Sunday, May 13, 2007

Geographica: Antarctica
This list shall actually be the antithesis of the previous six. In "Geographica," I listed only sovereign nations, excluding their overseas possessions and territories, e.g., the Falkland Islands were not listed as a country of South America and Bermuda not listed as a country of North America as both are dependencies of the British Crown, not sovereign states. There are no countries in all the vastness of Antarctica, but several nations have claimed immense swaths of land, a state of affairs I find amusing enough to be worth departing from the days-old protocols of "Geographica." In a further break with protocol, I have consulted those reference materials necessary to list each claimant's formal name for their territory; on my own I know the claimants, but not the titles of all their claims.

Great Britain - British Antarctic Territory
Australia - Australian Antarctic Territory
New Zealand - Ross Dependency
France - Adelie Land
Norway - Queen Maud Land and Peter I Island
Chile - Chilean Antarctic Territory
Argentina - Argentine Antarctica

Also, Nazi Germany claimed a part of Antarctica, an historical curiosity to which I was introduced by the novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Tomorrow: The Moon.

Mission: Unpossible Zwei - Tage Siebenundzwanzig (Freitag) und Achtundzwanzig (Samstag)
I continue to be cursed by my own overconfidence. The endeavour has increased in difficulty over the last few days, curse it all.

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