Antibiotics

By 1000 BC the Chinese had recognized the antibiotic effect of certain fermented products. For instance they used moldy soybean curds to treat boils and similar skin infections. Around the same time the Central American Indians were treating infected wounds with fungi.

The discovery of the first element that had the power of dissolving bacteria was an accident. In 1928, while working on influenza virus, Scottish research scientist Alexander Fleming observed that mold had developed accidentally on a glass plate he had left in the sink and that the mold had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He was inspired to further experiment and he found that a mold culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He named the active substance penicillin.

Fleming's initial work was reported in 1929 in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, but it would remain in relative obscurity for a decade.

Though Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, he never tried to make an antibiotic out of it. It was not until a decade later that a man named Howard Florey found Fleming's little-known paper and realized the mold's potential.

World War II brought penicillin to the fore when it saved the lives of countless soldiers who would have died from their wounds in previous wars.

In a 1945 interview with The New York Times, Alexander Fleming warned that misuse of penicillin could result in selection for resistant bacteria. True to this prediction, resistance began to emerge within ten years.

Fleming never made any money from his discovery. He had no wish to do so.

Albert Schatz, a graduate student, first isolated Streptomycin, a bacterial antibiotic produced by the soil actinomycete. in the laboratory of Dr. Selman Abraham Waksman at Rutgers University, New Jersey on October 19, 1943. The antibiotic was the first effective treatment which could be used against tuberculosis. Previously there had been no effective drug for this major killing disease, but by its use tuberculosis was largely eradicated in developed countries by the 1970s.

Waksman and two associates testing Streptomycin

Dr. Waksman and his laboratory staff discovered several antibiotics, including actinomycin, clavacin, streptothricin, streptomycin, grisein, neomycin, fradicin, candicidin, and candidin. It was Waksman who was the first to apply the term "antibiotic".

Around one in 16 people in Britain are prescribed antibiotics each year.

Over 80% of antibiotics used in the United States are used on farm animals.

Bacteria have the ability to develop resistance following repeated doses of antibiotics and since the turn of the century it has become noticeable that bacterial infections are showing increasing resistance to the drugs.

One example is a bacteria that causes pneumonia in the elderly and ear infections in children. The failing success rate of antibiotics for treating this is resulting in the recommendation of the wider use of vaccines to protect young children and the elderly from catching the disease. In another instance a research program discovered that the bacteria that commonly causes urinary tract infections were resistant in nearly one third of the cases to antibiotic treatments. The consequence of this is that there is constant pressure for more advanced antibiotics to be developed to overcome these increasingly resistant infections.

Poster from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "Get Smart" campaign

No new families of antibiotics had been developed since 1987. This was until 2015 when it was announced a new super antibiotic capable of wiping out everything from MRSA to TB had been found lurking in soil. The new drug, teixobactin, was discovered after American, British and German scientists went back to basics and studied bacteria from a grassy field in Maine.

Some leaf cutter ants grow antibiotics on their backs so that when their nests get infected with microbes they roll on it to kill bacteria.  The discovery has applications regarding the search for new antibiotics that can be used in humans.

Phages (a group of viruses) were supposed to be studied as antibacterial agents in human medicine, but were cut short by the discovery of penicillin shortly after. With today's increasingly drug-resistant bacteria, phages are being considered once again.

Anti-semitism

A Semite is a member of any of the peoples said to be descended from Shem, who was one of Noah's sons, or speaking a Semitic language. Antisemitism is defined as the hatred of Semites, especially Jews or of their interest. It is a form of racism and has been practiced since the persecution of the Hebrews by the ancient Egyptians before the Exodus.

The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 led to the dispersal of the Jews, many settling in Europe and throughout the Roman Empire.

In the 4th century, Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire, which reinforced existing prejudice against Jews who refused to convert. Anti-Semitism increased in the Middle Ages because of the Crusades and later the Spanish Inquisition. Also Christians were taught that the Jews killed Jesus Christ.

On December 30, 1066, a Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, which was at that time in Muslim-ruled al-Andalus, assassinated the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred most of the city's Jewish population. More than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering an estimated 4,000 persons, fell in one day.

The 1066 Granada Massacre

In 1189 King Richard I was to be crowned King of England. He forbade any Jews to make an appearance at his coronation, but some Jewish leaders showed up anyway to present gifts for the new king. Richard's courtiers stripped and flogged the Jews, then flung them out of court. The people of London joined in to persecute the Jews, and a massacre began. Many Jews were beaten to death, robbed, and burnt alive. At least one was forcibly baptized. Some sought sanctuary in the Tower of London, and others managed to escape half-dead. Later, when Richard wrote of this incident, he called the massacre a "holocaustum".

A hundred years later, life for Jews in England had not improved. To finance his war to conquer Wales, Edward I taxed the Jewish moneylenders, legally an occupation Christians were not allowed to undertake. For years the English King taxed them heavily, and the cost of Edward's ambitions soon drained the money-lenders dry and when they got into debt the state accused them of disloyalty. Anti-Semitic feeling grew, until the King decreed the Jews a threat to the country and restricted their movements and activities. Edward decreed that all Jews must wear a yellow patch (see below) in the shape of a star attached to their outer clothing to identify them in public.

In the course of King Edward's persecution of the Jews, he arrested all the heads of Jewish households. The authorities took over 300 of them to the Tower of London and executed them, while killing others in their homes. Finally, 1290 , the King ordered the expulsion of all 16,000 Jews from England. Edward's wife, Queen Eleanor, died months after their expulsion.

King Louis IX of France ordered on June 19, 1269 all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver.

Strasbourg, part of the Holy Roman Empire, was the scene of the first mass holocaust of Jews in Europe on February 14, 1349. Collectively accused of causing the Black Death by poisoning the local water supplies, 2,000 men, women and children were herded into a circle and burnt alive.

Pogrom of Strasbourg by Emile Schweitzer

As part of the Spanish Inquisition, close to 200,000 Jews, who refused to be baptized, were driven out of Spain. This was inspired by the king and queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella who interpreted the fall of Granada as a sign that Christ’s second coming was imminent; the removal of the Jews being required before Jesus returned. The royal pair signed an edit banishing all Jews unwilling to receive baptism on March 31, 1492. Their departure brought great economic distress to Spain for in turning out their most talented and industrious citizens, Spain became speedily crippled economically.

From the 16th century Jews were forced by law in many cities to live in a separate area, or ghetto. Ghettos continued into the 20th century, and were often seen as a prison, but they have also been regarded by some as a safeguard to maintaining religious identity.

Things did not improve in the early days of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, advocated setting synagogues on fire and destroying Jewish homes, so that these "envenomed worms" would be forced into labor or expelled "for all time". 

Small signs of improvement began at the end of the 16th century. In 1570 At the Council of Trent the Catholic Church absolved Jews of responsibility for Jesus’ death. In 1579 the Union of Utrecht united the northern provinces of the Netherlands, which meant the city of Amsterdam was able to offer religious toleration. As a consequence there was an influx of Jewish refugee merchants who provided the city with an unrivaled access to the world’s most profitable trading networks.

In 1655 the deeply religious English Protector, Oliver Cromwell, allowed all Jews to return to England after being banished for 350 years. He believed that if they returned to Britain, a country where now the purest form of Christianity exists, the Jews would convert to Christianity and this would bring about the Second Coming of Christ.

In 1758 the first group of Jews to emigrate to America arrived in Newport, Rhode Island. 15 families mainly from Portugal and Spain had decided to establish a congregation there.

Early 19th-century liberal thought improved the position of Jews in European society. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example, they were allowed to own land, and following the French Revolution (1789–99) the ‘rights of man’ were extended to French Jews. The Enlightenment in 18th-century France encouraged the assimilation of Jews but expected them to give up the practice of their religion.

The rise of 19th-century nationalism and unscientific theories of race instigated new resentments, and the term ‘anti-Semitism’ was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr. Literally it means prejudice against Semitic people, (but in practice it has been directed only against Jews). Anti-Semitism became strong in Austria, France and Germany, and from 1881 pogroms in Poland and Russia caused refugees to flee to the USA.

Mark Twain wrote an essay entitled Concerning the Jews. He claimed Jews didn't do their part of fighting in America's military. In response, the War Department revealed that Jewish Americans were represented in the military in a larger percentage than their share of the population.

Henry Ford used his personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, to argue that "the Jew" had caused World War I. He placed these newspapers in every new Model T automobile.

The German Army conducted a "Jewish Census" of their soldiers during World War I, designed to prove that Jews were shirking military service. It ended up proving the opposite, so the results were never published.

The recently elected Nazis under Julius Streicher organized a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany on April 1, 1933, ushering in a series of anti-Semitic acts. Fascism and the Nazi Party's application of racial theories led to organized persecution and the genocide of the Holocaust.

In 1935 the Nazis held a competition in which baby pictures were sent in and the "most beautiful Aryan baby" was chosen by Joseph Goebbels. The baby they picked, and used in propaganda for years, was actually Jewish; the photo had been sent in to make the Nazi party look ridiculous.

On November 9, 1938, the Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath died from gunshot wounds by Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate Kristallnacht — the Night of Broken Glass. During the pogrom SA paramilitary forces and German civilians destroyed and ransacked Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues in Germany and Austria, resulting in at least 90 deaths and the deportation of around 30,000 others to concentration camps.

Photograph of the smashed interior of the Berlin synagogue 

When the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow stars during World War II, it only increased sympathy for them. People began tipping hats to Jews as a symbol of anti-German resistance.

The Nazis once came up with a plan to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. The plan was postponed after the Germans failed to defeat the British in the Battle of Britain later in 1940 and was permanently shelved in 1942 with the commencement of the extermination of European Jewry.

Between 1933-45 about 6 million Jews died in concentration camps and in local extermination pogroms, such as the siege of the Warsaw ghetto. In the Soviet Union, Jews had their religion stamped on their passports and were not allowed to leave; synagogues were shut down, and the use of Hebrew forbidden.

After World War II, the creation of Israel in 1948 provoked Palestinian anti-Zionism, backed by the Arab world.

In Eastern Europe, as well as in Islamic nations, anti-Semitism exists and is promoted by neo-fascist groups. In Western countries Anti-Semitism is still fostered by extreme right-wing groups, such as the National Front and BNP in the UK, the National Rally in France, and the neo-Nazis in, particularly, the USA and Germany.

Sources Wikipedia, Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2011. Helicon Publishing is division of RM.

Anthrax

Anthrax is a deadly disease of cattle. It is highly contagious, can be passed to man, and can infect animals in fields from which cattle have been excluded for years.

Anthrax may have been the cause of the biblical fifth plague of Egypt detailed in the Old Testament Book of Exodus; a widespread disease which affected all the Egyptian livestock but none of the Hebrews.

In the 17th century, some 60,000 cattle died in a European pandemic known as the Black Bane, thought to have been anthrax.

In 1876 Robert Koch, who was a country doctor in Wollstein, a small town in eastern Germany, identified the bacterium, which causes anthrax. He became interested in the deadly disease and worked on it in a room in his house, using a microscope given to him by his wife as a 28th birthday present.

Koch's discovery was a remarkable breakthrough as it was the first time it had been proved that infectious diseases are caused by micro-organisms such as bacteria. He developed methods to purify the bacillus from blood samples and grow pure cultures and his first successful treatment was a milkmaid who was dying from anthrax.

The Sverdlovsk anthrax leak, which occurred on April 2, 1979, was a tragic accident that resulted in the release of anthrax spores from a Soviet military microbiology facility near the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg, Russia). This incident caused a significant public health crisis. The exact number of victims remains a topic of debate. Estimates range from 68 to 100 fatalities.

The 2001 anthrax attacks occurred within the United States beginning with five letters containing anthrax spores mailed to various media outlets on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 attacks. Over the course of several weeks a number of other letters were mailed killing 5 people and infecting 17 others. A reward for information totaling $2.5 million was offered by the FBI, U.S. Postal Service and ADVO, Inc.

Animals acquire anthrax from drinking water draining from contaminated soil, in which the organism may live for years; from eating infected carcasses and feedstuffs; and from the bites of bloodsucking insects. 

For animals the disease, sometimes manifested by staggering, bloody discharge, convulsions, and suffocation, may be fatal almost immediately in acute cases and within three to five days in subacute cases. Death is caused by toxemia. 

Although a rare disease, human anthrax, when it does occur, is most common in Africa and central and southern Asia with a death rate of about 25 percent. 

Globally, at least 2,000 cases of human anthrax occur a year with about two cases a year in the United States. Skin infections represent more than 95% of cases. 

Skin lesion from anthrax

A single gallon of anthrax, if distributed properly, is all it would take to kill everyone on this planet.

Hyenas can consume prey carrying anthrax without contracting the disease itself.

Household bleach is the recommended chemical to decontaminate people exposed to the anthrax virus, by the U.S. F.D.A.

Sources Funk & Wagnells Encyclopedia,  greatfacts.com

Saint Anthony the Great

Anthony or Antony the Great or Anthony of the Desert is known as the Father of All Monks. He was born on c January 12,  251 in Coma, a village near Heracleopolis Magna in Upper Egypt.

Painting of Saint Anthony by Piero di Cosimo, c. 1480

Anthony lost his parents at the age of about 20 leaving him with the care of his unmarried sister. Shortly thereafter, he decided to follow the exhortation of Jesus in Matthew 19: 21, which reads, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven."

His first action was to complete his sister's education, then Anthony sold the house, furniture, and hundred acres of land which he processed, giving the proceeds to the poor. Anthony then left to live an ascetic life.

Anthony lived for 13 years in the alkaline Nitrian Desert on the edge of the Western Desert about 95 km (59 mi) west of Alexandria. 

At the age of thirty-five, Anthony determined to withdraw from the habitations of men and retire in absolute solitude. He moved into an old abandoned Roman fort on a mountain by the Nile called Pispifor. Anthony barricaded the entrance and food was thrown to him over the wall.

San Antonio Abad, portrait by Francisco de Zurbarán in 1664

Admirers finally broke into the fort. Anthony then miraculously cured several sick people and consented to give spiritual counsel to some souls. His special recommendation to them was to base their rule of life on the Gospel. Little by little so many disciples came that he was able to found two monasteries, one on the right bank of the Nile at Pispir, the other on the left bank beside Arsinoe. For five or six years Anthony devoted himself to the instruction and organization of the great body of monks that had grown up around him; 

Anthony appeared for a few days at Alexandra in 311, to fight the Arian heresy and to comfort the victims of Maximinus' persecution. 

Anthony spent the last forty-five years of his life in the inner desert that lay between the Nile and the Red Sea, near the shore of which he fixed his abode on a mountain where still stands the monastery that bears his name, Der Mar Antonios. 

Before his death, Anthony had the great joy of seeing his sister once more. She also had grown old in a search for perfection and directed a community of dedicated virgins. 

Filled with serenity, St Anthony of the Desert ended his existence on January 17, 356, at the age of 105 in a cave on Mount Colzin. 

Most of what is known about Anthony comes from the Life of Anthony. Written in Greek around 360 by Athanasius of Alexandria, it became something of a best seller in its day and played an important role in the spreading of the ascetic ideal in Eastern and Western Christianity and had an immense influence both an art and hagiography.

His feast day is celebrated on January 17 among the Orthodox and Catholic churches.

Source The Lives of the Saints by Omer Englebert

Susan B. Anthony

EARLY LIFE

Susan Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts.

Raised by a strict Quaker father, Susan Anthony was not allowed toys or amusements as a child as he claimed that they would distract the soul from the "inner light."

A precocious child, she learned to read and write at the age of three.

Susan B. Anthony's father withdrew her from a school that would not allow her to learn long division as boys did.

When Anthony was six years old, her family moved to Battenville, New York, where her father managed a large cotton mill.

Susan B. Anthony didn't actually have a middle name. There was a craze for middle initials at the time, so she chose "B" because her namesake aunt had married a man named Brownell.

TEACHING CAREER

Before she was sixteen, Anthony started to teach, taking small jobs near her home. After her family was financially ruined during an economic downturn known as the Panic of 1837, the family moved to Hardscrabble (later called Center Falls), New York. 

Anthony left home to teach and to help pay off her father’s debts. She taught first at Eunice Kenyon’s Friends’ Seminary in New Rochelle, New York and then at the Canajoharie Academy in 1846. There, she rose to become headmistress of the Female Department.

Headmistress Susan B. Anthony in 1848 at age 28

Away from Quaker influences for the first time in her life, Anthony began to replace her plain clothing with more stylish dresses, and she stopped using "thee" and other forms of speech traditionally used by Quakers.

By this time, Anthony's family had moved to a farm on the outskirts of Rochester, New York, purchased partly with the inheritance of Anthony's mother. 

When the Canajoharie Academy closed in 1849 Anthony took up her father’s offer to come to Rochester and run the farm while he built up his insurance business. 

SOCIAL ACTIVISM

In her youth, Anthony was very self-conscious of her appearance and speaking abilities. She long resisted public speaking for fear she would not be sufficiently eloquent.

Anthony took part in absolutist and temperance movements from an early age. At the age of 16, Susan collected two boxes of petitions opposing slavery, in response to the gag rule prohibiting such petitions in the House of Representatives.

From the mid 1850s she devoted herself totally to the cause of equal rights for women. Her Quaker background, where unlike most other denominations both men and women were allowed to speak at services, was influential on her beliefs.

She founded the National Woman Suffrage Association along with Elizabeth Stanton on May 15, 1869.

Susan Antony and Elizabeth Stanton

On November 18, 1872, Anthony was arrested by a U.S. Deputy Marshal for voting illegally in the 1872 Presidential Election thirteen days earlier. Found guilty she received a $100 fine, but not imprisonment; true to her word in court ("I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty"), she never paid the fine for the rest of her life, and an embarrassed U.S. Government took no collection action against her.

In 1900, Anthony led a long, campaign for The University of Rochester to accept women into their programs. To do so Anthony was required to raise $50,000 in pledges and practicing what she preached, Anthony cashed out her own life insurance policy to reach the funding goal. The university later repaid her for the cost of the policy.

By the time she was 80 years old, even though woman suffrage was far from won, Anthony was enough of a public institution that President William McKinley invited her to celebrate her birthday at the White House.

Portrait of Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony died at the age of 86 of heart failure and pneumonia in her home in Rochester, New York, on March 13, 1906, 14 years before passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. She was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester.

In 1979 Anthony was honored as the first American woman on circulating U.S. coinage with her appearance on the  Susan B. Anthony dollar.  Sadly, it was short lived, the coins were only produced through 1981 because they were supposedly too easily confused with quarters.

Sources Rric, Exhalelifestyle

Antelope

The antelope is the common name applied to a large group of hollow-horned ruminants of the family Bovidae, which also includes cattle, goats, and sheep. The group comprises about 150 species, of which most are found in Africa and the remainder in Asia.

Ancient Egyptians kept herds of gazelles for meat, and occasionally pets. It is unknown whether they were truly domesticated.

The English word "antelope" first appears in 1417 and is derived from the Old French antelop, itself derived from Medieval Latin ant(h)alopus.

The first successful corneal transplant was performed by a British army surgeon in India in 1835. His pet antelope had only one eye and it had a badly scarred cornea. He removed a cornea from a newly killed antelope and transplanted it into his pet’s eye. The operation was successful and his pet was able to see.

The first recorded use of the word bongo for a breed of African antelope was in 1861.

Almost half of the world's saiga antelopes, a critically endangered species, died in May 2015 from a mysterious illness suspected to be pasteurellosis.

The royal antelope, a West African antelope, is recognized as the world's smallest antelope. It was first described by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in 1758. The royal antelope stands up to merely 10 inches (25 cms)  at the shoulder and weighs 5.5-6.6 pounds (2.5–3 kms).

A Royal Antelope at the San Diego Zoo. By Mirko Raner - Wikipedia Commons

The giant eland is recognized as the world's largest antelope. First described in 1847 by John Edward Gray it has a body length ranging from 220–290 cm (86.5–114 in) and weighs up to about 680 kg (about 1500 lb). 

One species of antelope, the Sitatunga, can sleep underwater. 

A duiker is a small to medium-sized brown antelope native to sub-Saharan Africa, found in heavily wooded areas. When frightened, they dive through the bushes and then stand on their hind legs to look around. 

The blesbok, a South African antelope, is almost the same color as grape juice.

When a predator is chasing an impala (see below), a type of antelope, it runs in a zig zag formation jumping as high as three metres (9 ft 10 in).

Prong Horned Antelope have vision ten times stronger than average - On a clear night, they can see the rings of Saturn.

Unlike the deer, which they resemble in body and in habits, antelope have unbranched, hollow horns that are never shed. 

Antelope are generally swift, and some species are the fastest of the quadrupeds, attaining speeds of 97 km/hr (60 mph). 

Sources Funk & Wagnells Encyclopedia, Wikipedia greatfacts.com

Anteater

The giant anteater was named Myrmecophaga tridactyla, meaning a three-fingered eater of ants, by Carl Linnaeus in 1758.

The anteater lives almost entirely on ants and termites and soft-bodied grubs.

The giant anteater can eat 30,000 insects a day.

Anteaters are the only mammals that do not have teeth; instead, they have tongues, which start at its breastbone and can extend up to two feet.

Pixabay

Their physical digestion is aided by the pebbles and debris that they consume when they ingest insects.

Anteaters are incapable of producing their own digestive acids. They instead use formic acid found in the stinging venom of the ants they eat, which essentially means the ants are dissolved in their own acid.

Anteaters only stay at one ant colony for a short period of time to avoid soldier ants.

Anteaters are one of three surviving families of a once diverse group of mammals that occupied South America while it was geographically isolated from an invasion of animals from North America, the other two being the sloths and the armadillos.

There is no generally agreed collective noun for anteaters, which are solitary animals, however sources suggest a parade, a flock or a herd.

Sources Wikipedia, Daily Express

Antarctica

ANTARCTICA HISTORY

The literal meaning of ‘Antarctica’ is ‘opposite the bear’. The ancient Greeks named the frozen north ‘Arktikos’ after their word for ‘bear’, as the Great Bear (Ursa Major) is above the North Pole.

The first person to explore the southern ice fields was Captain James Cook, who reached 70° 10' South in 1774; the most southerly point to which a ship had ever sailed.

On January 28, 1820 a Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discovered the Antarctic mainland at a point with coordinates 69º21'28"S 2º14'50"W. They managed to twice circumnavigate the continent and disproved Captain Cook's assertion that it was impossible to find land in the southern ice fields.

The first American to see Antarctica was 21-year-old seal hunter Captain Nathaniel Palmer on November 17, 1820. His vessel, a diminutive sloop named the Hero, was only 47 feet (14 m) in length. The Palmer Peninsula was later named after him.

Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer (1799-1877), 

Before 1840, the Antarctic was known as Terra Australis Incognita (the unknown southern land). When modern-day Australia stole its name it left the continent nameless until its current name was adopted in the 1890s.

On October 14, 1899, the Norwegian zoologist Nicolai Hansen became the first person to be buried in Antarctica. Hanson was a member of the 1899 Borchgrevink Expedition, the first scientific foray to spend considerable time in the Antarctic, but was taken seriously ill during the voyage from England. At his request was Hanson buried in the mountain section above Cape Adare, where a grave was excavated from the mountain.

Nicolai Hanson

Danish traveler Caroline Mikkelsen became the first woman to set foot on Antarctica on February 20, 1935. She accompanied her Norwegian husband, Captain Klarius Mikkelsen, on an expedition, which made landfall at the Vestfold Hills near the present Davis Station. Mikkelsen left the ship and participated in building a memorial cairn. A mountain, Mount Caroline Mikkelsen, is named after her.

Picture below shows Caroline Mikkelsen raising the flag of Norway at a cairn on the Ingrid Christensen Coast of Antarctica

In 1958 Vivien Fuchs, leading the British Commonwealth Expedition, became the first to cross Antarctica.

The Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent, came into force on June 23, 1961. The original signatories were the 12 countries active in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58 (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States.) These countries had established over 50 Antarctic stations at that stage.

Solveig Gunbjørg Jacobsen of Norway was born in Grytviken on the island territory of South Georgia on October 8, 1913. She was the first person born South of the Antarctic Convergence, Solveig also had claims to be the actual first Antarctica birth as that territory is sometimes considered part of Antarctica.

Solveig Jacobsen standing with her dog on the Grytviken flensing plan in 1916

The first person born on Antarctica itself was Emilio Marcos Palma of Argentina on January 7, 1978. He was born in Fortín Sargento Cabral at the Esperanza Base near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and weighed 3.4 kg (7 lb 8 oz). His father, Captain Jorge Emilio Palma, was head of the Argentine army detachment at the base.

The southern pole of inaccessibility is the point on the Antarctic continent most distant from the Southern Ocean. A four-man team, using only skis and kites, completed a 1,093-mile (1,759 km) trek to reach the southern pole of inaccessibility for the first time since 1967 on January 19, 2007. It was also the first time ever the feat had been achieved without mechanical assistance.

The old Soviet Pole of Inaccessibility Station.19 January 2007. By Cookson69 

FUN ANTARCTICA FACTS

If Antarctica were to melt, the sea level would rise by 60 metres.

Antarctica is almost 1.5 times the size of the United States.

Antarctica occupies 10% of the world's surface.

A satellite composite image of Antarctica.

Antarctica contains 90% of the world's ice, representing nearly three-quarters of its fresh water.

98% of Antarctica is covered by ice which is a mile thick.

There is about eight times as much ice in Antarctica as in the Arctic.

Antarctica's most abundant land animal is the nematode worm.

Antarctica is the only continent without reptiles or snakes.

The Antarctic midge is endemic to Antarctica. At 0.079–0.236 inches long, it is the largest purely terrestrial animal on the continent, as well as its only insect.

Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country.

Antarctica is the only continent that does not have land areas below sea level.

Mount Jackson with an elevation of 3,184 metres (10,446 ft) is the highest mountain in the Antarctic Peninsula.

There is a waterfall that pours slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valley that runs as red as blood.

It has no permanent residents and no indigenous inhabitants; settlement is limited to scientific research stations with a population of Antarctica that varies from approximately 4,400 in summer to 1,100 in winter. This population is spread across approximately 40 year-round stations and a range of summer-only stations, camps, and refuges.

Every year at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, after the last airplane has left for the winter, the remaining scientists hold a screening of John Carpenter’s The Thing, which is about a shape-shifting alien that terrorizes scientists trapped at an Antarctic research station. The movie is usually shown in a double-feature with The Shining.

The eight churches in Antarctica serve the population of 4,400.

Antarctica is the only continent where dogs are banned. Being used as sled dogs for exploration until 1992, they were banned over concerns that they would transmit diseases to the seal population.

The driest place on earth is McMurdo dry Valleys in Antarctica where it hasn't rained for two million years. Only anaerobic bacteria are able to survive in the extreme conditions. Scientists also consider the area terrestrially closest to Mars on earth.

Antarctica is the coldest continent on Earth, with a mean annual temperature at the South Pole of -49°C/-56°F.

A temperature of -89°C/-128°F was recorded in Antarctica at the Russian base Vostok on July 21, 1983. It is the lowest ever temperature in an inhabited location.

The Russian station Vostok

The warmest reliably measured temperature ever recorded on the Antarctic continent was 18.3 °C (64.9 °F) set at at Esperanza Base, on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula on February 6, 2020 - around the same temperature as Los Angeles that day. 

There is an exclusive club in Antarctica called Club 300. In order to become a member one have to warm themselves in a 200 degree sauna, and then run outside naked and touch the Ceremonial South Pole where it's 100 degrees below.

Sources Hutchinson Encyclopedia, Daily Express

Ant

POPULATION 

Ants are found on every land except Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland.

There are 20 quadrillion ants worldwide, according to a 2022 census.

Black carpenter ant on a leaf. Pexels.

Scientists estimate for every human there are 2.5 million ants on the planet.

The total weight combined of the world's ant population is actually heavier than the weight of the human population.

ANT COLONY

A study showed that 2.6% of ants in a colony are always active. Over 25% are observed to never be working, and 71.9% are inactive half of the time.

Ants identify colony members by odor, which allows them to recognize and kill threats.

Ant queens can take over other colonies by murdering their real queen and bathing in her bodily fluids to avoid detection. 

An ant mega-colony exists across three continents and is thought to contain billions of ants, all of which recognize each other to be from the same colony. The largest part of the colony is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the USA, known as the "Californian large", extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. 

The biggest ant colony found so far in a single area is on the Ishikari Coast of Hokkaido, the second largest island of Japan: 306,000,000 ants, with 1,080,000 queens in 45,000 interconnected nests over an area of 2.7 square kilometers, (1.04 sq ml)

BEHAVIOR 

When ants find food they lay down a chemical trail so as other ants can find their way from the nest to the food.

Ants communicate by swapping spit.

Ants never get into traffic jams, thanks to receptors that allow them to speed by each other without slowing down or colliding. A

Ants sleep by taking about 250 one minute naps throughout their day. It totals just under five hours of sleep. This allows for 80% of their colony to be awake, working and prepared at any given moment.

An ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

When an ant gets too drunk, his fellow comrade will carry him back to the nest to sleep off the alcohol.

Ants have designated paramedics that are assigned to rescue their wounded soldiers, carry them back to their nest and help them heal by gently holding the hurt limb in place with their mandibles and front legs while intensely “licking” the wound for up to four minutes.

Ants can carry 10 to 20 times their body weight, and they will work together in small or large groups to move extremely heavy things.

Ants stretch when they wake up in the morning. Worker ants take hundreds of 1-2 minute naps per day, so that they can essentially work around the clock.

Scientists attached stilts to the legs of ants to prove that they return to their nests by counting their steps. The ants with stilts overshot their nest by roughly 50% due to the new length of their steps.

Ants farm and milk insects called aphids. Ants protect the aphids from predators and bring them food, then milk the aphids to produce a sweet substance known as honeydew, which the ants then store and eat.

Wood ants practice chemistry, and will synthesize an antibiotic substance using tree resin and formic acid to protect the health of their colony. It is considered to be the most advanced act of evolutionary pharmacology seen in the animal kingdom.

ANATOMY 

The ant is the animal with the largest brain in proportion to its size.

The jaws of a leaf cutter ant can move 1000 times a second.

An ant has five noses. An ant’s sense of smell is comparable to a dog's.

An ant's heart is a long tube that pumps colorless blood from the head back to the rear and then back up to the head again.

If ants were scaled up to human-sized proportions, they would walk at around 52 miles per hour.

ANT SPECIES 

Scientists discovered an ant species found nowhere else on earth between 63rd and 76th streets in New York City. It has been nicknamed the “ManhattAnt.”

Amazon ants, which are red ants found in the western United States steal the larvae of other ants to keep as slaves. The slave ants build homes for and feed the Amazon ants.

Armadillo ants are a rare genus of ants that inhabit the leaf litter of Neotropical forests in Central and South America, from Mexico to Brazil. They are the only ant species with an antenna socket apparatus sitting upside-down.

The bulldog ant, which is found in coastal regions in Australia, is the most dangerous ant in the world. In attack it uses its sting and jaws simultaneously and has been known to kill adults within 15 minutes.

Bulldog ant by Narendra A, Reid 

Some ant species can survive under water for up to 14 days or longer. They're so small that they need very little oxygen.

Camponotus saundersi, a species of Carpenter ant found in Malaysia and Brunei, can explode as an ultimate act of defense. As a last resort they contract their abs to rupture their internal glands, resulting in a suicidal burst of corrosive, immobilizing glue.

Biologists discovered a new species of ant on Broadway medians between 63rd and 76th streets. They named it ManhattAnt.

REPRODUCTION AND LIFE CYCLE

Male ants do not have fathers because fertilized eggs become females while unfertilized eggs become males.

An Amazonian ant called Mycocepurus smithii reproduces through cloning—no male of the species has ever been found. 

The average life expectancy of an ant is about 90 days, though isolated ants live for just a week,

Queen Ants can live over 30 years, making them one of the longest living insects. 

When the only queen ant dies, so does the entire colony, because no new workers are born.

FUN ANT FACTS 

An ant can survive for up to two days underwater.

 

Ants can sense earthquakes a day in advance either by picking up changing gas emissions or noting tiny changes in the Earth's magnetic field.

Roasted ants, known as "hormiga culona," are a common movie theater snack in Colombia. 

 
Sources Greatfacts.com