David Tom, age 11, of Tucson, Arizona, for his question:

Who discovered Antarctica?

The South Polar continent was the last to be discovered and the last to be ex¬plored by man. Many early geographers did not suspect it was there, but in the 18th century, a few dreamers began to wonder whether there was a land mass at the bottom of the globe. One of these was the super explorer Captain James Cook. In 1772, he resolved to find out and set forth in his ship, the Resolution. During his three year voyage, he sailed all the way around the continent of Antarctica without knowing it. His little ship was too fragile to brave the polar ice floes that surround the is¬lands and mainland of Antarctica, and the honest to goodness discovery of Antarctica had to wait until the 19th century.

The continent was discovered piece by piece by daring sea captains of several countries. Most of them were seal hunters, some were explorers and a few were inter¬ested in both seal hunting and geography. In 1820, an American seal hunter named Nathaniel Palmer sighted the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Meantime Fabian von Bellingshausen of Russia retraced Cook's voyage around the land mass. A few years later, James Weddell of England found the Weddell Sea shoreline. On February 7, 1821,

John Davis of America landed at Hughes Bay at the tip of the peninsula and became the first man to set foot on Antarctica. In the 1830s, the French and then the American navy sent expeditions that verified the discovery of the Antarctic continent.