If you guessed the last man, you were right. Roald Amundsen not only led his party safely to the South Pole, ahead of Scott, but he managed to gain weight on the adventure.

In 1926, Amundsen was the first expedition leader to be recognized without dispute as having reached the North Pole. He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage (1903–06). He disappeared in June 1928 while taking part in a rescue mission.

Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen‘s Norwegian expedition. On their return journey, Scott and his four comrades all died from a combination of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold.

 

Mawson turned down an invitation to join Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition in 1910; Australian geologist Griffith Taylor went with Scott instead. Mawson chose to lead his own expedition, the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, to King George V Land and Adelie Land, the sector of the Antarctic continent immediately south of Australia, which at the time was almost entirely unexplored. The objectives were to carry out geographical exploration and scientific studies, including a visit to the South Magnetic Pole. …

Mawson himself was part of a three-man sledging team, the Far Eastern Party, with Xavier Mertz and Lieutenant Belgrave Ninnis …

There was a quick deterioration in the men’s physical condition during this journey. …

It was unknown at the time that Husky liver contains extremely high levels of vitamin A. It was also not known that such levels of vitamin A could cause liver damage to humans. …

(Mertz and Ninnis died.) Mawson continued the final 100 miles alone. During his return trip to the Main Base he fell through the lid of a crevasse, and was saved only by his sledge wedging itself into the ice above him. He was forced to climb out using the harness attaching him to the sled. .

When Mawson finally made it back to Cape Denison, the ship Aurora had left only a few hours before. …

After the race to the South Pole ended in December 1911 with Roald Amundsen‘s conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to what he said was the one remaining great object of Antarctic journeying: the crossing of the continent from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed before the shore parties could be landed. There followed a sequence of exploits, and an ultimate escape with no loss of human life, that would eventually assure Shackleton’s heroic status, although this was not immediately evident. …