Sunday, November 29, 2020

Interesting Fact: The Planet Uranus Was Discovered Before Antarctica

 Discovered by Englishman William Herschel in 1782

Antarctica was theorized to exist, to balance out the northern continents, but no one had actually confirmed its existence, until 1820.

Ships captained by three men sighted Antarctica or its ice shelf in 1820: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (a captain in the Imperial Russian Navy), Edward Bransfield (a captain in the Royal Navy), and Nathaniel Palmer (a sealer from Stonington, Connecticut).


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5 comments:

  1. Rob De WittNovember 29, 2020 at 7:53 PM

    In 1986, the Voyager 2 spacecraft announced a close sighting of the planet Uranus, resulting in the headline "Scientists Discover Rings Around Uranus" - and the immediate adoption of the pronunciation "Your-a-nus" by television announcers.

    The world is so full of a number of things...

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  2. LLNovember 30, 2020 at 4:08 AM

    That planet has an unfortunate name.

    And the name Antarctica sounds cold. It doesn't have an inviting ring to it. Like, "Hey, CW, let's go discover Antarctica and build a cabin there on the coast." That dog doesn't hunt.

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  3. The Old GuyNovember 30, 2020 at 8:50 AM

    CW, if Antarctica was first known in 1820, how do you explain its clear presence on the Oronteus Finaeus map of 1531?

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    Replies
    1. c w swansonNovember 30, 2020 at 10:35 AM

      Easy! It was theorized to exist, so like sea monsters, they put what they thought should be there on the map.

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  4. Chuck PergielNovember 30, 2020 at 9:26 AM

    Sokay, Lucky Jack Aubrey from Patrick O'Brian's epic sea saga, is working on a scheme to calculate longitude from the positions of Jupiter's moons round about 1800. He nearly lost his wooden ship when it was holed by an iceberg somewhere in the southern ocean. So, proof positive of your assertion.

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