South Pole First Reached
Roald Amundsen's expedition became the first to reach the geographic South Pole
December 14, 1911
The Race to the Bottom of the World
On December 14, 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and four companions became the first people to reach the South Pole, planting the Norwegian flag at 90 degrees south latitude after a 53-day trek across the Antarctic ice sheet. A British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott reached the same spot 34 days later, on January 17, 1912 — only to find Amundsen's flag and a letter left behind for them. The two expeditions had been racing each other, and the outcome was one of history's most heartbreaking tales of exploration. Scott and all four of his companions died on the return journey, trapped by blizzards just 11 miles from a supply depot.
Two Very Different Strategies
Amundsen's success and Scott's tragedy were not simply a matter of luck. They reflected very different approaches to polar exploration. Amundsen used sled dogs expertly — he had spent time learning from the Inuit people of the Arctic — and planned his route with meticulous precision, establishing food depots at regular intervals. He dressed his team in Inuit-style furs and moved fast. Scott relied more on motor sledges and ponies, both of which failed in the extreme cold, and fell back on man-hauling — pulling the heavy sledges themselves. Scott's team was also handling survey instruments and collecting rock samples for science, adding to their load and slowing their pace.
A Continent for Science
The conquest of the South Pole closed the era of great geographic unknowns on Earth's surface. Antarctica has since become a continent dedicated to science under the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, which suspended territorial claims and opened the continent to research by all nations. Today, dozens of research stations operate year-round on the continent, studying climate history locked in ancient ice cores, astronomical phenomena, and the earth's geomagnetic field. Amundsen's route is still followed by modern expeditions, and Scott's story remains one of the most moving tales of courage and tragedy in the history of exploration. You can see exactly how long ago these events occurred using the age calculator.