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Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen
Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen (7 June 1890 – 3 June 1965) was a Norwegian aviation pioneer, military officer, polar explorer and businessman. Among his achievements, he is generally regarded a founder of the Royal Norwegian Air Force. Background Riiser-Larsen was born in Kristiania, Norway. In 1909, aged nineteen, he joined the Norwegian Naval Academy. In 1915 he became a 1st lieutenant in the newly formed Royal Norwegian Navy Air Service (RNoNAS). After World War I, he served as the acting head of the RNoNAS's factory until a more senior officer was appointed. In 1921, he joined the Aviation Council, then part of the Norwegian Ministry of Defence, as a secretary. This gave him the opportunity to study the fledgling military and civil aviation infrastructure for which the council was responsible. He also became a frequent pilot on the air routes used by the new aviation companies. Polar exploration Flying over the North Pole Riiser-Larsen's years of polar exploration began in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of Norway. Bouvet Island, located in the Subantarctic, is a dependency of Norway; it also lays claims to the Antarctic territories of Peter I Island and Queen Maud Land. The capital and largest city in Norway is Oslo. Norway has a total area of and had a population of 5,425,270 in January 2022. The country shares a long eastern border with Sweden at a length of . It is bordered by Finland and Russia to the northeast and the Skagerrak strait to the south, on the other side of which are Denmark and the United Kingdom. Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. The maritime influence dominates Norway's climate, with mild lowland temperatures on the se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Umberto Nobile
Umberto Nobile (; 21 January 1885 – 30 July 1978) was an Italian aviator, aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships in the years between the two World Wars. He is primarily remembered for designing and piloting the airship ''Norge'', which may have been the first aircraft to reach the North Pole, and which was indisputably the first to fly across the polar ice cap from Europe to America. Nobile also designed and flew the ''Italia,'' a second polar airship; this second expedition ended in a deadly crash and provoked an international rescue effort. Early career Umberto Nobile was born in Lauro, in the southern Italian province of Avellino, into a family of small landowners. His father Vincenzo, a civil servant, belonged to the cadet branch of an aristocratic family that had been stripped of its titles after the Italian unification over their continuing loyalty to the deposed Bourbons, and which had adopted the Nob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter I Island
Peter I Island ( no, Peter I Øy) is an uninhabited volcanic island in the Bellingshausen Sea, from continental Antarctica. It is claimed as a dependency of Norway and, along with Bouvet Island and Queen Maud Land, composes one of the three Norwegian dependent territories in the Antarctic and Subantarctic. The island measures approximately , with an area of ; its highest point is the ultra-prominent, Lars Christensen Peak. Nearly all the island is covered by a glacier, and it is surrounded most of the year by pack ice, making it inaccessible during these times. There is little vertebrate animal life on the island, apart from some seabirds and seals. The island was first sighted by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen on 21 January 1821 and was named for Peter I of Russia. Not until 2 February 1929 did anyone set foot on the island, when Nils Larsen and Ola Olstad's Second ''Norvegia'' Expedition, financed by Lars Christensen, was successful. They claimed it for Norway, which an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bouvet Island
Bouvet Island ( ; or ''Bouvetøyen'') is an island claimed by Norway, and declared an uninhabited protected nature reserve. It is a subantarctic volcanic island, situated in the South Atlantic Ocean at the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, making it the world's most remote island. It is not part of the southern region covered by the Antarctic Treaty System. The island lies north of the Princess Astrid Coast of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, east of the South Sandwich Islands, south of Gough Island, and south-southwest of the coast of South Africa. It has an area of , 93 percent of which is covered by a glacier. The centre of the island is the ice-filled crater of an inactive volcano. Some skerries and one smaller island, Larsøya, lie along its coast. Nyrøysa, created by a rock slide in the late 1950s, is the only easy place to land and is the location of a weather station. The island was first spotted on 1 January 1739 by the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southern Ocean
The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-smallest of the five principal oceanic divisions: smaller than the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans but larger than the Arctic Ocean. Over the past 30 years, the Southern Ocean has been subject to rapid climate change, which has led to changes in the marine ecosystem. By way of his voyages in the 1770s, James Cook proved that waters encompassed the southern latitudes of the globe. Since then, geographers have disagreed on the Southern Ocean's northern boundary or even existence, considering the waters as various parts of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans, instead. However, according to Commodore John Leech of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), recent oceanographic research has discovered the importance of Southern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lars Christensen
Lars Christensen (6 April 1884 – 10 December 1965) was a Norwegian shipowner and whaling magnate. He was also a philanthropist with a keen interest in the exploration of Antarctica. Career Lars Christensen was born at Sandar in Vestfold, Norway. Born into a wealthy family, Christensen inherited his whaling fleet from his father, Christen Christensen. After completing middle school in 1899, he received training in Germany and at Newcastle followed by trade college in Kristiania (now Oslo). He started his career as a ship owner in 1906. He ventured into the whaling industry in 1909, and directed several companies, including Framnæs Mekaniske Værksted, AS Thor Dahl, AS Odd, AS Ørnen, AS Thorsholm and Bryde og Dahls Hvalfangstselskap. Christensen was Danish consul in Sandefjord from 1909. In 1910 Lars Christensen had married Ingrid Dahl (1891–1976), daughter of wholesale merchant and ship owner Thor Dahl (1862–1920). He would later assume control of large part of his fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whaling
Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16th century, it had risen to be the principal industry in the Basque coastal regions of Spain and France. The industry spread throughout the world, and became increasingly profitable in terms of trade and resources. Some regions of the world's oceans, along the animals' migration routes, had a particularly dense whale population, and became the targets for large concentrations of whaling ships, and the industry continued to grow well into the 20th century. The depletion of some whale species to near extinction led to the banning of whaling in many countries by 1969, and to an international cessation of whaling as an industry in the late 1980s. The earliest known forms of whaling date to at least 3000 BC. Coasta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antarctic
The Antarctic ( or , American English also or ; commonly ) is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau and other island territories located on the Antarctic Plate or south of the Antarctic Convergence. The Antarctic region includes the ice shelves, waters, and all the island territories in the Southern Ocean situated south of the Antarctic Convergence, a zone approximately wide varying in latitude seasonally. The region covers some 20 percent of the Southern Hemisphere, of which 5.5 percent (14 million km2) is the surface area of the Antarctica continent itself. All of the land and ice shelves south of 60°S latitude are administered under the Antarctic Treaty System. Biogeographically, the Antarctic realm is one of eight biogeographic realms of Earth's land surface. Geography As defined by the Antarctic Treaty System, the Antarctic r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Evelyn Byrd
Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957) was an American naval officer and explorer. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for valor given by the United States, and was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. Aircraft flights in which he served as a navigator and expedition leader crossed the Atlantic Ocean, a segment of the Arctic Ocean, and a segment of the Antarctic Plateau. Byrd said that his expeditions had been the first to reach both the North Pole and the South Pole by air. His belief to have reached the North Pole is disputed. He is also known for discovering Mount Sidley, the largest dormant volcano in Antarctica. Family Ancestry Byrd was born in Winchester, Virginia, the son of Esther Bolling (Flood) and Richard Evelyn Byrd Sr. He was a descendant of one of the First Families of Virginia. His ancestors include planter John Rolfe and his wife Pocahontas, William Byrd II of Westover P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Peary
Robert Edwin Peary Sr. (; May 6, 1856 – February 20, 1920) was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for, in April 1909, leading an expedition that claimed to be the first to have reached the geographic North Pole. Explorer Matthew Henson, part of the expedition, is thought to have reached what they believed to be the North Pole narrowly before Peary. Peary was born in Cresson, Pennsylvania, but, following his father's death at a young age, was raised in Portland, Maine. He attended Bowdoin College, then joined the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey as a draftsman. He enlisted in the navy in 1881 as a civil engineer. In 1885, he was made chief of surveying for the Nicaragua Canal, which was never built. He visited the Arctic for the first time in 1886, making an unsuccessful attempt to cross Greenland by dogsled. In the Peary expedition to Green ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Cook
Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) was an American explorer, physician, and ethnographer who claimed to have reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. That was nearly a year before Robert Peary, who similarly claimed to have reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909. Both men's accounts have been disputed ever since. His expedition was the first, and the only one with a United States national, to find a previously unknown, to people of European descent, North American Arctic island, Meighen Island. In December 1909, after reviewing Cook's limited records, a commission of the University of Copenhagen ruled his claim unproven. In 1911, Cook published a memoir of his expedition that continued his claim. His account of reaching the summit of Denali (Mount McKinley) in Alaska has also been discredited. Biography Cook was born in Hortonville, New York, in Sullivan County. (His birthplace is sometimes listed as Callicoon or Delaware, both also in Sullivan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teller, Alaska
Teller ( ik, Tala or ) is a city in the Nome Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 229, a decrease from 268 in 2000. It is situated on the southern half of the spit called ''Nuuk'' in Inupiaq, which separates Port Clarence Bay (see also Port Clarence, Alaska) and Grantley Harbor, at the outlet of the Imuruk Basin. History The Inupiat had a fishing camp called ''Nuuk'' south of Teller in the early 19th century. The 1825-28 Beechey expedition found three camps with a total of some 400 inhabitants and a winter camp site with burial grounds in a roughly radius around the later site of Teller on September 1, 1827. An expedition from the Western Union telegraph spent the winter at the present site of Teller in 1866 and 1867; they called it ''Libbyville'' or ''Libby Station''. When the United States Government introduced reindeer herding in Alaska, the Teller Reindeer Station operated from 1892 to 1900 at a nearby site. The station was name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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