Antarctica Trivia | 60 facts about the icy continent

Antartica is one of the world’s continents, and it is without any doubt one very challenging place to visit, because of its really low temperature.

Let’s find out more about it!

1. Antarctica is Earth’s southernmost continent.
2. It contains the geographic South Pole.
3. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle.
4. It is surrounded by the Southern Ocean.
5. At 14,200,000 square kilometres (5,500,000 square miles), it is the fifth-largest continent.
6. It is nearly twice the size of Australia.
7. It is by far the least populated continent, with around 5,000 people in the summer and around 1,000 in the winter.
8. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 1.9 km (1.2 mi; 6,200 ft) in thickness, which extends to all but the McMurdo Dry Valleys and the northernmost reaches of the Antarctic Peninsula.
9. Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents.
10. Most of Antarctica is a polar desert, with annual precipitation of 200 mm (7.9 in) along the coast and far less inland.
11. Yet 80% of the world freshwater reserves are stored there, enough to raise global sea levels by about 60 metres (200 ft) if all of it were to melt.
12. The temperature in Antarctica has dropped to −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F) (or even −94.7 °C (−135.8 °F) as measured from space), though the average for the third quarter (the coldest part of the year) is −63 °C (−81 °F).
13. Organisms native to Antarctica include many types of algae, bacteria, fungi, plants, protista, and certain animals, such as mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades.
14. Vegetation, where it occurs, is tundra.
15. Antarctica was the last region on Earth to be discovered, likely unseen until 1820 when the Russian expedition of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev on Vostok and Mirny sighted the Fimbul ice shelf.
16. The continent remained largely neglected for the rest of the 19th century because of its harsh environment, lack of easily accessible resources, and isolation.
17. In January 1840, land at Antarctica was discovered for the first time, almost simultaneously, by the United States Exploring Expedition, under Lieut, Charles Wilkes, and a separate French expedition under Jules Dumont d’Urville.
18. The latter made a temporary landing. The Wilkes expedition—though it did not make a landing—remained long enough in the region to survey and map some 800 miles of the continent.
19. The first confirmed landing was by a team of Norwegians in 1895.
20. Antarctica is governed by parties to the Antarctic Treaty System.
21. Twelve countries signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, and thirty-eight have signed it since then.
22. The treaty prohibits military activities, mineral mining, nuclear explosions and nuclear waste disposal.
23. It supports scientific research and protects the continent’s ecology.
24. Between 1,000 and 5,000 people from many countries reside at research stations scattered across the continent.
25. The Dry Valleys of Antarctica are the driest place on Earth, with low humidity and almost no snow or ice cover.
26. On average, Antarctica is the windiest continent. Winds in some places of the continent can reach 200 mph (320 km/h).
27. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth.
28. The average thickness of Antarctic ice is about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers).
29. Including its islands and attached floating plains of ice, Antarctica has an area of about 5.4 million square miles (14 million square kilometers), about one-and-a-half times the size of the United States.
30. The largest of Antarctica’s ice shelves (floating tongues of ice) is the Ross Ice Shelf.
31. It measures some 197,000 square miles (510,680 square kilometers), or 3.7 percent of the total area of Antarctica.
32. Antarctica’s Gamburtsev Mountains are a range of steep peaks that rise to 9,000 feet (3,000 meters) and stretch 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) across the interior of the continent — and are completely buried under up to 15,750 feet (4,800 m) ice.
33. Also hiding under the Antarctic ice is an entire lake, the Lake Vostok.
34. Lake Vostok is a pristine freshwater lake buried beneath 2.5 miles (3.7 kilometers) of solid ice.
35. It is about the size of Lake Ontario, and is the largest of the more than 200 liquid lakes strewn around the continent under the ice.
36. The name Antarctica is the romanised version of the Greek compound word antarktiké feminine of antarktikós) meaning “opposite to the Arctic”, “opposite to the north”.
37. Aristotle wrote in his book Meteorology about an Antarctic region in c. 350 BC.
38. Marinus of Tyre reportedly used the name in his unpreserved world map from the 2nd century CE.
39. The Roman authors Hyginus and Apuleius (1–2 centuries CE) used for the South Pole the romanised Greek name polus antarcticus, from which derived the Old French pole antartike (modern pôle antarctique) attested in 1270, and from there the Middle English pol antartik in a 1391 technical treatise by Geoffrey Chaucer, A Treatise on the Astrolabe, referring to the modern Antarctic Pole
40. Matthias Ringmann called Terra Australis the Ora antarctica (antarctic land) in 1505
41. The long-imagined (but undiscovered) south polar continent was originally called Terra Australis, sometimes shortened to Australia as seen in a woodcut illustration titled “Sphere of the winds”, contained in an astrological textbook published in Frankfurt in 1545.
42. In the early 19th century, the colonial authorities in Sydney removed the Dutch name from New Holland.
43. Instead of inventing a new name to replace it, they took the name Australia from the south polar continent, leaving it nameless for some eighty years. During that period, geographers had to make do with clumsy phrases such as “the Antarctic Continent”.
44. They searched for a more poetic replacement, suggesting various names such as Ultima and Antipodea.
45. Eventually Antarctica was adopted as the continental name in the 1890s.
46. Actually, the first use of the name is attributed to the Scottish cartographer John George Bartholomew.
47. A rift that could rival the Grand Canyon was discovered beneath the Antarctic ice during an expedition conducted during 2009-2010. It is roughly 6 miles (10 kilometers) across and at least 62 miles (100 km) long, possibly far longer if it extends into the sea. It extends nearly a mile down (1.5 km) at its deepest.
48. A rift that could rival the Grand Canyon was discovered beneath the Antarctic ice during an expedition conducted during 2009-2010. It is roughly 6 miles (10 kilometers) across and at least 62 miles (100 km) long, possibly far longer if it extends into the sea. It extends nearly a mile down (1.5 km) at its deepest.
49. The Transantarctic Mountains divide the continent into East and West sections.
50. At 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) long, the Transantarctic range is one of the longest mountain ranges on Earth.
51. Antarctica is home to Mount Erebus
52. Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on the planet and home to Earth’s only long-lived lava lakes.
53. There are no indigenous populations of people on Antarctica.
54. In January 1979, Emile Marco Palma became the first child born on the southernmost continent. Argentina sent Palma’s pregnant mother to Antarctica in an effort to claim a portion of the continent.
55. British explorer and meteorologist Felicity Aston was the first person ever to ski across Antarctica powered only by human muscle. She traveled 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) in 59 days between late 2011 and early 2012.
56. In 2011, nearly 20,000 tourists visited the Antarctic Peninsula, according to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators.
57. Like the Arctic to the north, most of Antarctica is completely dark during the region’s winter months. Because of the Earth’s tilt, during the austral winter, the sun disappears below the horizon for the duration of winter, from the autumnal to the vernal equinox.
58. During the summer months, when the sun is constantly above the horizon, more sunlight reaches the surface at the South Pole than over a similar period of time at the equator, according to the CIA World Factbook.
59. Antarctica lies almost entirely within the Antarctic Circle, which is at about 66 degrees south latitude.
60. The most abundant land animal on Antarctica is not the penguin, but the tiny nematode worm.