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1912 Jan 18

A team of British Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott, and four others intended to be the first to reach the South Pole, but when they arrived, they found a letter from Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen--he had been there 36 days before. [see more]

Source:(AP, 1/18/98)(HNPD, 1/18/99)

Scott and his group had set out from a camp in Antarctica 81 days earlier, and on their way back, their supplies ran out. Scott wrote in a diary during the trek, which a search party discovered with the team's frozen bodies in November. Part of Scott's March 29 entry reads, "We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far." The team had made it to within 11 miles of the camp. Scott's diary ended with, "Last Entry: For God's sake look after our people." [see Jan 16,17]