Diomede Islands in the context of "Mesa"

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⭐ Core Definition: Diomede Islands

The Diomede Islands (/ˌd.əˈmd/; Russian: острова́ Диоми́да, romanizedostrova Diomida), also known in Russia as Gvozdev Islands (Russian: острова́ Гво́здева, romanizedostrova Gvozdeva), consist of two rocky, mesa-like islands. One is the Russian island of Big Diomede (part of Chukotka). The other is the U.S. island of Little Diomede (part of Alaska). The Diomede Islands are located in the middle of the Bering Strait between mainland Alaska and Siberia. At their closest points, the two islands are approximately 2.4 miles away from each other.

Because they are separated by the International Date Line, Big Diomede is almost a day ahead of Little Diomede; due to locally defined time zones, Big Diomede is 21 hours ahead of Little Diomede (20 in summer). Because of this, the islands are sometimes called Tomorrow Island (Big Diomede) and Yesterday Island (Little Diomede).

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Diomede Islands in the context of Beringia

Beringia is a prehistoric geographical region, defined as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72° north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It includes the Chukchi Sea, the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi and Kamchatka peninsulas in Russia as well as Alaska in the United States and Yukon in Canada.

The area includes land lying on the North American Plate and Siberian land east of the Chersky Range. At various times, it formed a land bridge referred to as the Bering land bridge or the Bering Strait land bridge that was up to 1,000 km (620 mi) wide at its greatest extent and which covered an area as large as British Columbia and Alberta together, totaling about 1.6 million km (620,000 sq mi), allowing biological dispersal to occur between Asia and North America. Today, the only land that is visible from the central part of the Bering land bridge are the Diomede Islands, the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George, St. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island, and King Island.

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Diomede Islands in the context of Eskaleut languages

The Eskaleut (/ɛˈskælit/ e-SKAL-ee-oot), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of what are now the United States (Alaska); Canada (Inuit Nunangat) including Nunavut, Northwest Territories (principally in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region), northern Quebec (Nunavik), and northern Labrador (Nunatsiavut); Greenland; and the Russian Far East (Chukchi Peninsula). The language family is also known as Eskaleutian, or Eskaleutic.

The Eskaleut language family is divided into two branches: Eskimoan and Aleut. The Aleut branch consists of a single language, Aleut, spoken in the Aleutian Islands and the Pribilof Islands. Aleut is divided into several dialects. The Eskimoan languages are divided into two branches: the Yupik languages, spoken in western and southwestern Alaska and in Chukotka, and the Inuit languages, spoken in northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Inuit languages are divided into several varieties. Neighbouring varieties are quite similar, although those at the farthest distances from the centre in the Diomede Islands and East Greenland are quite divergent.

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Diomede Islands in the context of Cape Prince of Wales

Cape Prince of Wales (Russian: Мыс Принца Уэльского; Inupiaq: Siuġaq, Sivuġaq) is the westernmost mainland point of the Americas. It was named in 1778 by Captain James Cook of the British Royal Navy, presumably for the Prince of Wales at the time, George Augustus Frederick. Discovered (for Europeans) in 1732, by an expedition led by a Russian military geodesist Mikhail Gvozdev in Sviatoi Gavriil (St. Gabriel); later, the cape was named by Vitus Bering for Gvozdev as Mys Gvozdeva (Cape Gvozdev). The Yupik name of the cape, published by Gavril Sarychev in 1826, was Nykhta. The current name was approved by a decision of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 1944.

Located on the Seward Peninsula of the U.S. state of Alaska near the settlement of Wales, Cape Prince of Wales is the terminus of the Continental Divide, marking the division between the Pacific and Arctic coasts, as well as marking the limit between the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea. It is the eastern boundary of the Bering Strait, 51 miles (82 km) opposite Cape Dezhnev, and adjacent to the Diomede Islands and Fairway Rock.

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