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History of Antarctica

After splitting from Gondwana, Antarctica drifted slowly to its present position over the South Pole. It has been covered with ice since approximately the beginning of the Pliocene, about 5 million years ago.

Captain James Cook and the crews of the Resolution and Adventure circumnavigated Antarctica between 1772 and 1775, crossing the Antarctic Circle three times and dispelled the myth of Terra Australis.

The first confirmed sighting of Antarctica can not be accurately attributed to one single person. It can, however, be narrowed down to three individuals. According to the National Science Foundation[1], US House of Representatives' Peter DeFazio[2], NASA[3] and the University of California San Diego[?][4] Fabian von Bellingshausen, a captain in the Russian Imperial Navy; Edward Bransfield, a captain in the British navy; Nathaniel Brown Palmer, an American sealer all sighted Antarctica within days or weeks of each other. Bransfield supposedly saw Antarctica on Jan 27, 1820, three days before Palmer sighted land.

The first landing on Antarctica was arguably only slightly more than a year later by American sealer, Captain John Davis. Davis claimed to have set foot on Antarctica on February the 7th, 1821[6][7][8].

After the North Magnetic Pole[?] was located in 1831, explorers and scientists began looking for the South Magnetic Pole. One of those explorers, James Clark Ross, identified its approximate location, but was unable to reach it. He also mapped the Ross Ice Shelf, which was later named for him.

The National Antarctic Expedition (1901 - 1904), led by Robert Falcon Scott, came to within 480 statute miles of the South Pole.

Ernest Shackleton, who had been a member of Scott's expedition, organized and led the British Antarctic Expedition (1907 - 1909), again with the primary objective of reaching the South Pole, and came within 97 miles before having to turn back.

On December 14, 1911, a party led by Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen became the first to reach the South Pole, followed by Robert Falcon Scott over a month later. Scott's party later died on the return journey after being delayed by a blizzard.

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914, led by Ernest Shackleton, set out to cross the continent via the pole, but their ship, the Endurance was trapped and crushed by pack ice before they even landed. The expedition members survived after an epic journey on sledges over pack ice to Elephant Island. Then Shackelton and five others crossed the Southern Ocean, in an open boat, and then trekked over South Georgia to raise the alarm at a whaling station.

US Navy Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd[?] led five expeditions to Antarctica during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. He overflew the South Pole with pilot Bernt Balchen on November 28 and 29, 1929, to match his overflight of the North Pole in 1926. Byrd's explorations had science as a major objective and pioneered the use of aircraft on the continent. Byrd is attributed with doing more for Antarctic exploration than any other explorer. His expeditions set the scene for modern Antarctic exploration and research.

It was not until October 31, 1956 that anyone set foot on the south pole again; on that day US Navy Rear Admiral George Dufek[5] (and others) successfully landed a R4D Skytrain aircraft.

During the International Geophysical Year of 1957 a large number of expeditions were mounted.

New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, led an expedition using farm tractors equipped for polar travel, arrived at the Pole in late 1957, the first expedition since Scott's to reach the South Pole over land. Hillary was laying supply depots for the British Trans-Antarctic expedition and in typical Hillary style "detoured" to the pole because the trip had gone well. Then in 1958, British explorer Vivian Fuchs[?] led a successful overland transpolar expedition that completed the journey that Shackelton had first envisaged.

The Antarctic Treaty was signed on December 1, 1959 and came into force on June 23, 1961.

On November 28, 1979, an Air New Zealand DC-10, on a sightseeing trip, crashed into Mount Erebus, on Ross Island, killing all 257 people on board. The accident effectively put an end to commercial airlines operating sightseeing flights to the continent, due to perceived risks and remoteness from search and rescue services.

In March 2002 the 2,120 square statute mile Iceberg B-22 broke off from the Thwaites Ice Tongue and the Larsen B ice shelf[?] on the Antarctic Peninsula[?] shattered into small fragments. The ice shelf was 200 metres thick and had a surface area of 3,250 square kilometers.

[1] http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1997/antpanel/antpan05.pdf
[2] http://www.house.gov/defazio/antarctica/antarcticafacts.htm
[3] http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/antarctica/background/NSF/palmer
[4] http://arcane.ucsd.edu/pstat
[5] http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/datesoct.htm
[6] http://www-old.aad.gov.au/environment/cultural_heritage/mawsons_hut_man_plan/03maws.pdf
[7] US Office of Technology Assessment prepared "Polar Prospects" which has history of Antarctica: http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk1/1989/8926/892604.PDF
[8] http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/resources/infosheets/19