Word: spitsbergen
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...forbidding island of Spitsbergen is another bone of contention. The Soviets keep pressing Oslo for a "special arrangement" that would enhance their economic rights on the island, which was demilitarized in 1920 by a 40-nation treaty and placed under Norwegian sovereignty. Rebuffed, Moscow nonetheless insists on maintaining 3,400 Russians on Spitsbergen (v. 1,000 Norwegians), most of whom are military men disguised as civilians. Under the treaty, their presence on the island is perfectly legal, so long as they obey Norwegian laws. One of their assignments: to discourage Norwegian interest in the Kola Peninsula's military installations...
Bruce Tulloh, the former British Olympic distance runner, is panting across the plains of Oklahoma in an attempt to run from Los Angeles to New York in a record 66 days. Four of his countrymen are pushing their dog sleds toward Spitsbergen, Norway, in the last days of a 16-month, 2,000-mile trek across the Arctic. This summer, eight men from East Africa will try to follow up their successful ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro (elevation: 19,340 ft.) by climbing Mount Everest (29,028 ft.); all are blind. Stunt Man Evel Knievel plans to race a jet-powered...
...schoolteacher, Geoffrey Williams, who slipped into Newport, R.I., a fortnight ago after 26 days, 20 hours, and 32 minutes en route; others are still at sea. The competing Sunday Times sent four record-seeking Britons floundering by dogsled across mushy Arctic Ocean ice from Point Barrow, Alaska, to the Spitsbergen archipelago, some 2,100 crevasse-ridden miles distant; last week the quartet was a third of the way along and having radio trouble. More lately, the Times has sponsored a nonstop, round-the-world solo sail, which Chichester calls "the Everest of the sea." Three yachtsmen, including two Britons...
...attempt to reach the North Pole under water; in Framingham, Mass. Wilkins learned his first lessons in cryogeography on an Arctic expedition with Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who taught him "to work like a dog and then eat the dog." Sir Hubert's 1928 flight from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Spitsbergen-made with Carl Ben Eielson-was the first airplane : ight from North America over the top of the globe to the European area; and the trip under the edge of the Arctic icecap in 1931 was cool enough to chill spines in 1958. A converted U.S. Navy sub, Wilkins...
About 36 hours later Nautilus came out from under the ice pack, surfaced between Greenland and Spitsbergen right where it expected to be, broke radio silence for the first time since leaving Hawaii to send off a three-word encrypted signal to the Navy that said something like: "Here we are!" Thirteen miles off Iceland a helicopter arrived out of nowhere, lifted Anderson off for a preplanned hop to Iceland's Keflavik Airfield, where a Navy plane was waiting to fly him to Washington. The helicopter lowered the crew's first outside-world tribute direct from the President...