In Antarctica there's a Historic Monument that no-one can visit, and no-one really knows where it is.
Image source: Olav Bjaaland (1873–1961) - Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation: De Aarde en haar Volken, Jaargang 1913.
The tent - which they called Polheim (their home at the Pole) - was erected by the Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen on its arrival on 14 December 1911. It is buried beneath the snow and ice in the vicinity of the Pole. It has been designated a Historic Site or Monument (HSM 80), following a proposal by Norway to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting.
It lay unvisited for decades after Captain Scott left for the return journey, and was covered with drifting snow, and eventually ice... It will now stay undisturbed for ever.
When he arrived at the Pole, he found that in the tent were:
3 half bags of reindeer containing a miscellaneous assortment of mits [sic] and sleeping socks, very various in description, a sextant, a Norwegian artificial horizon and a hypsometer without boiling-point thermometers, a sextant and hypsometer of English make.
These had been used to confirm that the Pole had been reached...
The precise location of the tent is unknown, but based on calculations of the rate of movement of the ice and the accumulation of snow, it is believed, as of 2010, to lie between 1.8 and 2.5 km (1.1 and 1.6 mi) from the Pole at a depth of 17 m (56 ft) below the existing surface.
Some information via Wikipedia
This period fascinates me, and I am not alone in that.
I have also previously used this Google Doodle as an example of an image to query... there are several issues with it... can you spot them?
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