In 1741 while returning from his second voyage at sea during the Great Northern Expedition, Danish-born Russian explorer Vitus Bering made the first European discovery of most of the Aleutian Islands, including Kiska.

Georg Wilhelm Steller, a naturalist-physician aboard Bering's ship, wrote: On 25 October 1741 we had very clear weather and sunshine, but even so it hailed at various times in the afternoon.

[6] Starting in 1775, Kiska, the Aleutian Islands, and mainland Alaska became fur trading outposts for the Russian-American Company managed by Grigory Shelekhov.

3 Special Landing Party and 500 marines went ashore at Kiska on June 6, 1942, as a separate campaign concurrent with the Japanese plan for the Battle of Midway.

The Japanese captured the sole inhabitants of the island: a small United States Navy Weather Detachment consisting of ten men, including a lieutenant, along with their dog.

The military importance of this frozen, difficult-to-supply island was questionable, but the psychological impact upon the Americans of losing U.S. soil to a foreign enemy for the first time since the War of 1812 was tangible.

Following the winter, Attu was recaptured, and bombing of Kiska resumed until a larger American force was allocated to defeat the expected Japanese garrison of 5,200 men.

[8] Admiral Ernest King reported to the secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, that the only things that remained on the island were dogs and freshly brewed coffee.

In 1983, a memorial plaque was placed on Kiska by the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, inscribed: To the men of Amphibious Task Force 9 who fell here August 1943 placed here August 1983 by 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment.In September 1989, divers from the United States Navy rescue and salvage ship USS Safeguard (ARS-50) surveyed the wreck of the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine Ro-65, which sank in the harbor at Kiska with the loss of 19 lives on November 3, 1942.

[12] On August 22, 2007, the submarine USS Grunion, which disappeared with a crew of 70 during World War II, was found in 1,000 metres (3,281 ft) of water off Kiska.