evidence: Vozrozhdeniya Island (Template:Lang-ru, which translates as Rebirth Island or Renaissance Island), or Voz Island for short, was an island in the Aral Sea. The former island's territory is split between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In 1954, the Soviet Union constructed a biological weapons test site called Aralsk-7 there and on the neighboring Komsomolskiy Island.[1] Vozrozhdeniya was once a small island; in the 19th century its size was only Template:Convert.[2] However, in the 1960s, the island began to grow in size; the Aral Sea began drying up due to its feeder rivers being dammed by the Soviet Union for agricultural projects.[3] The shrinkage of the Aral continued and accelerated over time. Vozrozhdeniya became a peninsula in mid-2001 when the channel to its south dried up completely and became a land bridge.[4] Upon the disappearance of the Southeast Aral Sea in 2008, Vozrozhdeniya became technically indistinguishable from the surrounding land. It briefly reemerged as a peninsula in 2010 when the eastern basin was flooded by heavy snow melt before once again becoming indistinguishable as a unique geographic feature. [...] - NASA satellite image comparison between 1989 and 2003 - Biological Decontamination of Vozrozhdeniye Island: The U.S.-Uzbek Agreement - Former Soviet Biological Weapons Facilities in Kazakhstan: Past, Present, and Future - 1960's Satellite images of Soviet laboratory - Top Inhospitable Places in the World