Polar Explorer's Day
May 21 · Level 7 · #752 of 2238
Polar Explorer's Day honours the people who work and winter in the Arctic and Antarctic: researchers, meteorologists, radio operators, doctors and mechanics at polar stations.
How it is celebrated: veterans of expeditions meet, museums and institutes hold exhibitions about life on ice stations, and colleagues receive congratulations and awards.
The date recalls the landing of Ivan Papanin's team near the North Pole on 21 May 1937. Papanin, Ernst Krenkel, Pyotr Shirshov and Yevgeny Fyodorov then drifted on an ice floe for almost nine months, until icebreakers picked them up off Greenland.