"Arctic Becomes an Island for the first time in human history"...really??? On Dec 5, 1932, The New York Times reports the "feat, accomplished for the first time" of circumnavigation of Franz Josef Land (actually, an Arctic archipelago). The same expedition (lead by a Professor N.N. Subkov) was also described in March 1933 in the pages of Nature. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="248" caption="Arctic Map"] (Franz Josef Land is between the North Pole and Novaya Zemlya in the map above) Notably, in the words of the NYT, that circumnavigation had been "heretofore regarded as impossible". It actually took just 34 days, from Aug 17. It was warm enough for the "Eva" and "Liv" islands to be recognized as one, joined by "a low stretch of land" and thereby renamed "Evaliv". Fast forward to 2008. Cryosphere Today shows two tongues of ice still clinging to Franz Josef Land as of Aug 31. Prof. Subkov would not have been so lucky this time around. [gallery]
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