Big Diomede

Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / height missing

The Ratmanov Island (Russian Остров Ратманова ostrow Ratmanowa, original name Imaqliq ), also Big Diomede Island (English Big Diomede Iceland ) called, together with the 4 km east past Little Diomede Iceland and the uninhabited Fairway skirt ( both belong to the U.S. State of Alaska), the group of Diomedes Islands. It is the easternmost point of Russia. The Russian mainland to the west is 35.68 km away.

The Ratmanov island located in the Bering Strait belongs to Tschukotski Raion of the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug of Russia and is its easternmost area. It has a land area of ​​29 km ² and was formerly inhabited by about 400 people who called their island itself as Imaqliq.

On the island is the northernmost breeding colony of Rotschnabelalken, a medium-sized species of the family of the Auks.

Almost 1.3 km before its east coast runs the International Date Line.

History

The island was originally inhabited by Yupik. According to the First Alaskan Institute residents of the Diomede Islands were members of the Inupiat.

The first European to reach the islands, was the Russian explorer Semyon Deschnjow in 1648. Rediscovering the Diomede Islands was carried out by the Danish sailors ( in Russian service ) Vitus Bering on August 16, 1728. On this day in the Russian Orthodox Church commemorates the martyr St. Diomede.

1732 recorded the Russian surveyor Mikhail Gvozdyovs the map of the island.

On the occasion of the sale of Alaska by Russia to the United States in 1867, the new border between the two nation-states has been drawn between the Ratmanov Island and Little Diomede Island.

20-21. century

After the Second World War, the indigenous people of the Ratmanov island was forced to move to the Russian mainland in order to avoid cross-border contacts. Today, there are no permanent settlement on the island again, puts a weather station and a post of the border police.

During the Cold War, this place was on the border between the Soviet Union and the United States as the " Ice Curtain " (Ice Curtain ) known. However, in 1987 Lynne Cox swam from Little Diomede Island to Ratmanov island (about 4 kilometers ) and was congratulated for this jointly by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.

2012 abolished the quadruple amputee Frenchman Philippe Croizon, who had previously managed straits between other continents, the distance in the same direction by means of artificial limbs and fins.