Here’s a bit of trivia to challenge your geography knowledge: Which country is closest to the continental United States without sharing a land b

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2024-09-19 22:00:07

Here’s a bit of trivia to challenge your geography knowledge: Which country is closest to the continental United States without sharing a land border?

The answer is revealed in the top image, which shows the eastern part of Russia and western part of the United States. This image was acquired on June 2, 2017, by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite. At the narrowest part of the Bering Strait, about 82 kilometers (51 miles) is all that separates Cape Dezhnev on the Chukotka Peninsula and Cape Prince of Wales on mainland Alaska. But Russia’s Big Diomede Island is even closer to mainland Alaska, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) away, making it the closest non-border-sharing country to the continental U.S.

The distance between the two countries is actually much smaller. Just 3.8 kilometers (2.4 miles) separate Big Diomede Island (Russia) and Little Diomede Island (U.S.). The island pair is visible in the detailed image, acquired on June 6, 2017, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.