The Diomede Islands (Russian: Острова Диомида Ostrova Diomida), consisting of the western island Big Diomede or Imaqliq, also known as Ratmanov Island, and the eastern island Little Diomede or Inaliq, are two rocky islands located in the middle of the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia.
The islands are separated by an international border and the International Date Line. At the closest land approach between the United States (which controls Little Diomede) and Russia (which controls Big Diomede, part of the Chukotka region), they are 3 km (2 miles) apart. Big Diomede Island is Russia's easternmost point, while Alaska's Aleutian Islands are the furthest-west point of the U.S. 50 States.
15 kilometres (9 miles) south-south-east of Little Diomede there is a small uninhabited island called Fairway Rock.
History
The islands were named by Danish explorer Vitus Bering in 1728.
The text of the 1867 treaty finalizing the sale of Alaska uses the islands to designate the boundary between the two nations: The border separates "equidistantly Krusenstern Island, or Ignaluk, from Ratmanov Island, or Nunarbuk, and heads northward infinitely until it disappears completely in the Arctic Ocean."
Because the International Date Line runs down the 2.5 mile gap between the two islands, you can look from Alaska into "tomorrow" in Russia.
During the Cold War, Lynne Cox swam from one island to the other. The Diomede Islands are often mentioned as likely intermediate stops for a bridge or tunnel spanning the Bering Strait.
In summer 1995 the British television actor Michael Palin, famous as one of the stars of the BBC's Monty Python's Flying Circus television series of the 1960s and several movie spin-offs, started his counter-clockwise circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim, encompassing 18 different countries, on Little Diomede Island, as part of the BBC series Full Circle. It was his intention to set foot on it again at the very end of his journey lasting nearly eight months, but he was unable to do so because he was returning during the following winter (on a U.S. Coast Guard cutter), and the sea became too rough to allow him and his BBC film crew to land on the island.