Although the Antarctic ice pack and some offshore islands had been sighted and even landed upon briefly as early as the 1820s, it was not until an eccentric Anglo-Norwegian explorer, Carsten F. Borchgrevink, went ashore in 1895 that a human being set foot on the Antarctic continent. Borchgrevink, snubbed by the British establishment, had stolen a march on several planned competing expeditions from Germany and Scandinavia. Borchgrevink returned to...