Sannikov Land
Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom claimed to have seen a land mass north of Kotelny Island during their 1809–1810 cartographic expedition to the New Siberian Islands. Sannikov reported this sighting of a "new land" in 1811, and the supposed island was named after him. Three-quarters of a century later, in 1886, Baron Eduard Toll, a Baltic German explorer in Russian service, reported observing Sannikov Land during another expedition to the New Siberian Islands. In 1900, he would lead still another expedition to the region, which had among its objectives the location and exploration of Sannikov Land. The expedition was unsuccessful in this respect. Toll and three others were lost after they departed their ship, which was stuck in ice for the winter, and embarked on a risky expedition by dog sled. In 1937, the Soviet icebreaker "Sadko" also tried and failed to find Sannikov Land. Some historians and geographers have theorised that the land mass that Sannikov and Toll saw was actually Fata Morganas of Bennett Island.