This was NOTsomething I counted on....

But I have been astounded by the international hits I get on my blog. I nearly every continent, But for the fun of it I am going to try to lure in a few visitors from off the wall places so I'm going to occasionally be posting a country or continent and see what comes of it, starting with:

Antarctica:

1. Antarctica is the coldest and windiest of all the continents.
2. To the surprise of many, Antarctica is also the driest of all the continents receiving a mere sprinkling of rain and snow once or twice a year.
3. Antarctica gets its name from the Greek language. In a bit of deviousness, the term because it means opposite the Arctic.
4. The continent was discovered in 1820 by a Russian expedition, but was not further explored to any serious extent for another 100 years.
5. No permanent human residents are known to have ever lived on the continent and even today only temporary scientific communities exist.
6. Antarctica, not the Sahara Desert, is technically the biggest desert in the world, but the desert is ice instead of snow.
7. The ice sheet covering the continent is approximately 1.6 miles thick on average and holds 90 percent of the fresh water on the planet in the form of ice.
8. The ice sheet was melting dramatically. In 2002, over 1,000 square miles broke off the continent. In recent years, unusual amounts of snow fall have resulted in a thickening of the ice contrary to global warming concerns.
9. The continent is the only natural habitat of the Emperor Penguin, immortalized in the movie March of the Penguins. The penguin, however, also is found on the shoreline of some southern continents from time to time.
10. The continent has no government and is not owned by any country. Many countries have claimed the continent at one time or another. Currently, a treaty exists that grants the continent its independence from any such claims.

Antarctica has no permanent residents, but a number of governments maintain permanent manned research stations throughout the continent. The number of people conducting and supporting scientific research and other work on the continent and its nearby islands varies from about 1,000 in winter to about 5,000 in the summer. Many of the stations are staffed year-round, the over-wintering personnel typically arriving from their home countries for a one-year assignment. An Orthodox church opened in 2004 at the Russian Bellingshausen Station is also manned year-round by one or two priests, which are similarly rotated every year.