Early Plane Found Frozen

Australian explorers have discovered one of the world’s earliest airplanes in Antarctica. The monoplane was built in Britain only eight years after the Wright brothers’ first flight!

Australian explorer Douglas Mawson took the plane to Antarctica in 1911 with the hope of staging the first human flight over the Antarctic ice cap. The plane was damaged, however, and Mawson used it as an “air tractor” until its engine stopped working in 1914. The plane has been buried in ice at Cape Denison ever since.

Conservationists and scientists have searched for the plane, which was last seen almost totally buried in ice in 1975. The combination of historically low tides and an unprecedented melting of the ice led to the lucky discovery.

The existence of Antarctica was not confirmed until the early 1820s. In 1840, Antarctica was established as a continent, rather than a group of islands. While some countries have made territorial claims, the Antarctic Treaty neither denies nor gives recognition to those existing claims. It was signed in 1959 and went into effect in 1961.

Antarctica is almost 1.5 times the size of the United States. It is the fifth largest continent in area, after Asia, Africa, North America and South America. About 98 percent of the continent is covered by thick ice. Although Antarctica is considered a desert—because it receives only 8 inches of rainfall annually along the coast—it is, on average, the coldest, driest and windiest continent.

Although there are no indigenous inhabitants on the continent, there are 25 airports—all with unpaved runways. Following World War II, there was an increase in scientific research on Antarctica. Since then, a number of countries have set up a range of workstations to support scientific research on the continent. The runways, along with 53 heliports, allow all of the scientists and researchers to access the workstations.