Monday, December 25, 2006
Christmas in Spitsbergen
There are all sorts of strange places in the world. Surely one of them is Spitsbergen in the Arctic Svalbard Islands, where Russians and Norwegians have lived cheek-by-jowl for more than 80 years.
2 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Dec 25, 05:47:00 PM:
History was made in Spitsbergen in 1926, when Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett used it as their takeoff point for the world's first flight over the North Pole. If memory serves, and frequently it does not, the great Norwegian explorer Raould Amundsen was there also, thinking he could make it on a dirigible. But Byrd beat him to it, then later became the first to fly over the South Pole. Not from Spitsbergen, however.
By 
Matt Finch (ProCiv), at
Mon Dec 25, 11:28:00 PM:
This is a bit out of place in terms of addressing the comment, but I just happened onto this blog via Liberty and Culture's links, and it's really a very incisive commentary you're doing here. Congrats on nice work! Adding you as a link on my own blog!
