Antarctic Timeline

By Max.Geering
  • 350 BCE

    The Greeks

    It was the ancient Greeks who first came up with the idea of Antarctica.

  • Captain James Cook

    In January, Captain James Cook crosses the Antarctic circle and sail around Antarctica, though he doesn't sight land, deposits of rock seen in icebergs showed that a southern continent exists. His comment - "I make bold to declare that the world will derive no benefit from it".

  • Captain Thaddeus Bellingshausen

    Captain Thaddeus Bellingshausen a Russian naval officer sailed around the Antarctic, first to cross the Antarctic circle since Cook.He made the first sighting of the continent, reaching 69° 21'S, 2° 14'W - describing an "icefield covered with small hillocks." on Jan 27th 1820.

  • February the 7th. 1st known landing on continental Antarctica

    by American sealer Captain John Davis, though this is not acknowledged by all historians.
    In the winter of 1821, for the first time ever a party of men spent a winter in Antarctica. An officer and ten men from a British sealing ship the Lord Melville had to spend the winter on King George Island -part of the South Shetlands group, north of the Antarctic Peninsula. The ship had been driven offshore and did not return to pick them up again. They were rescued the following summer.

  • Separate British, French and American expeditions establish the status of Antarctica as a continent

    In 1840, British naval officer and scientist James Clark Ross takes two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, to within 80 miles of the coast until stopped by a massive ice barrier - now called the Ross Ice Shelf. He also discovers the active volcano that he names after his ship Erebus, and identifies 145 new species of fish (not personally you understand - a scientist on the ship did that bit).

  • Carsten Borchgrevink Starts his way tothe South Pole

    Carsten Borchgrevink leads a British expedition that landed men at Cape Adare and built huts. This was the first time that anyone had wintered on the Antarctic landmass. Believed by some historians to be the first confirmed landing on continental Antarctica.

  • Amundson Starts His Way to the South Pole

    December 14th. Norwegian Roald Amundsen leads a five man expedition that reaches the South Pole for the first time.

  • Captain Scott Starts his way to the South Pole

    Captain Scott, UK, leads his first Antarctic expedition to try to reach the South Pole, with Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson. They are forced to turn back two months later having reached 82 degrees south, suffering from snow blindness and scurvy.