Khariton Prokofievich Laptev (Russian : Харитон Прокофьевич Лаптев; 1700–1763) was a Russian naval officer and Arctic explorer.
Khariton Laptev was born in a gentry family, Laptev family which was a branch of the Lopukhin family, in the village of Pokarevo near Velikiye Luki (in the southern part of today's Pskov Oblast), just a year before his cousin Dmitry Laptev was born in the nearby village of Bolotovo.
Khariton Laptev started his career in the Russian Navy as a cadet in 1718. By 1730, he was already in charge of a military ship, and in 1734 participated in the siege of Gdańsk.
In 1739–1742, Khariton Laptev led one of the parties of the Second Kamchatka expedition. Together with Semion Chelyuskin, N. Chekin, and G. Medvedev, Laptev described the Taimyr Peninsula from the mouth of the Khatanga River to the mouth of the Pyasina river and discovered a few of the islands in the area. After the expedition, he participated in the creation of the "General Map of the Siberian and Kamchatka Coast", and continued his military service in the Baltic Fleet. The sea coastline of the Taimyr Peninsula, a cape on the Chelyuskin Peninsula and other landmarks bear his name. The Laptev Sea was also named after him (and his cousin Dmitry Laptev). The 1962-built icebreaker Ledokol-3 was renamed Khariton Laptev in 1966 in his honor.
Vitus Jonassen Bering, also known as Ivan Ivanovich Bering, was a Danish-born Russian cartographer and explorer, and an officer in the Russian Navy. He is known as a leader of two Russian expeditions, namely the First Kamchatka Expedition and the Great Northern Expedition, exploring the north-eastern coast of the Asian continent and from there the western coast on the North American continent. The Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island, the Bering Glacier, and Vitus Lake were all named in his honor.
Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld was a Finland-Swedish aristocrat, geologist, mineralogist and Arctic explorer. He was a member of the noble Nordenskiöld family of scientists and held the title of a friherre (baron).
The Laptev Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands. Its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with co-ordinates of 79°N and 139°E, and ends at the Anisiy Cape. The Kara Sea lies to the west, the East Siberian Sea to the east.
The Taimyr Peninsula is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, in the Siberian Federal District, that forms the northernmost part of the mainland of Eurasia. Administratively it is part of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Federal subject of Russia.
Cape Chelyuskin is the northernmost point of the Eurasian continent, and the northernmost point of mainland Russia. It is situated at the tip of the Taymyr Peninsula, south of Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The headland has a 17-metre-high (56 ft) light on a framework tower.
Semyon Ivanovich Chelyuskin was a Russian polar explorer and naval officer.
Dmitry Yakovlevich Laptev was a Russian Arctic explorer and Vice Admiral (1762). The Dmitry Laptev Strait is named in his honor and the Laptev Sea is named in honor of him and his cousin, and fellow Arctic explorer, Khariton Laptev.
Boris Andreyevich Vilkitsky was a Russian hydrographer and surveyor. He was the son of Andrey Ippolitovich Vilkitsky.
Dmitry Leontiyevich Ovtsyn was a Russian hydrographer and Arctic explorer. The Ovtsyn family is one of the oldest Russian noble families, originating from the descendants of Rurik, the Murom princes.
Fyodor Alekseyevich Minin was a Russian Arctic explorer.
Nikolay Nikolayevich Urvantsev was a Soviet geologist and explorer. He was born in the town of Lukoyanov in the Lukoyanovsky Uyezd of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate of the Russian Empire to the family of a merchant. He graduated from the Tomsk Engineering Institute in 1918.
Vasili Vasilyevich Pronchishchev was a Russian explorer.
Vilkitsky Strait is a strait between the Taimyr Peninsula and Bolshevik Island in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago of Russia. The strait connects the Kara and Laptev Seas. The length of the Vilkitsky Strait is 128 km, the width approx. 55 km and the depth between 32 m and 210 m. It is covered with drifting ice all year round. The strait was discovered in 1913 by a Russian hydrographic expedition led by Boris Vilkitsky and then named after him in 1918.
The Russian conquest of Siberia took place during 1580–1778, when the Khanate of Sibir became a loose political structure of vassalages that were being undermined by the activities of Russian explorers. Although outnumbered, the Russians pressured the various family-based tribes into changing their loyalties and establishing distant forts from which they conducted raids. It is traditionally considered that Yermak Timofeyevich's campaign against the Siberian Khanate began in 1580. The annexation of Siberia and the Far East to Russia was resisted by local residents and took place against the backdrop of fierce battles between the Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Russian Cossacks, who often committed atrocities against Indigenous Siberians.
Vladimir Ivanovich Voronin was a Soviet Navy captain, born in Sumsky Posad, in the present Republic of Karelia, Russia. In 1932 he commanded the expedition of the Soviet icebreaker A. Sibiryakov which made the first successful crossing of the Northern Sea Route in a single navigation without wintering. This voyage was organized by the All-Union Arctic Institute.
The Komsomolskaya Pravda Islands are an archipelago in the far north of the Russian Federation. The islands are uninhabited and are covered with tundra vegetation, shingle and ice.
The Taymyr Gulf is a gulf in the Kara Sea that includes the estuary of the Lower Taymyra.
Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen were two young men from Norway who went with fellow Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen on his 1918 Arctic expedition aboard ship Maud. Peter Tessem was a carpenter and Paul Knutsen was an able-bodied seaman. One year into the expedition, in 1919, Amundsen left Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen behind at Cape Chelyuskin after having made winter quarters there. Amundsen chose Peter Tessem because he had been suffering from chronic headaches throughout the winter and was not fit to continue the long expedition. He selected Paul Knutsen because he had previously wintered in the Kara Sea in 1914–1915 with Otto Sverdrup on ship Eclipse, so he knew about the locations of the caches of provisions that had been left in the area by Sverdrup.
The history of exploration by citizens or subjects of the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire, the Tsardom of Russia and other Russian predecessor states forms a significant part of the history of Russia as well as the history of the world. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,850 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than a ninth of Earth's landmass. In the times of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, the country's share in the world's landmass reached 1/6. Most of these territories were first discovered by Russian explorers. Contiguous exploration in Eurasia and the building of overseas colonies in Russian America were some of the primary factors in Russian territorial expansion.
Khariton Laptev was a Soviet and later Russian icebreaker in service from 1962 until 1996. It was one of twelve Project 97A icebreakers built by Admiralty Shipyard in Leningrad in 1961–1971.