49 Fun Facts About The South Pole

The Geographic South Pole lies at which degree of latitude?

90° south is as far as the scale goes: every line of longitude meets at the Pole, so it has a latitude but no longitude of its own.

Which 1982 horror film do South Pole winterers traditionally watch on the night the last plane leaves?

The Thing, in which a shape-shifting alien picks off the crew of an isolated Antarctic base, is screened in the station gym as soon as the winter crew is cut off.

Scott's expedition, beaten to the Pole by 34 days, was named after which ship?

Terra Nova, a former whaler, gave Scott's last expedition its name. The five men who reached the Pole found proof that Amundsen had got there first, and all died on the way back.

Standing on the Pole in Antarctica, every direction you can face is which compass direction?

North is the only direction on offer: every line of longitude meets at the Pole, so any step away from it, whichever way you face, heads north.

During which months is the Sun never above the horizon at the South Pole?

May through August falls inside one long night: the Sun sets around the March equinox and does not rise again until the September equinox.

Roughly how thick is the ice sheet at the South Pole?

About 2,700 metres of ice lie under the marker, so the bedrock beneath the Pole sits close to sea level.

Why is the Geographic South Pole's marker repositioned annually?

The ice sheet moves about 10 metres a year, carrying the station and every old marker with it, so a newly made stake is planted at the true Pole each year.

On what day is the South Pole marker ceremonially repositioned?

New Year's Day is the date: the marker is replanted at the freshly surveyed Pole, with a new top piece designed by the winter crew and made in the station's machine shop.

What surrounds the metal sphere at the Ceremonial South Pole?

Flags of the original Antarctic Treaty signatories, twelve in all, ring the sphere. It is a stand-in for photographs: the real Pole, yards away, is a small stake that moves each year.

What did Amundsen's party leave standing at the South Pole in December 1911 for Scott to find?

A tent, holding a letter Amundsen asked Scott to carry home in case the Norwegians died on the way back. Drifting snow has since buried it deep beneath the surface.

What landmark structure sheltered the US South Pole station's buildings from 1975 into the 2000s?

A geodesic dome 50 metres wide covered the station's buildings. It was taken apart in 2009–10 and shipped to California, where its top ring hangs in the museum of the Navy Seabees who built it.

The US-run South Pole station keeps the time of which other country, the usual gateway for its flights?

New Zealand time is kept because the station is usually reached by way of New Zealand. Every line of longitude meets at the Pole, so any time zone would have done.

US military flights supplying McMurdo and the South Pole run under what operation name?

Deep Freeze began in 1955 as the Navy operation that built the first South Pole station for the International Geophysical Year, and the name has stuck to US Antarctic supply missions ever since.

Who led the first flight over the South Pole, in November 1929?

Richard Byrd was the navigator, not the pilot: the Norwegian Bernt Balchen flew the plane, and the flight earned Byrd promotion to rear admiral.

Which song named the first plane to land at the South Pole?

Que Sera, Sera was the name of the Navy plane that set an admiral's party down on 31 October 1956. Nobody had stood at the Pole since Scott's men left it, 44 years before.

Which Everest conqueror reached the South Pole overland in January 1958?

Edmund Hillary led the support team laying supply depots for Vivian Fuchs's main party, and beat Fuchs to the Pole by about two weeks.

What everyday vehicles became the first ever driven to the South Pole, in January 1958?

Farm tractors: three Fergusons fitted with tracks, brought along to haul supplies for a depot-laying team, became the first land vehicles to reach the Pole.

Which explorer turned back in January 1909 only 97 nautical miles from the South Pole?

Ernest Shackleton never reached the Pole, yet coming so close made him a hero: he was knighted on his return, two years before anyone got there.

Scott learned he was in a race with Amundsen from a telegram waiting at which Australian port?

Melbourne is where the cable caught up with Scott in October 1910. It said only that Amundsen was proceeding to the Antarctic, leaving the British to guess his plans.

Amundsen built his base at which inlet in the Ross Ice Shelf, about 100 km nearer the Pole than Scott's?

The Bay of Whales was as far south as a ship could sail, which gave the Norwegians a head start of about 100 km over Scott's base at McMurdo Sound.

Amundsen's party slaughtered dogs for food at the top of the Axel Heiberg Glacier at a spot they called what?

The Butchers' Shop was part of the plan: once the dogs had hauled the sledges up to the plateau, all but eighteen were shot to feed the men and the remaining dogs.

Amundsen borrowed which famous polar ship, previously used by Fridtjof Nansen, for his South Pole expedition?

Fram was built so that pack ice would lift it rather than crush it. Nansen used it to drift across the Arctic Ocean, and Amundsen then took it to the far end of the Earth.

Scott, Wilson and Bowers died in their tent how far short of the supply depot that might have saved them?

11 miles was all that lay between them and One Ton Depot, but a blizzard pinned the three men in their tent for nine days, until they died.

Which member of Scott's polar party walked out into a blizzard saying 'I am just going outside and may be some time'?

Lawrence Oates, crippled by frostbite, hoped that without him to slow them his three companions might still get home. His body was never found.

Scott's last expedition planned to haul its loads with dogs, ponies and what novel technology?

Motor sledges were Scott's experiment, and they soon broke down. The ponies were shot on the march, leaving the men to haul their own sledges.

Roald Amundsen disappeared in June 1928 while doing what?

Amundsen was flying to rescue the crew of the airship Italia, which had crashed on the Arctic ice. Its commander, Umberto Nobile, was saved by others; Amundsen's remains were never found.

South Pole winterers join the '300 Club' by running out into −100 °F cold straight from what?

A sauna heated to 200 °F is the starting line: members dash to the Pole marker and back wearing next to nothing, a swing of 300 degrees.

Which Antarctic station logged Earth's lowest recorded air temperature, −89.2 °C, in 1983?

Vostok Station, a Soviet base, set the record in July 1983; the South Pole's own low is −82.8 °C. Deep under Vostok's ice lies Antarctica's largest lake, liquid water that drillers reached in 2012.

The South Pole's record high of −12.3 °C, set in 2011, fell on which day?

Christmas Day 2011 was the Pole's heat wave: the air stayed twelve degrees below freezing, yet it was the warmest reading since records began in 1957.

Why is the South Pole so much colder than the North Pole?

It sits high on an ice sheet in the middle of a continent, while the North Pole lies at sea level in the middle of an ocean.

Judged by its yearly snowfall, the South Pole's climate resembles what?

A desert: almost nothing falls from the sky, but none of it ever melts, which is how so dry a place came to hold so much ice.

Which seabirds are occasionally blown off course all the way to the South Pole?

Skuas, relatives of the gulls, turn up only by accident: no plant or animal lives at the Pole, so a bird seen there has been blown far inland from the coast.

In 1999 the station's winter-over physician, Jerri Nielsen, discovered she had what, and had to treat herself until a rescue flight?

Breast cancer: with a welder's help she biopsied the lump herself, then began chemotherapy with drugs dropped from a plane, months before one could land to fly her out.

How was astrophysicist Rodney Marks's death at the Pole in 2000, later traced to methanol poisoning, first described?

'Apparently natural causes' was the first word from the Pole. With no flights in winter, his body waited there nearly six months for the autopsy that found methanol.

What particles does the IceCube observatory, a cubic kilometre of instrumented ice at the South Pole, detect?

Neutrinos interact so weakly with matter that a detector must be enormous to catch any: IceCube's strings of sensors reach 2,450 metres down into the ice.

The South Pole Telescope, a giant dish beside the station, mainly studies what?

The cosmic microwave background, faint radiation left over from the Big Bang, shows best through cold, dry air at high altitude, which is why the dish was built at the Pole.

An abandoned Soviet station at Antarctica's Pole of Inaccessibility is still topped by a bust of whom?

Vladimir Lenin's bust was the 'black dot on the horizon' that guided a British kite-skiing team in during 2007. Snow had buried the hut it stands on.

Which light display fills the South Pole's sky during its six-month winter night?

Aurora australis is the southern twin of the aurora borealis. With the Sun below the horizon for months, the winter crew can watch it at any hour of the day.

Who led the first all-women ski expedition to the South Pole, which arrived in 1993?

Ann Bancroft gave up teaching to join a dogsled trek over the Arctic ice in 1986, then led a team of four women on skis to the South Pole, hauling sleds for more than 600 miles.

Which mountaineer, who had climbed Everest without bottled oxygen, crossed Antarctica via the South Pole on foot in 1989–90?

Reinhold Messner and the German Arved Fuchs covered some 2,800 km on skis with no dogs and no engines, hauling their own sledges and helped only by the wind.

Bellingshausen and Lazarev, often credited with the first sighting of Antarctica in 1820, sailed under which flag?

Russia sent their two sloops on a two-year voyage right around the continent. Rival British and American claims to the first sighting date from the same year.

Amundsen named the plateau around the Pole in honour of which monarch?

Haakon VII had been King of Norway for only six years. Norway left its union with Sweden in 1905, and Amundsen put the newly independent kingdom's first king on the map.

Where does the South Pole's winter crew get its fresh vegetables?

A hydroponic greenhouse grows them in nutrient solution instead of soil. With no flights for about eight months, it is the only fresh produce the winter crew sees.

During the South Pole's summer, what does the Sun do over 24 hours?

It circles the sky without setting, wheeling once around the horizon each day and never climbing higher than about 23.5 degrees, the tilt of the Earth's axis.

Why does the South Pole station opened in 2008 stand on stilts?

To avoid being buried by snow: drifts were slowly burying its predecessor, so the new station was raised on legs and built so that it can be jacked up higher still.

Which British royal trekked to the South Pole in 2013 with teams of wounded veterans?

Prince Harry set out in a three-way race between British, American and Commonwealth teams, but conditions were so harsh that the race was dropped and everyone walked in together.

What keeps the lights and heating on at the South Pole station through the dark winter?

Jet-fuel generators, three of them, power the station, so a whole winter's fuel has to be delivered during the short summer before the last flight leaves.

What links McMurdo Station to the South Pole across about 1,600 km of ice?

A flagged road of compacted snow, the South Pole Traverse, lets supply convoys haul fuel and cargo to the station in about 40 days, more cheaply and reliably than flying it in.

Vivian Fuchs's party, which reached the South Pole in January 1958, went on to complete the first what?

The first overland crossing of Antarctica took his twelve men 99 days. An expedition had set out to do it in 1914, but its ship was crushed in the ice before the march could begin.