Hall Island was discovered on 30 August 1873, by the Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition,[1] and named after American Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall.

[2] A small camp was built at Cape Tegetthoff in 1898 by the Walter Wellman expedition.

Its highest point is 502 m (1,647 ft) and it is the summit of the Kupol Moskvy ice dome that covers the central part of the island.

There is a wide bay on the southeastern side of Hall Island known as Hydrographer Bay and a smaller one west of the Littrov Peninsula called Bukhta Surovaya.

Additionally, in August 2019, a geographic expedition by the Russian Northern Fleet to Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya discovered a new island, previously thought to be a peninsula of Hall Island.