Heroic Era News Today

January 2022 is the centenary of the death of Kildare’s famous Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. Kevin Kenny examines his life of exemplary leadership...

The icy continent has historically been a place for men. First “discovered” in 1820, Antarctica would not be visited by a woman for well over a century. In 1935, Norwegian Caroline Mikkelsen, a whaler’s wife, became the first woman to do so, some 24 years after her compatriot Roald Amundsen had trekked all the way to the South Pole. It wasn’t until the 1950s that women were finally allowed to participate in Antarctic science. How had Antarctica come to be so dominated by men? Where wer...