Original photo by Peter Hermes Furian/ Shutterstock
Seeing into the future is supposed to be impossible. But if you travel to the Diomede Islands of the Bering Strait, the impossible becomes reality. The Diomedes consist of two remote islands, Big Diomede (part of Russia) and Little Diomede (part of Alaska). They’re only 2.4 miles apart, but the international date line runs in between them. That means that when you’re in the Alaskan fishing village of Little Diomede and looking at your Russian neighbor, you’re actually gazing into tomorrow. It’s no wonder these landmasses have been nicknamed the Yesterday and Tomorrow islands.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factThanks to the quirks of the international date line and time zones, there are two hours a day when three days are happening at once. Because the date line curves to encompass Kiribati, part of the island nation has begun Wednesday while other spots in the world haven’t ended Monday.
Today, Big Diomede has no permanent population (except a few observation posts), whereas Little Diomede has a population of around 100 people, mostly Native Alaskans. Native people long passed freely between these two islands, even after the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, but things changed with the Cold War. That’s when the “Ice Curtain” (a reference, of course, to the “Iron Curtain” of the Soviet era) came down between the two islands. Since then, travel between Big and Little Diomede has been strictly forbidden, even though ice in the winter forms a land bridge between them, making it theoretically possible to walk into the next day.
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When Secretary of State William Seward bought Alaska from Russia, the press called it “______.”
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When Secretary of State William Seward bought Alaska from Russia, the press called it “Seward’s Folly.”
The U.S. has one ongoing territorial border dispute with Canada.
No matter how much you like your neighbor, you might have a few disagreements if your backyards share the largest land border in the world. Since April 11, 1908, the border between the U.S. and Canada has been a mostly settled issue, but one spot is still up for debate (on land, that is; other maritime disputes exist). Machias Seal Island, along northern Maine’s coast (or possibly New Brunswick’s coast), got stuck in a geographic “gray zone” when two separate documents essentially granted each country claim to the island. Although the place has an old Canadian lighthouse (Canada even makes sure to staff the lighthouse 24/7 for “sovereignty purposes”), the U.S. doesn’t recognize the land as Canadian. Luckily, this hasn’t escalated into too big of a deal, as it mostly only inconveniences lobster fishermen and tourists bird-watching puffins.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
