Hubert Wilkins (1888–1958) was an Australian polar explorer and aviator who made the first west-to-east Arctic aerial crossing. Born in Mount Bryan East, Australia, on Oct. 31, 1888, George Hubert Wilkins was educated in electrical engineering at the School of Mines and Industries in Adelaide, after which he took up photography and learned the fundamentals of flying. As a newsreel photographer, he covered (1912–1913) the Balkan War for British newspaper and motion-picture concerns. The American explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson selected Wilkins as official photographer for the Canadian Arctic Expedition (1913–1917), and his loyalty and devotion to the aims of the expedition resulted in his promotion to second in command. In September 1917, during World War I, Wilkins joined the Australian Flying Corps on the French front as a photographer. In 1919 he competed, unsuccessfully, for the London Daily Mail prize of $50,000 for a flight from England to Australia. Wilkins was second in co...
Ice Island, a large, tabular piece of glacial ice adrift in the Arctic or the Antarctic oceans. Arctic ice islands are less common and generally smaller than Antarctic ice islands, or icebergs (see Iceberg), but their location makes them more useful and durable for research. Scientists have used drifting ice stations since the Soviet Union established North Pole I on floe ice in May 1937, but ice islands have been found preferable because they are longer-lasting. Formation of Arctic Ice Islands The glaciers of Canada's Ellesmere Island form a massive ice shelf that floats on the water at the ocean edge and yet remains attached to the shore. Progressive advances of the glaciers push the shelf seaward, and the combined action of winds, tides, and waves breaks loose large pieces of the ice. The ice islands then drift with the polar pack ice in the clockwise current of the Beaufort Sea area. The islands sometimes are many square miles in extent. Their surface appearance is distinc...
Two major lowland corridors cross eastern Europe: the northern plain, within which virtually the entire territory of Poland lies, and the Danube Valley, which is shared by Hungary, Croatia, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Between them lie the low mountains and plateaus of Bohemia and Moravia and the higher alpine peaks of the Tatra in Slovakia, as well as the arc of the Carpathians and the Transylvanian Alps in Romania. South of the Danube are the mountain cores of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Albania, and Bulgaria. The first four countries lie amid the Dinaric Alps, and the last is traversed by the Balkan and Rhodope ranges. Bulgaria's principal lowland area is the valley of the Maritsa River, which opens southeastward toward Turkey and the Aegean Sea. The climate of the east is continental, with cold snowy winters and warm humid summers. There is precipitation at all seasons, but it is insufficient to support a forest cover in the lower plains areas ...
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