Well, hello and welcome to the Learn Every Day English Podcast, your roadway to English proficiency.
You've come to the right place to improve your listening comprehension skills and mastery of the English language.
My name is Gary and I will be your host today.
I'm a native English speaker born and raised in the United States and I'm also a retired engineer living in a small Texas town about one hour north of Houston.
Hey and I'm also a language learner like you so I know what it is like to learn a new and different language.
So now let's jump right in to today's episode.
Well hello listeners and welcome to this episode of Learn Every Day English.
Hey glad to have you with me and again my name is Gary.
In this episode we're going to be talking about something a little bit different, something interesting.
We're going to be talking about the state of Alaska here in the United States of America and it's interesting because I just took a vacation there and it was a very neat and interesting state.
Neat means just interesting kind of cool, a lot of nice things to see.
Hey but before we get started I want to remind you that you can follow me at my webpage.
Just go to www .learneverydayenglish .com and there you can check that page out.
At the webpage you can find links to and listen to all the podcasts directly from the webpage and there's also a link where you can click on and go to the Learn Every Day English YouTube channel where you can watch many interesting and engaging videos to practice your listening comprehension and improve
your English skills.
Hey well that's enough for now I think.
Let's jump right in to today's episode about the state of Alaska.
Well like I said I just came back from a vacation to Alaska.
We were up there for about one week.
We flew directly from out of Houston and to Anchorage which is the largest city in Alaska and the flight was about seven hours.
It's a fairly long flight but it was a non -stop flight or a direct flight and it was the longest flight that I've taken so far in my life but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was.
We did a lot of cool things there.
There's a lot of beautiful scenery things to see.
We actually went to a glacier and climbed on the glacier.
We went to little cities around Anchorage and we also went to a lot of little lakes so it was a very nice and beautiful experience.
So we're going to be talking about some facts about the state of Alaska.
The state nickname is called the Last Frontier.
Frontier has kind of a notation like of the Wild West.
The frontier things that are not tame we would say in English that are kind of rugged and rural.
The state motto is North to the Future and the state capital of Alaska is Juneau, Alaska and it's located in the southeast part of the state and has a population of only a little over 33 ,000 people.
And one interesting fact about Juneau is that it has no road access to the rest of the state so you can't just drive there say by car or truck.
It is the only state capital in the United States of America that is accessible only by boat or by plane.
Hmm, or plane we mean airplanes, that's very interesting.
And it is the largest state capital in area with over 3 ,000 square miles.
Alaska became a state in 1959 and it was the 49th state in the Union.
The population as of 2015 was 738 ,432 people so as you can see there's not a lot of people in Alaska or it's not heavily populated as there's less than 1 million people and in total population it ranks number 48th in the United States.
The biggest city in Alaska is Anchorage with a population of 282 ,958 people.
And another thing, Alaska is a very very large state, it's the largest state in the USA.
It's about 1 5th the size of the total country and interestingly enough it is twice the size of the state of Texas.
Hmm, well we say Texas is big but Alaska is really big.
The name Alaska comes from the ollie wet word alaska meaning the great land.
The state bird of Alaska is called the willow petarmigan though some like to joke that the state bird is really the mosquito and this is something that I didn't know but I found out very quickly when I went to Alaska you would think that since it's cold there much of the year that there wouldn't be
many mosquitoes but that's not true there are actually a lot of mosquitoes in Alaska and interestingly enough they are very very big I think their mosquitoes are just as much of a problem in Alaska as they are here in Texas.
Hey did you know that the state sport of Alaska is called dog mushing?
Dog mushing which was once the primary mode of transportation in Alaska and actually dog mushing is just using dogs to pull a sled that you can ride in so that's called dog mushing.
And there's a huge sporting event in Alaska called the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race where many competitors have teams of dogs that pull their dog sleds through a race course.
It's very very popular in Alaska.
Alaska also has the lowest population density in the United States at just one person per square mile.
About 52 % of Alaskans are men which is the highest percentage of any state in the United States and there are 224 federally recognized tribes and 20 indigenous languages that are spoken in the state of Alaska.
Another very interesting fact that I didn't know is at their closest points Alaska is only approximately 50 miles from the country of Russia.
If you could drive across the ocean that separates Alaska and Russia you could actually be there in under one hour.
There's a city in Alaska called Barrow and it has both the longest and shortest amount of daylight in the state.
So on May 10th when the sun rises and it doesn't set for nearly three months so that means it stays daylight for nearly three months at a time and when the sun does set or go down on November 18th the residents of Barrow they don't see the sun again for nearly two months so that means they're in total
darkness for two months straight and that's why Alaska is known as the land of the midnight sun.
Did you know that almost one third of Alaska's land is located in the Arctic Circle and the Aurora Borealis or we also call that the Northern Lights you might have seen pictures or videos of this.
We see green lights in the sky.
The Northern Lights can be seen an average of 243 days a year in the city of Fairbanks, Alaska and the Northern Lights are just produced by charged electrons and protons striking the Earth's upper atmosphere.
Now we're going to talk about what is Alaska known for and you might think it's the nature and landscape and you would be right it's a very beautiful and scenic state.
Of the 20 highest peaks in the U .S.
peaks are mountain peaks like the tallest point of a mountain is called the peak.
So of the 20 highest peaks in the U .S.
17 of them are located in Alaska including the highest peak in the whole country is at the mountain called Denali with an average altitude or height of 20 ,320 feet above sea level.
And according to a National Park Service article, nine Alaska native groups and five Athabaskan languages have had unique names for Denali that all translate to some form of the Great One or the Tall One.
Hey also Alaska contains more than 100 volcanoes and volcanic fields did you know that which have been active within the last two million years.
There are also more than 3 ,000 rivers and 3 million lakes in Alaska and Alaska's largest lake, Lake Iliumna is about as long as the state of Connecticut is wide at 77 miles.
Also Alaska has more coastline than the rest of the whole United States combined with more than 34 ,000 miles.
Wow hey that's all the beach you can have with none of the crowds.
And according to another fact Alaska is 14 .2 % water with 94 ,743 square miles of water area in the state.
And also another interesting fact Alaska's only state to have coastlines on three different seas the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea.
And you might know that there are a lot of glaciers in Alaska and most of the glaciers in the US are located in Alaska.
So based on a recent comprehensive survey there are about 100 ,000 or more glaciers located in Alaska.
Wow that's a lot of glaciers and about 3 % of Alaska is actually covered by glaciers.
So if you want to see beautiful blue ice that's thousands of years old, hey a trip to Alaska might be the way to go or might be the thing that you need to do.
Hey did you also know that Alaska is one of the most seismically active places in the world and seismic has to do with earthquakes.
So the Alaska Earthquake Center has reported more than 150 ,000 earthquakes in the last 5 years and 31 of those had magnitudes of 6 or higher.
And of the 8 strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the world while 3 have actually occurred in Alaska.
And the nation's two largest forests are also located in Alaska.
The Tongass Forest which is located in the southeast part of Alaska covers 16 .8 million acres and the Chugach Forest in south central Alaska has 4 .8 million acres.
Wow that's a lot of trees.
Now we're going to talk about weather in Alaska and when most people think about Alaska they just think about cold or very cold weather and it does get very cold.
But we went to Alaska in July and it got around say 50 degrees Fahrenheit at night and during the day it was in the 60s and low 70s so it was very comfortable.
But the average high temperature for Fairbanks Alaska in the month of January is just 1 degree Fahrenheit and the average low is 17 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit so that's very very cold.
Interestingly enough the highest temperature ever recorded in Alaska was 100 degrees Fahrenheit or 68 degrees Celsius in a city called Fort Yukon in 1915.
And the lowest temperature recorded in Alaska was minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 62 degrees Celsius at a place called Prospect Creek Camp in 1971.
And this is also and not surprisingly so the lowest temperature ever recorded in the United States and man that sure is cold.
Alaska also has an interesting history and some quirks and a quirk is just a thing that is very odd or unusual.
Did you know that the only battle during World War II that was fought on American soil took place in 1943 after the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands and it was called the Battle of Atu which lasted from May 11th to May 30th.
And did you know that outsiders first discovered Alaska in 1741 when a Danish explorer, Vitus Jonensen Bering, sighted it on a voyage from Siberia so Russian hunters began traveling to the state and the first official Russian colony was founded on Kodiak Island in 1784.
But Russia sold Alaska to the United States for 7 .2 million dollars and that amounts to only two cents per acre.
Wow that's a deal. What if we could find property like that today?
I don't think so. The deal was initially ridiculed or ridiculed means to make fun of and it was called Seward's Folly and a folly is just something that you do that seems foolish or doesn't seem to be very smart.
But when gold was found in 1898 people flocked to the region.
To flock to means a lot of people just went there and now Alaska celebrates Seward's Day each March 30th to commemorate the sale of Alaska to the United States.
Another thing, giant vegetables are common in Alaska due to the extremely long days in the summer and this was another thing I found very interesting.
The light comes through your window very early in the morning like about 5am and even at 11 .30 at night 11 .30pm it is still light outside so it really takes a little getting used to so in the summer it says there are extremely long sunny days.
At the Alaska State Fair farmers show off their large veggies which is just a short form or way to say vegetables and they compete for world records.
So a gentleman by the name of Scott Robb still holds a world record for his 130 .25 pound cabbage that he grew in 2012 and also Scott and Marty Robb also hold the world record for the world's largest turnip coming in at 39 pounds, 3 ounces.
There is also a lot of wildlife and fishing in Alaska.
The largest salmon ever caught was at the Kanai River and it weighed in at 79 pounds, 4 ounces, wow can you believe that?
A salmon that weighs almost 100 pounds and also there are some Pribilof Islands which are the home to the largest congregation of northern fur seals.
Alaska's Kodiak Bears can grow to 1 ,500 pounds and stand 10 feet tall while on their hind legs and hind legs just mean their rear legs.
And there is also another kind of animal called a moose and it can grow up to 1 ,600 pounds and has antlers or horns on its head that span up to 6 feet in width or 6 feet wide.
Finally we are going to talk about Alaska's industry and economy.
Alaska is the only state in the United States that does not collect state sales tax or has an individual income tax although some cities have sales tax however.
According to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, seafood is the economic foundation or base of many rural communities in Alaska where more than 21 ,200 residents or 15 % of all rural working age people were directly employed by the seafood industry.
Hey did you know that Alaska produces more than 60 % of the commercial fisheries in the whole United States?
There are 5 species of salmon, 4 species of crab, cod, shrimp, halibut and more are harvested in Alaska.
Alaska is also known for its oil.
There is a place called the Northern Alaskan Coast is North America's largest oil field.
There is also a very long pipeline called the Trans -Alaska Pipeline which starts in Prudhoe Bay and stretches for more than 800 miles over very rugged terrain including three mountain ranges to the city of Valdez and more than 18 billion barrels of oil have moved through this pipeline.
And the project that built the pipeline involved 77 ,000 workers from 1969 through 1977 when it was completed.
One other thing that's very interesting about Alaska is there are a lot of pilots that live and work in Alaska.
So as of July 2015 Alaska had 10 ,378 active pilots and with more than 1 % of the state's population with some level of pilot certification it's 3 .6 times higher than the US average for pilots.
The state also has 4 times the number of airports per square mile and this is due to the fact that so many places in Alaska are only accessible by air or water so they use a lot of planes we call them sea planes that can land and take off from or in the water.
Lake Hood in Anchorage is the world's largest and busiest sea plane base and finally zinc is the state's biggest mineral export but gold might be what Alaska is most famous or known for.
So that's a little information about Alaska.
The 49th state in the United States of America.
So hopefully you learned something and found that interesting.
I know I did when doing research on this podcast.
Well I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Learn Every Day English Podcast.
I'd love to hear from you what you thought about this episode.
If you have any questions for me or if you have any suggestions for specific topics you'd like me to discuss just go to the Learn Every Day English webpage and then at the bottom there'll be a contact form.
Just fill that out.
Send me a message. Let me know how you're doing or just say hello.
Well I think that's it for now listeners.
Hey be sure to check out our upcoming episodes.
Hey thanks for listening and goodbye.
