From Encyclopedia Westarctica
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
|
|
1,082 articles in English
|
|
|
Featured article
Sir Ernest Shackleton was a polar explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic, and one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Born in Kilkea, Athy, County Kildare, Ireland, Shackleton and his Anglo-Irish family moved to Sydenham in suburban south London when he was ten. His first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition 1901–1904.
After the race to the South Pole ended in December 1911 with Roald Amundsen's conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to the crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed before the shore parties could be landed.
(Full Article...)
|
|
In the news
|
Featured image
|
|
|
The south polar skua is a large seabird in the skua family Stercorariidae. An older name for the bird is MacCormick’s skua, after explorer and naval surgeon Robert McCormick, who first collected the type specimen. This species and the other large Southern Hemisphere skuas, such as the great skua, are sometimes placed in a separate genus Catharacta.
Photographer: Paride Legovini
(More Images)
|
|
|
|
|
"Few men during their lifetime comes anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used."
- Richard E. Byrd
|
|
More info
