Here we present an Antarctic A – Z to squeeze into one big factfile lots of really cool information, facts and stories about Antarctica that we couldn’t fit in anywhere else on the website.
Explore the white continent with stories from the extreme expeditions of the `Heroic Age’ of exploration in the early 20th century to a practical guide to coping on a polar expedition, in case you ever set off to Antarctica yourself. Over the coming months, you’ll find it all here.
HMS Endurance in Antarctica
Discover more about the white stuff through our Antarctic A - Z and find out more about the coolest place on Earth.
A is for Antarctica
Imagine a continent almost entirely buried by snow and ice, so remote and so hostile that it has no permanent inhabitants. Add the strongest winds in the world which can completely rip a tent to pieces and some sub-zero temperatures and this is Antarctica. And apart from a handful of research stations, Antarctica remains virtually untouched by man’s activities.
Antarctica
James Cook, the English naval officer and explorer, was the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. A great navigator, he was probably the first man to come within sighting distance of the Antarctic continental coast. However, Cook was not impressed with what he saw and remarked that “no man will ever venture further than I have done”. He was wrong, of course.
The quest for the South Pole, if one thinks about it, was a strange object of desire. There is nothing there but drifting ice and for six months of the year, the sun does not appear above the horizon. But the achievement of `being the First’ was an incredible triumph at the end of the 19th century and so two people prepared themselves to conquer Antarctica’s wilderness, Robert Scott and Road Amundsen.
After Amundsen won the race for the South Pole, polar exploration entered a new era. Explorers were motivated to discover Antarctica’s mysteries through scientific enquiry. Today, the main objective is research. Antarctica has become the focus of international effort directed towards a fuller understanding of the continent itself, its part in the evolution of our planet and its influence on global climate. The Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961, has been an outstanding international success; Antarctica has truly become a continent for science, as this unique framework has made it possible for scientists from countries both large and small to work freely alongside each other.
Antarctica and the Arctic
Amazingly enough, people very commonly confuse the characteristics of Antarctica and the Arctic as many people have never learned the difference between the two regions.
But how different is Antarctica from the Arctic? While both regions may appear at first glance to look the same because they’re both icy and cold, the term `poles apart’ is very suitable when talking about these regions because they’re actually very different in many ways.
Next >>