LANDING ON

Antarctica Elizabeth Rivera | 5to CCLL

JAMES COOK'S CROSSING

OF THE ANTARCTIC
CIRCLE
British explorer Capt. James Cook made his
mark on Antarctic exploration when he and
his crew made the first recorded crossing of
the Antarctic Circle, on Jan. 17, 1773. Cook
circumnavigated the globe on the HMS
Resolution, searching for a massive land
mass that was rumored to exist at the
bottom of the Southern Hemisphere.

FIRST RECORDED SIGHTING

OF ANTARCTICA
Capt. Thaddeus von Bellingshausen,
sometimes called Fabian Gottlieb von
Bellingshausen, may have been the first
person to see the mainland of Antarctica.
During a Russian expedition in January 1820,
he noted seeing "an ice shore of extreme
height," according to the Royal Museums
Greenwich in London. Von Bellingshausen did
not claim to have discovered the continent,
but his descriptions of what he saw match up
well with what the edge of the continent looks
like, according to a 1971 study in the journal
Polar Record.

THE COMMONWEALTH
TRANS-ANTARCTIC
EXPEDITION
British explorer Vivian Fuchs succeeded where
Shackleton had failed by making the first
overland crossing of Antarctica in 1958, during
the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic
Expedition. Fuchs traveled 2,158 miles (3,473
km) across the continent from the Weddell
Sea to McMurdo Sound, visiting the South Pole
on the way, according to the New Zealand
government's Antarctica New Zealand
website. Fuchs was supported by New
Zealand explorer Edmund Hillary, whose team
placed supply drops from the Weddell Sea
inland to the South Pole for Fuchs to pick up
as he crossed.