this tip, the remains were recovered and then paraded solemnly through Anadyr to the monuments, where they were buried with full honors. In 1923, Novo–Mariinsk was renamed Anadyr. WWII and the Cold War During World War II, an airfield was built here for the Alaska-Siberian (ALSIB) air route used to ferry American Lend-Lease aircraft to the Eastern Front. During the 1960s, Anadyr was home to an R-12 Dvina (SS-4 Sandal) medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) complex, which targeted American military installations in Alaska. The base was located 23 km (14 miles) northeast of Anadyr and was the USSR's only remote missile site. Anadyr was granted town status in 1965, around which time it had a population of 5,600. The Hope Sled Dog Race was run between Anadyr and Nome, Alaska for more than a decade. Modern history It is claimed that the town of Anadyr annexed the neighboring "ethnic village" of Tavayvaam in May 1994, and that this was done by then governor Alexander Nazarov with a view to saving money from the autonomous okrug's budget. If the village had indeed been absorbed into the town of Anadyr then there would have been no obligation for the autonomous okrug to allocate specific funds for the indigenous population there. In 2011, Paul Steinhardt led a group of scientists that landed in Anadyr en route to an expedition into the Koryak Mountains to search for naturally occurring quasicrystals. Three quasicrystals have been found to date from the material gathered on that expedition, including icosahedrite, decagonite, a yet unnamed third natural quasicrystal, which (unlike icosahedrite and decagonite) is unlike anything ever previously synthesized in a laboratory. Steinhardt's team established that the natural quasicrystals were embedded in a meteorite that had hit Earth about 15,000 years ago. Geography The town of Anadyr is situated at the tip of a large cape, to the north of which is the mouth of the Anadyr River and to the east the estuarine part of that river, the Anadyrsky Liman, which empties into the Gulf of Anadyr. The town itself is situated on a gentle slope rising up from the sea, on the other side of the Anadyr River are mountains, but to the west, beyond the town are large expanses of flat tundra. It is on a similar parallel as Fairbanks, Alaska; Skellefteå, Sweden; and Oulu, Finland. Apart from those cities, the population at such northerly parallels is