Today it's 100 years since Roald Amundsen and his crew were the first men to reach the South Pole.
The race for the pole: Amundsen vs Scott. Two teams competing, using very different approaches.
Scott relied on motorsleds and ponies (and a handful of dogs). The motors failed and the ponies died (not much hay in Antarctica). His men walked on foot, and had to pull the sledges by hand.
Amundsen had learnt survival in the Arctic and dog-sledging from the navive Inuits, when he discovered the North-West Passage a few years earlier. He started out with more than 100 dogs, and going on skis. On the way to the pole, he killed the weaker dogs and used the meat to feed the living dogs, and his men.
The British didn't like Amundsen's methods. They called him a brutal maniac.
Amundsen reached the South Pole one month before Scott, and brought his team back home, alive.
Scott and his men died on the way back from the pole.
Skis and dogs rule in the snow.
(The picture above is a very famous one; it's Roald Amundsen and his crew on the South Pole in December 1911.)
