Nansen's Fram expedition was an 1893–1896 attempt by the
Norwegian explorer
Fridtjof Nansen to reach the geographical
North Pole by harnessing the natural east–west current of the
Arctic Ocean. In the face of much discouragement from other polar explorers Nansen took his ship Fram to the
New Siberian Islands in the eastern Arctic Ocean, froze her into the
pack ice, and waited for the drift to carry her towards the pole. Impatient with the slow speed and erratic character of the drift, after 18 months Nansen and a chosen companion,
Hjalmar Johansen, left the ship with a team of dogs and sledges and made for the pole. They did not reach it, but they achieved a record
Farthest North latitude before a long retreat to
Franz Josef Land. Meanwhile Fram continued to drift westward, finally emerging in the North Atlantic Ocean. The ship was rarely threatened during her long imprisonment, and emerged unscathed after three years. The scientific observations carried out during this period contributed significantly to the new discipline of
oceanography, which subsequently became the main focus of Nansen's scientific work. Fram's drift and Nansen's sledge journey proved conclusively that there were no significant land masses between the
Eurasian continents and the North Pole, and confirmed the general character of the north polar region as a deep, ice-covered sea. (more...)
... that the 2012 election for mayor of
Gaborone,
Botswana, was contested when a councillor on the Gaborone City Council cut his ballot in half to vote twice?
1858 – Edgardo Mortara, a six-year-old Jewish boy, was seized by
papal authorities and taken to be raised as a Roman Catholic, sparking an international controversy.
1946 – Canada's largest onshore earthquake, measuring 7.3
Mw, struckVancouver Island, but only caused two casualties since there were no heavily populated areas near its
epicenter.
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