The South Pole of Earth’s rotation was the unattained goal of

Shackleton in 1908–09 but on December 14, 1911, Norwegian

explorer Roald Amundsen of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition of
1910–12 reached it. One month later, on January 17, 1912, Scott of
the British Antarctic Terra Nova Expedition of 1910–13 also reached
the South Pole. Whereas Amundsen’s party of skiers and dog teams,
using the Axel Heiberg Glacier route, arrived back at Framheim
Station at the Bay of Whales with little difficulty, Scott’s polar party—
Scott, Edward A. Wilson, H.R. Bowers, Lawrence E.G. Oates,
and Edgar Evans—traveled on foot using the Beardmore Glacier route
and perished on the Ross Ice Shelf.

After Amundsen and Scott attained the South Pole, the idea that
particularly haunted people’s minds was that of an overland crossing
of the continent. Conceived earlier by the Scotsman W.S. Bruce and
the German Wilhelm Filchner to test the thought that a channel might
exist connecting the Ross and Weddell seas, Shackleton organized the
Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914–17). Disaster struck in 1915
when his ship, the Endurance, was caught and later crushed in pack
ice of the Weddell Sea. The crew’s eventual escape to South
Georgia via Elephant Island is one of the enduring tales of polar
heroism. The idea for a Trans-Antarctic crossing lay dormant for
several decades and came to fruition with the British Commonwealth
Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Vivian Fuchs, with Edmund
Hillary leading the support team. Using tracked vehicles and aided by
aerial flights, the party left Shackleton Base on Filchner Ice Shelf on
November 24, 1957, and by way of the South Pole reached the New
Zealand Scott Base on Ross Island on March 2, 1958. As for the heroic
era, it is generally accepted to have ended with Shackleton’s death in
1922 during the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition.