wake Islet | 1,367.04 | 553.22 |
| Wilkes Islet | 197.44 | 79.90 |
| Peale Islet | 256.83 | 103.94 |
| Wake Island | 1,821.31 | 737.06 |
| Lagoon (water) | 1,480.00 | 600.00 |
| Sand Flat | 910.00 | 370.00 |
Wake is located to the west of the International Date Line and sits in the Wake Island Time Zone, one day ahead of the 50 U.S. states.
Although Wake is officially called an island in the singular form, it is actually an atoll comprising three islands and a reef surrounding a central lagoon:
Referring to the atoll as an island is the result of a pre-World War II desire by the United States Navy to distinguish Wake from other atolls, most of which were Japanese territory.
Read more about this topic: Wake Island
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)