Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 14, 2012



The Southern Cross Expedition, officially known as the British Antarctic Expedition 1898–1900, was the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, and the forerunner of the more celebrated journeys of Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. The brainchild of the Norwegian-born, half-British explorer and schoolmaster Carsten Borchgrevink, it was the first expedition to over-winter on the Antarctic mainland, the first to visit the Great Ice Barrier since James Clark Ross in 1839–43, and the first to successfully land on the Barrier's surface. It also pioneered the use of dogs and sledges in Antarctic travel. The expedition was privately financed by the British magazine publisher Sir George Newnes. Taken south in the ship Southern Cross in August 1898, Borchgrevink's party spent the winter of 1899 at Cape Adare, the north-west extremity of the Ross Sea. (more...)

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