What a great day for Antarctic news: The last supply ship in dumped off about 16,000 condoms to make it through the winter. Good on ya, mates, as my Kiwi colleagues say. The first part of THE ENTIRE EARTH AND SKY is a "gazetteer" of Antarctic facts. And then there are facts strewn around the book. How about this one: 46,800 cans of beer are ordered each year for Scott Base, the New Zealand base in the Ross Sea. (Wine, you ask? 2,268 bottles.) At any rate, I plan to include fact lists each week over the austral winter, in honor of our colleagues toughing it out in the 24-hour darkness of the deep south. While some might call such lists random, there is also an argument that all of these ideas were carefully selected from the tens of millions floating around out there -- do you see the link?
1) Antarctica is the only continent where people compete on an annual basis for the chance to reside and work there.
2) Antarctica was once the center of the Gondwana supercontinent, which included Africa, India, South America, and Australia.
3) 98 percent of the continent is covered by ice; with a volume of 30 million cubic kilometres.
4) The weight of the ice has depressed continental bedrock by 600 meters.
5) Antarctica contains 70 percent of the Earth's fresh water in the form of ice.
6) When winter darkness descends, the community shrinks to 1,000.
7) Ice crept across Antarctica about 40 million years ago and has remained largely intact since then.
8) On Nov. 29, 1929, Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd of the U.S. Navy became first to fly over the South Pole.
9) At the South Pole, the ice is 2.8 kilometers thick.
10) People who live and work at the South Pole are called "polies."
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