Antarctica: 25 Things You Didn’t Know (Video)

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Irvine/Wikimedia Commons

In 1958, scientists made a startling discovery under the ice in Antarctica: mountains! The Gamburstev Mountains were discovered when scientists trekking across ice two miles thick suddenly found themselves on thin ice. Beneath the ice they found a mountain range with peaks 9,000 feet high, stretching for 750 miles.

Photo:  McMurdo Webcam/NASA

Believe it or not, if you need some quick cash at the McMurdo Station – the largest scientific research station on the continent – you’re in luck because Wells Fargo installed two ATMs there in 1998. McMurdo is essentially a small town, with coffee shops, a general store, a post office, etc. This closed micro-economy needs cold hard cash to function properly. Only one of the two machines is operable at any given time, and the trustworthy crew at McMurdo has been trained to repair the machines – swapping parts back and forth if need be.

Photo: National Science Foundation/Peter Rejcek/Wikimedia Commons

This nightmare fuel looks like a deleted scene from The Shining, but is actually caused by ferrous hydroxide, an iron-containing salt. The blood-red salt sludge is basically leaking out of a glacier after a process scientists think took millions of years. Researchers and visitors refer to this horror show as “Blood Falls.”

Photo: Tasteofcrayons/Wikimedia Commons

Insect lovers living in Antarctica only have one species to observe: Belgica antarctica. This wingless fly is also the continent’s largest terrestrial animal at just 2-6 millimeters long. It’s also quite a trooper: as a larva, it survives the total freezing of its bodily fluids.

Video: YouTube

In 2013, heavy metal legends Metallica became the first band to play in Antarctica when they performed for a crowd of 120 in a protective dome on the continent. The name of the show? “Freeze ‘Em All,” of course! The crowd had to wear headphones during the show in order to protect the local wildlife from the damaging amplification.

Photo: William D. Tribble, LTJG/Wikimedia Commons

One of the more fantastical things happening at the bottom of our planet is an active volcano called Mount Erebus that literally spews crystals. These unusually large minerals are called anorthoclase, which is apparently a type of feldspar (if that helps clarify things for you). Scientists with the United States Antarctic Program say these volcanic crystals are “not well understood” but Erebus has been spewing them on the regular since the 1970s.

Photo: Andrew Shiva/Wikipedia/CC-BY-SA-4.0

The first person ever born in Antarctica was an Argentinian man named Emilio Marcos Palma. Near the end of her pregnancy in 1978, Marcos’s mother was hauled to the Esperanza Base in Antarctica so the Argentinian government could use him as a sort of human chess piece to claim authority over a tip of the Antarctic peninsula (Marcos’s father was in the military and in charge of the base). His birth didn’t really impact diplomatic relations, but Marcos will always have an icebreaker at cocktail parties. Several more kiddos were born on Antarctica in the next few years – the latest in 1985 – but Marcos was the first.

Photo: Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Want to work in Antarctica? Then you better go ahead and get your wisdom teeth and appendix yanked out! That’s how remote the place is: there is no way to evacuate you to get you the surgical care you need in case of appendicitis or wisdom teeth pain. And you thought a drug test was intrusive…

Photo: Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons/ Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

You wouldn’t think a place that is largely covered in snow and ice would be dry, would you? But that’s the case with Antarctica: it’s the driest place on planet Earth. In fact, it’s actually classified as a cold desert.

Photo: 23am.com/Wikimedia Commons/ Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Who first spotted Antarctica is still being debated by historians, but most generally agree that human eyes didn’t spot the continent until 1820 or so. British, Russian, and US ships were all in the area around that time. It speaks volumes about how inhospitable Antarctica is that no one stepped foot on the continent until 1895!

Photo: Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons/ Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Talk about a dry spell: there are dry valleys in Antarctica that haven’t experienced precipitation for 2 million years! Sure, 98% of the continent is covered in ice, but this is the driest place on the planet after all. Antarctica is still intensely cold despite the low precipitation, with howling winds contributing to the overall discomfort.

Photo: Tony Alter/flickr/CC-BY 2.0

From 1898 until 1994 husky dogs pulled sleds in Antarctica on expeditions all across the continent. That all stopped in 1994 in pursuit of what the New York Times called “ecological purity.” The thinking was that the dogs, as a species not native to the area, would introduce previously unknown viruses to native species populations.

Photo: Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons/ Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

You wouldn’t think a place that is largely covered in snow and ice would be dry, would you? But that’s the case with Antarctica: it’s the driest place on planet Earth. In fact, it’s actually classified as a cold desert.