The Nimrod Expedition was the first of three expeditions to the Antarctic led by Ernest Shackleton. Its ship, Nimrod, departed from British waters on 7 August 1907, fewer than six months after Shackleton’s first public announcement of his plans. Initially, the expedition's public profile was much lower than that of Scott’s Discovery Expedition six years earlier. However, nationwide interest was aroused by the news of its achievements. The South Pole was not attained, but the expedition’s southern march reached a farthest south latitude at 88°23′S, and it could thus claim that it had got within a hundred miles of the Pole. This was by far the longest southern polar journey to that date and a record convergence on either Pole. During the expedition a separate group led by Welsh-born Australian geology professor Edgeworth David reached the estimated location of the South Magnetic Pole, and the first ascent was made of Mount Erebus, the lofty Ross Island active volcano. The scientific team, which included the future Australian Antarctic Expedition leader Douglas Mawson, carried out extensive geological, zoological and meteorological work. Shackleton’s transport arrangements, based on Manchurian ponies, motor traction, and sledge dogs, were innovations which, despite limited success, were later copied by Scott for his ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition. (more...)

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January 9: Martyrs' Day in Panama

• 1839 – The French Academy of Sciences announced the Daguerreotype photographic process, named after its inventor, French artist and chemist Louis Daguerre.
• 1861 – The civilian ship Star of the West was fired upon as it attempted to send supplies and reinforcements to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor before the American Civil War.
• 1878 – Umberto I became King of Italy following the death of his father Victor Emmanuel II.
• 1916 – World War I: The last British troops evacuated from Gallipoli, as the Ottoman Empire prevailed over of a joint British and French operation to capture Istanbul at the Battle of Gallipoli.
• 1923 – The autogyro (pictured), a type of rotorcraft invented by civil engineer and pilot Juan de la Cierva, made its first successful flight at Cuatro Vientos Airfield in Madrid, Spain.
• 2005 – Mahmoud Abbas was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority to replace Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004.

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