Transcript Slide 1

Dr David Livingstone, the
British explorer, discovered a
waterfall on the River Zambezi
in Africa in 1855 and named it
Victoria Falls after the British
queen, Victoria. Victoria Falls
are one of the wonders of the
world.
Roald Amundsen
and his crew reached
Antarctica in 1911,
one month before
Captain Scott and
his expedition got
there. Scott and all
his men died on the
way home.
In 1953, Edmund
Hillary was the first
man to reach the
top of Mount
Everest, the highest
mountain in the
world. He climbed to
the top with a
Nepalese man,
Tenzing Norgay.
In 1961, the Russian pilot and cosmonaut
Yuri Gagarin became the first person to
orbit the Earth.
Jacques Cousteau was the French explorer, inventor,
photographer, and filmmaker. He found new ways to
explore the world‘s oceans. His scuba breathing
apparatus allows divers to breathe underwater.
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Rain, wind, snow, the cold the
weather is every explorer’ s worst
enemy. In the North Pole, when
an icy wind blows, you have to be
careful. Already low temperatures
become even lower. Your fingers
can stick to anything you touch.
Your hot drink freezes
before you finish it
and batteries won’ t
work. And yet Robert
Swan decided to spend
over two months in
such conditions. His
plan was to spend 66
days in the Artic
walking 965
kilometres.
In March 1989, the eight-man team set off on their Icewalk
expedition across the frozen Arctic Ocean to reach the
North Pole. At the start of their journey, they only
managed a few kilometres a day, but later, they walked for
up to thirty kilometres each day. As they went, they made a
series of educations films because Swan wanted to draw
people’ s attention to the effects of climate change on the
Arctic.
The whole expedition was
like a military operation
and 500 people had spend
over a thousand days
planning and preparing for
the journey. They had had
to find money, maps ,
special equipment and
special clothing to protect
the Icewalk team from the
cold. It was very important
to have clothes consisting of
several layers and special
material to keep the skin
dry.
The team was truly international.
Two British men, an Australian, a
German, a Japanese man, a
Canadian and a Russian had to
overcome a combination of
language and cultural problems that
were the result of them all coming
from different parts of the world.
However, they had one thing in
common. All the men on the Icewalk
expedition were very experienced
explorers and scientists. For
example, in 1986, Robert Swan, the
leader of the expedition, had walked
over 1,400 kilometres to the South
Pole in extremely cold temperatures.
The team arrived at their
destination on 14th May 1989 their journey was a success
despite the difficulties they had
had during the Icewalk
expedition. Most of them had
suffered from frostbite during the
trip, but fortunalety they hadn't
had to go home early.
They had also nearly
drowned because of the melting
of the Arctic ice - a result of
global climate change. With the
completion of the expedition,
Swan became the first man to
walk to both the North and
South Poles. However, he
wasn’t content to celebrate for
long. He was already planning
his next adventure.