Great honour for the first Swiss in Antarctica
A memorial plaque to the first Swiss in Antarctica, Dr Xavier Mertz, has been unveiled in Hobart Harbour.
A memorial plaque to the first Swiss in Antarctica, Dr Xavier Mertz, has been unveiled in Hobart Harbour.
January marked the anniversary of the death of Dr. Xavier Mertz. He was the first Swiss to set foot to Antarctica. The crew member of the 1911-1914 expedition met a bad end in the perpetual ice.
A team of researchers has discovered a huge impact crater in Antarctica with the help of satellites. This could be the largest meteorite crater on Earth.
February 22, 1904 is a memorable day in Argentine polar exploration. That’s when Argentina took over the “Orcadas” station and has held it since that date.
The “Vernadsky Research Base” celebrated the 25th anniversary. In 1996, Ukrainian polar explorers raised their flag over the former British “Faraday Station” for the first time.
Carsten Borchgrevink was not the first person on the Antarctic continent. But the first one to overwinter there.
William Speirs Bruce was a young Scot who had travelled to Antarctica for the first time as an expedition leader in 1892-93. Bruce was also a member of the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition to Franz Josef Land in 1896-97 and 1898 in Spitsbergen in the Arctic.
In preparation for the International Geophysical Year, the Soviet Union conducted its first Antarctic expedition in 1955-1956. On 14.2.1956 the flag was hoisted. The station “MIRNY” was thus officially opened.
During an Antarctic expedition, researchers in northern Victorialand discovered a 200-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur footprint. It was a roughly hand-sized trace of an animal from the group of archosaurs.