The closest land to Wrangel Island is the tiny and rocky Herald Island located 60 kilometres to the east.
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11 Facts About Wrangel Island
2.
Wrangel Island is the last known place where woolly mammoths survived, until around 4,000 years ago.
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3.
Captain Thomas Long named Wrangel Island for Baron Ferdinand von Wrangel, who was a Baltic German explorer and Admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy.
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4.
Wrangel Island searched for it during his Kolymskaya expedition but failed to find it.
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5.
Wrangel Island belongs administratively to the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation.
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6.
Wrangel Island is a breeding ground for polar bears, seals, walrus, and lemmings.
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8.
Wrangel Island erroneously thought he saw another island to the west, which he called Plover Island; thereafter it was indicated on British admiralty charts as Kellett Land.
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9.
Wrangel Island's ship became locked in the polar ice pack and drifted westward, passing within sight of Wrangel before being crushed and sunk in the vicinity of the New Siberian Islands.
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10.
Wrangel Island forbade the local Yupik Eskimos to hunt walrus, which put them in danger of starvation, while collecting food for himself.
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11.
Wrangel Island was then implicated in the mysterious deaths of some of his opponents, including the local doctor.
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