Geo answer

How far is it between the US and Russia …That’s the question for today’s Geo Quiz?

The Bering Strait is all that divides mainland Alaska from Russia’s Siberian coast. The Bering Strait is approximately 58 miles across. But the US and Russia are closer than you might think.

There are a couple of tiny islands out in the middle of the Bering Strait — that we want you to name. One’s Russian territory and the other’s American.

The two islands were sighted by a Russian mariner in the mid 17th century. But it was an American swimmer, Lynne Cox, who put these islands on the map during the Cold War.

?I thought that it would be great thing to swim across from the US to the USSR and to try to open the border for the first time in 48 years and so I spend 11 years writing Brezhnev, finally Gorbachev gave a approval for the swim.?

Bering Strait – two islands in the middleBering Strait – two islands in the middle

So name these islands if you can, and for a bonus guess how far it is to swim from one to the other. Our answer’s coming up…

Our Geo Quiz today takes us back to the Bering Strait.

A couple of weeks back we asked listeners to estimate the distance from mainland Alaska to Siberia.

Diomede Islands: Little Diomede Island (USA, left) and Big Diomede Island (USSR, then Russia, right)Diomede Islands: Little Diomede Island (USA, left) and Big Diomede Island (USSR, then Russia, right)

That quiz stirred a bit of confusion. The World’s David Leveille will attempt to clear things up: