KINGMAN REEF

reef, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Northern Line Islands in the west-central Pacific Ocean, 920 miles (1,480 km) southwest of Honolulu. A barren atoll with a deep lagoon (5 by 9.5 miles [8 by 15 km], it has a land area of 0.01 square mile (0.03 square km). It was sighted in 1798 by an American, Edmund Fanning, and was named for another American, W. Kingman, who first described it in 1853. Formally annexed by the United States in 1922, it became a U.S. naval reservation in 1934. Pan American World Airways used the lagoon just before World War II as a station for seaplanes flying between Hawaii and Samoa. Kingman Reef is uninhabited.