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70% of our planet's freshwater sits frozen on top of this continent.
_{Antarctic Peninsula seen from the Gerlache Strait. (Zee Evans / NSF)}

54 nations have agreed to share the continent.
No military activity, only science and tourism.
_{Flags of the Antarctic Treaty nations around the South Pole. (Galen Rowell / Mountain Light)}

Human beings didn’t lay eyes on Antarctica until 1820.
Then it took another ninety years for someone to reach the South Pole.
_{‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’ in the Antarctic depiction of Ross expedition. (J. W. Carmichael, 1847)}

Most of Antarctica has nothing living in it.
Not algae, not bacteria, nothing. Of all Earth’s continents, it’s the coldest, driest, highest, and windiest.
_{Coats Land Antarctic Plateau. (David Tipling / Minden Pictures)}

Months go by without a sunrise or sunset.
The South Pole has six straight months of daylight or darkness.
_{Southern lights over Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. (Patrick Cullis / NSF)}

Only 2% of Antarctica is not covered in ice.
These are the only inland places where anything lives—and there are some crazy things happening there!
_{Don Juan Pond in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. (Colin Harris / Era Images)}

There’s an entire mountain range buried under ice.
It’s about 750 miles long and the highest peaks rise nearly 15,000' above sea level, but the ice sheet completely covers it.
_{GPR image of the Gamburtsev Mountains buried under ice. (Lamont-Doherty / NSF)}

Antarctica has no permanent human population.
Our species only visits there. Å·ÃÀ¿Ú±¬ÊÓƵ 4,000 people stay there during summer; that number falls to 1,000 during winter.
_{McMurdo, the main U.S. research station, located in the Dry Valleys. (Andrew Smith / NSF)}