This Day in History: August 25 - two great disccoveries in the Arctic

📌    Eighty years apart, two geographic discoveries forever changed the course of Russia’s northern exploration. These were the expeditions to two archipelagos: Novaya Zemlya (1832-33) and Severnaya Zemlya (1912).

      Legends say Novgorod merchants first glimpsed these harsh lands in the 12th–13th centuries. Subsequent expeditions under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Catherine The Great slowly pieced together the archipelago’s map—one deadly mission at a time. Many never returned.

      The breakthrough came with Lieutenant Pakhtusov’s 1832–1833 expedition. Sailing a single-mast karbas boat Novaya Zemlya, he charted the first complete map of the eastern coast of Novaya Zemlya's southern island. He also pioneered the exploration of Matochkin Shar—the strait dividing Novaya Zemlya’s northern and southern islands.

      In 1912 the icebreaker Georgy Sedov's push to Severnaya Zemlya's western shores did more than etch names in polar annals—it secured Russia’s foothold in the Arctic and control over the Northern Sea Route, the vital shipping lane linking European Russia to the Far East.📚

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