End Of Year Geography Quiz, Question I:

[gh]

This is a 50-part EOYGQ; I'll throw out new questions when the first is answered.

Obviously there's no way of policing it, but if you feel compelled to cheat and look it up, at least have the class not to post the cribbed answer and wait until somebody does get it. Thanks.

1. Little Diomede Island was discussed constantly during the recent presidential election, although almost never by name. What is its claim to fame?

[Marlow]

[not cheating!]

Has to have something to do with Sarah Palin's world-view! The part of Alaska from which you can see Russia, or the part of Russia you can see from Alaska.

[Double R Bar]

There are a few places in Alaska where you can "see" Russia. I think this is one of them.

[gh]

the "official" answer as in the original quiz (the compiler of which also said he expected to receive corrections, as frequently happens with these things):

<<1. It's apparently the place Gov. Sarah Palin was talking about when she said you could see Russia from Alaska. Little Diomede is an island in the Bering Strait; its sister, Big Diomede Island, lies about 2 miles to the west, on the other side of the U.S.-Russia border. A CNN journalist who visited Little Diomede last summer confirmed that Palin had never been there, and, except for the mayor, no one on the island - mostly traditional Inuits - had ever heard of her.

(Apparently, there are a couple of other places in Alaska from which you can sometimes see Russia. A New York Times article published in the waning years of the Cold War said that if you make your way to St. Lawrence Island, also in the Bering Strait, and stand on high ground, you can occasionally see the Russian mainland, 37 miles away. It also said that you can sometimes see the mountains of Siberia from the Tin City Air Force base on Cape Prince of Wales.)>>

**

since I don't want this to degenerate into a closed-shop game, neither Double R Bar nor Marlow are eligible to answer when question 2 comes up.

[DrJay]

Holy sh*t! I f you want to live on Little Diomede, you better have a reliable DVD player, the max account with Netflix, and friendly neighbors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fileiome ... ge_big.jpg

A car is optional.

[pherekydes]

It's the most easterly point in the USA (or North America for that matter).

[tandfman]

It's the most easterly point in the USA (or North America for that matter).

That's just not true. It's one of the most westerly points. The most easterly point is somwhere in the Aleutian Islands, nowhere near Little Diomede.

[Quick Silver]

Frigid Birds

A spot well known among serious twitchers.

Quick Silver
Hong Kong