X-Nico

71 unusual facts about Alaska


56th Training Squadron

On 20 June 1942, the air echelon of the 56th took its newly assigned Bell P-39 Airacobras to Nome, Alaska, where it served in combat against the Japanese forces that invaded the Aleutian Islands during the summer of 1942.

Afognak

The descendants of the Native inhabitants of the island are officially recognized as the Native Village of Afognak, most of whom live in Port Lions or Kodiak.

African Metals Corporation

Shiega also had an interest in a project in the Tintina Gold Belt, northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

The towns of Eagle and Glennallen, both in the shadow of new monuments, produced official proclamations stating that the towns would not support NPS authorities, not enforce NPS regulations, and would shelter individuals who broke the regulations.

Alaska Nellie's Homestead

A post office opened in the area in 1924; Nellie was the first postmistress, and the post office was named Lawing in her honor.

Alaska Route 7

Another section of AK-7 is the Mitkoff Highway, traveling south from Petersburg to the southeast point of Mitkof Island.

Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government

The local tribal council in Venetie, Alaska, wanted to collect tax from non-tribal members doing business on tribal lands.

Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining Company

Its Transfer Agent was Central Trust Company while its Registrar was Metropolitan Trust Company.

Alaska-St. Elias Range tundra

This is a largely unspoilt environment home to large predators, although there is some development associated with tourism, especially at Kantishna near Denali Park, and some mining activity including the abandoned copper mining camp of Kennecott, Alaska in the Wrangell Mountains and coal mining at Nabesna and Healy, Alaska.

Alaska's Flag

At that time Benny was a thirteen-year-old seventh-grader of Russian-Aleut and Swedish descent, studying at the Territorial School at Seward and a resident of the Jesse Lee Mission Home.

Anti-moose mat

In October 2005, the municipal airport in Wasilla, Alaska, a town about 40 miles (65km) north of Anchorage, installed mats around the airfield to prevent moose from walking onto the runway and colliding with aircraft.

Arnold J. Isbell

Isbell was promoted to Captain in 1942 while in command of the Naval Air Station, Sitka, Alaska.

Birthday Eve

Though the previous single, You represented one of the United States, Alaska, this single's cover represents the lower 48 states of the United States of America.

Bowieite

Bowieite is a rhodium-iridium-platinum sulfide mineral (Rh,Ir,Pt)2S3, found in platinum-alloy nuggets from Goodnews Bay, Alaska.

Can-Am United Floorball Club

The club is a mix of three North American floorball clubs: Alaska's Arctic Floorball Monkeys, the Boston Bandyts Floorball Club, and the Edmonton Panthera Floorball Club.

Cassiar Country

After the excitement of the gold rushes, the Cassiar was nearly forgotten until the early 1940s when the American military built the Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Fairbanks, Alaska, thus further opening up the area and providing ease of transportation like never before.

César Cascabel

On their way from Port Clarence the travellers unfortunately end up on a floating iceberg that drifts to the Lyakhovsky Islands in Arctic Ocean.

Chatanika River

Chatanika, Alaska, located near the river, shares its name with the river.

Chena, Alaska

There was a pump station to provide water for the hydraulic mining operations on the other side of Chena Ridge, near Ester.

Chuathbaluk, Alaska

In 1954, the Crow Village Sam Phillips family from Crow Village resettled the mission, and were joined later by individuals from Aniak and Crooked Creek.

David W. Márquez

--The Alaska Court System database lists a "David W. Marquez" with a birthdate of September 5, 1945, though it's hard to say whether or not it's the same individual.--> is an American lawyer and politician, and the former attorney general of the state of Alaska.

Deltana, Alaska

Deltana is a census-designated place (CDP) in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States.

Dennis Stock

In the mid-1970s, he traveled to Japan and the Far East, and also produced numerous features series, such as photographs of contrasting regions, like Hawaii and Alaska.

East Montlake Park

A plaque at the bottom of the totem pole states that it was carved in 1937 by John Dewey Wallace, a Haida chief, in Waterfall, Alaska.

Energy use in California

{fact} In addition to oil from California, California’s refineries process crude oil from Alaska and foreign suppliers.

Ernest William Hawkes

His 1914 publication Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo was based on the three years Hawkes spent in the Bering Strait District, including on the Diomede Islands and at St. Michael.

Ethan Berkowitz

Berkowitz received more votes in 2008 (142,560) than any Democrat who had ever run against Young for Congress, and the 2008 race was the closest any Democrat had come to unseating Young since 1990, when John Devens of Valdez received 48% of the vote.

F. Stuart Chapin III

Usibelli Award (top researcher in all fields; Univ. of Alaska) 2000

Forty Mile

Tetlin Junction, Alaska, a community in the United States also known as Forty Mile

Fumimaro Konoe

Roosevelt told Ambassador Nomura that he would like to see more details of Konoe's proposal, and he suggested that Juneau, Alaska, might be a good spot for a meeting.

Harry Karstens

He also carried freight and mail with Charles McGonagall via dog teams among the frontier towns of Fairbanks, Valdez and Kantishna, being paid $75 per month.

Heating degree day

In the course of a heating season, for example, the number of HDD for New York City is 5,050 whereas that for Barrow, Alaska is 19,990.

Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others

In the story Hellboy travels to Alaska in 1961, where he finds not only the grave of the recently deceased Hercules (who lived out the final years of his life in anonymity as a school janitor) but a monstrous hydra.

Iditarod Trail

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, named after the now-abandoned town of Iditarod, commemorates the last great goldrush in America to the Iditarod gold fields and the critical role that dogs played in the settlement and development of Alaska.

Ilokano language

Called the "Manong" generation, the Ilocano became the first Filipino ethnic group to emigrate en masse to the United States, where they formed sizable communities in Hawaii, California, Washington and Alaska.

Isabel Pass

Isabel Pass is a gap in the eastern section of the Alaska Range which serves as a corridor for the Richardson Highway about 11 miles from Paxson.

John C. Acton

Next he served as Commanding Officer, USCGC Cape Henlopen, a search and rescue patrol boat in Petersburg, Alaska, and then completed his active duty at Vessel Traffic Service, New Orleans.

John W. Nordstrom

While working at a sawmill he read a newspaper account of the discovery of gold in the Klondike and headed to Alaska to make his fortune.

Josh Phelps

Phelps is the all-time leader in home runs for a player born in Alaska.

Killer whale attacks on humans

In August 2005, while swimming in four feet of water in Helm Bay, near Ketchikan, Alaska, a 12-year-old boy named Ellis Miller was "bumped" in the shoulder by a 25-foot transient killer whale.

Kim Elton

Muñoz, whose family came to Juneau from Wrangell in 1928, became the fourth generation in her family to hold elected office in Southeast Alaska when she was appointed to replace Dennis Egan (who was appointed Juneau's mayor) on the Juneau Assembly in 1995.

Knik River

Much of its length is paralleled by the paved Old Glenn Highway and the paved (as of 2000) Knik River Road, along which can be found the community of Knik River.

KSUA

KUAC, the Fairbanks North Star Borough's public radio station, went on the air October 1, 1962, operating out of the Constitution Hall studios KSUA now occupies.

Kwigiumpainukamiut, Alaska

Kwigiumpainukamiut is a ghost town in Bethel Census Area, Alaska, United States located between Chuathbaluk and Napaimute, directly across the river from Kolmakoff Island.

Les Nessman

While Sanders simply flew into Anchorage to make the appearance, Les took the wrong bus, wound up in Texas, hitchhiked from there to North Dakota and then to Great Slave Lake, rode with a bush pilot to Whitehorse, bought a motorscooter, was sighted near Tok, was arrested for a minor traffic infraction, and then was bailed out of jail by the station.

Margretta Styles

Their son, Mike Styles, was the founder and race director of the Midnight Sun Run in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Marjory Collins

In 1944, Collins worked freelance for a construction company in Alaska before travelling to Africa and Europe on government and commercial assignments.

Marmot Day

Senate Bill 58, sponsored by Sen. Linda Menard, R-Wasilla, was first introduced by the late Dr. Curtis Menard, Linda Menard's husband and former state legislator.

Merchant Marine Act of 1920

In order to conduct an emergency shipment of gasoline from Dutch Harbor, Alaska to Nome in January 2012, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano granted a waiver to the Russian ice class marine tanker Renda.

Minto, Alaska

The people from the Minto band were eventually joined by families from Nenana, Toklat, Crossjacket and Chena.

Mountain Stage

Most are recorded at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, West Virginia; however, the show has traveled to New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ashland, Kentucky, Athens, Georgia, Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia, Winnipeg Folk Festival (Canada), Kerrville Folk Festival (Texas) and Fairbanks, Alaska.

Mountain Village

Mountain Village, Alaska, city in Wade Hampton Census Area, Alaska, United States

Napaimute, Alaska

George Hoffman would soon relocated to Georgetown, and the name of the village was changed to Napaimute.

National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska

The NPRA was created by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 as Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4 during a time when the United States was converting its Navy to run on oil rather than coal.

Neil M. Colgan

He was also a member of climbing expeditions in the Canadian Rockies, the Andes and Alaska.

Nintendo North Bend

The North Bend center handles distribution for the Western Coast, Rocky Mountain, Midwestern, Hawaii, and Alaska regions.

Ohagamiut, Alaska

Ohagamiut (Urr’agmiut in Central Alaskan Yup'ik) was a Yup'ik village along the Kuskokwim River in the Bethel Census Area of the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Alaska, located between Crow Village and Kalskag.

Onalaska, Wisconsin

In Alaska, the modern day city of Unalaska and Unalaska Island are linked to the Onalaskas through Thomas Campbell's poem.

Password Plus and Super Password

However, a viewer in Anchorage, Alaska called the United States Secret Service and reported that "Quinn" was really Kerry Lee Ketchum, who was wanted on state fraud charges in Alaska and Indiana as well as federal mail fraud charges in California.

Patricia Dobler

She moved, as the spouse of a writer and professor, to Iowa City; Exeter, New Hampshire; Putney, Vermont; Anchorage, Alaska; Tucson, Arizona; El Paso, Texas; and finally Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Princess Tours

Princess Tours runs ten cars a day (five north, five south) from Anchorage to Fairbanks on the Alaska Railroad, stopping at Talkeetna, Denali, and occasionally Whittier.

Scouting in Alaska

This council was started in 1925 by a handful of girls in Fairbanks, Alaska headed by Jessie Bloom.

Single-wire earth return

In 1981 a high-power 8.5 mile prototype SWER line was successfully installed from a diesel plant in Bethel to Napakiak in Alaska, United States.

Swanson River

In its lower reaches, it passes through the Swanson River Oil Field east of Nikiski before turning sharply north.

Telida, Alaska

Many families moved to Takotna during the school year and lived in Telida only during summer months.

Thomas M. Anderson

In February 1897 Anderson and 100 soldiers of the 14th set up a base in Skagway and Dyea, Alaska at the start of the Klondike gold rush to protect miners along the trails into Canada as well as to keep watch on the border.

United States Senate election in Alaska, 2004

Mike Miller, younger brother of Terry Miller, involved in the family business in North Pole, also served in the Alaska House of Representatives and Alaska Senate from 1983 to 2001 and was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in 1994

Walrus Island, Pribilof Islands

This islet should not be confused with the Walrus Islands in the Walrus Islands State Game Sanctuary, located close to Hagemeister Island (in the Dillingham Census Area), nor with Walrus Island located in the southeastern shores of the Bristol Bay (in the Aleutians East Borough).

Walter Harper

At the age of 16, Harper started going to Tortella School, an Episcopal boarding school associated with St. Marks Mission in Nenana, Alaska.

William P. Upshur

Major General Upshur died from injuries suffered in a July 21, 1943 airplane crash near Sitka, Alaska, while on an inspection tour of his command which included Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands.

William Parkhurst Winans

He recorded a biography of Edward Marsden, an Indian of the tribe Metlakatla in Alaska.


Aaron Doering

These expeditions have taken him across many regions of the circumpolar Arctic, including the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada; Fennoscandia; Greenland; Chukotka in Russia; and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, USA.

Ahtna

Ahtna, Incorporated, an Alaska Native Regional Corporation created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971

Alaska Legislative Council

In 1998 the Council sued the Federal Government over plans by the United States to take over Alaska's subsistence fishing program under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, claiming the proposal would violate the Alaska Statehood Compact, which gave Alaska the right to manage its own fish and game resources.

Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve

Father Bernard R. Hubbard was a Jesuit priest and professor of geology at Santa Clara University in California, who had been exploring Alaska's volcanoes and glaciers every summer season since 1927 and writing about them in best-selling books and in publications such as National Geographic and the Saturday Evening Post.

Betula neoalaskana

Its range covers most of interior Alaska, and extends from the southern Brooks Range to the Chugach Range in Alaska, including the Turnagain Arm and northern half of the Kenai Peninsula, easterward from Norton Sound into western Ontario, and north to Northwest Territories and southern Nunavut.

Bong Hawkins

During the Philippine Cup of 2004-05, he was traded back to the Alaska Aces alongside Cariaso and Reynel Hugnatan for John Arigo and Ali Peek.

Danny Chen

Pvt. Chen served with C Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, which is based in Fort Wainwright, Alaska.

David W. Márquez

On March 31, 2005, Governor Frank Murkowski appointed Márquez as Attorney General for the State of Alaska.

Devil's Thumb

Devils Thumb, a mountain on the Alaska–British Columbia border

Digital line graph

DLGs are distributed at three different scales: large-scale, which normally correspond to the USGS 7.5- by 7.5-minute, 1:24,000 and 1:25,000-scale topographic quadrangle map series, 1:63,360-scale for Alaska and 1:30,000-scale for Puerto Rico; intermediate scale, which are derived from the USGS 30- by 60-minute, 1:100,000-scale map series; and small-scale, which are derived from the USGS 1:2,000,000-scale sectional maps of the National Atlas of the United States.

District of Alaska

In 1902 the Alaska Railroad began to be built, which would connect from Seward to Fairbanks by 1914, though Alaska still has no railroad connecting it to the lower 48 states today.

Drunken trees

Al Gore cited drunken trees caused by melting permafrost in Alaska as evidence of global warming, as part of his presentation in the 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth.

Echelmeyer Ice Stream

The name was changed from Ice Stream F by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in 2002 to honor Dr. Keith A. Echelmeyer of the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who studied the flow of Marie Byrd Land ice streams, 1992–93 and 1994–95, as well as the fast flow of surging glaciers in Alaska and Greenland.

Edward L. Keithahn

He became interested in totem poles at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, Washington, in 1909 and later traveled to southeast Alaska and eventually lived there working "in the Indian service," as he put it (meaning perhaps employment with the Bureau of Indian Affairs), living mainly among the Tlingit and Haida people.

Evstratii Delarov

Delarov participated in Solov'ev's 1764 attacks on the Umnak-Unalaska Aleut alliance, which were carried out in revenge for the 1762 Fox Islands revolt—a coordinated Aleut attack on four Russian vessels and several shore parties, during which over 300 Russians were killed.

Han language

Hän language, an endangered Native American language spoken in Alaska and Yukon

John Troy

John Weir Troy (1868–1942), American Democratic politician, Governor of Alaska Territory, 1933–1939

Kenneth Duremdes

With Alaska focusing itself on rebuilding the team, Duremdes became the top man for the Aces along with young players John Arigo and Ali Peek.

KSWD

KSEW, a radio station (950 AM) licensed to Seward, Alaska, United States, which used the call sign KSWD from September 1991 to May 2008

Little Gold Creek, Yukon

Little Gold Creek is a border crossing located on the Top of the World Highway between Dawson City, Yukon and Tok, Alaska, at the Alaska/Yukon border.

Lituya

MV Lituya, shuttle ferry for the Alaska Marine Highway System

Luzula wahlenbergii

Luzula wahlenbergii has a relatively wide distribution, growing across Arctic Eurasia, far-east Russia (including Transbaikal), Alaska, Greenland, Canada and the mountains of Scandinavia.

Marie Drake

Prior to that, a lyrical adaptation of "Maryland, My Maryland", written by a Juneau high school student during the early years of the 20th century, had been recognized by the Pioneers of Alaska as Alaska's official song, but had not received any such recognition by a governmental body.

Matsumae clan

Like several other Japanese before them, they had been found in the Aleutians, off the coast of Alaska, by Russian sailors and had asked to be brought back to Japan.

Meany Hall for the Performing Arts

Meany himself wanted the building to be named Seward Hall, after William H. Seward, the man who bought Alaska from Russia.

Michael Henry Herbert

He created with the U.S. Secretary of State John Hay a joint commission to establish the border between the U.S. district of Alaska and British interests in the Dominion of Canada, where gold had been found in the 1890s, which resulted in the definitive Alaskan boundary treaty of 1903.

MS Oosterdam

The ship has been alternating fall/winter cruises along the Mexican Riviera and summer in Alaska.

Music in High Places: Live in Alaska

Music in High Places: Live in Alaska is a live DVD by the Goo Goo Dolls.

Northwestel

The microwave system on the Alaska Highway was inaugurated with a phone call from Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, visiting Whitehorse, to President John F. Kennedy in Washington, D.C..

PABT

Bettles Airport (ICAO location indicator: PABT), in Bettles, Alaska, United States

Puff model

In a joint program called University Partnering for Operational Support (UPOS) between the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (early 2000s), Puff was integrated into the U.S. Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) volcano monitoring system by Rorik Peterson and David Tillman.

Randy Wayne White

White has traveled extensively and participated in a wide variety of adventures, including dog sledding in Alaska, helping to re-establish Little League baseball in Cuba, and ferrying Cuban refugees to safety during the Mariel boatlift.

Richard D. Cotter

After Cotter completed the mapping in Yosemite late 1864, he signed up to work on the Western Union Telegraph Expedition to British Columbia and Alaska, with the goal of providing a telegraph link from Asia through Alaska by way of Bering Strait.

Robert R. Coats

As part of the Alaska Branch of the USGS, he continued working in Alaska, mapping in the Chichagof, Anikovik, Nome, Solomon, Kigluaik and Kobuk River areas, among others.

Sam Keith

His most notable work was the 1973 best seller One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey in which he edited the journals and photographs of his friend Richard Proenneke's solo experiences in Alaska.

Samuel Balto

Samuel Balto, together with 113 other people from Finnmark were hired by Sheldon Jackson to be involved in the introduction of reindeer in Alaska.

Scopula frigidaria

It is found from Fennoscandia to the Kamchatka Peninsula and in northern North America, where it occurs across the boreal forest region, from Alaska across the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to Newfoundland, and in the mountains south to southern Wisconsin, Alberta and British Columbia.

Seguam

Seguam Island, an island in the Andreanof Islands in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

Senate Conservatives Fund

The PAC also supported a number of candidates that lost their elections, including Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado, Joe Miller in Alaska, John Raese in West Virginia, Dino Rossi in Washington, and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware.

Stone sheep

Stone's Sheep are primarily found in Northern British Columbia and can often be seen by travellers licking minerals along the side of the Alaska Highway in areas such as Summit Lake, Stone Mountain Provincial Park and Muncho Lake Provincial Park.

Stryker

The 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fairbanks, Alaska's Fort Wainwright began its initial deployment in August 2005 to Summer 2006.

Stun belt

Introduced in the United States in the early 1990s, by 1996 it was reportedly in use by the US Bureau of Prisons, the US Marshals Service, and 16 state correctional agencies including those of Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, Virginia, and Washington.

Vatnajökull

The glacier was used as the setting for the opening sequence (set in Siberia) of the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill, in which Bond (played for the last time by Roger Moore) eliminated a host of armed villains before escaping in a submarine to Alaska.

Vela Uniform

Vela Uniform incorporated seven underground nuclear tests in the continental United States and Alaska from October 1963 to July 1971.

William Henry Bay

After Alaska was purchased by the US Government in 1867, the first effort to identify the timber trade route from Lynn Canal to Haines via William Henry Bay was made in 1869 by Navy Commander Richard Worsam Meade.

Women's Bay

Womens Bay, Alaska, a census-designated place in Kodiak Island Borough, Alaska, in the United States