The first mention of an iceberg in world literature was not made until 800 A.D.  An Irich monk, St. Brendan wrote about the giant blocks of ice floating in the North Atlantic Ocean.  The manuscript, which was written 300 years before it was ever published described a “floating crystal castle”.

In Africa, the climate is not has not always been warm.  The Nile River has been known to freeze over at least twice.  These two recorded events took place in 829 A.D. and again in 1010 A.D.

Eskimo Indians made and used wooden “eyeglasses”.  These glasses had only a narrow slits for eyepieces in order to provide protection for the eyes from the bright blinking white that glared off the ice and snow.

Korean women, called Ama, harvested shellfish by diving into the sea without the use of any diving gear.  These women endured a greater level of cold stress from the icy seas than any other people.

It gets so cold in Siberia that a persons breath has been known to crystalize as they exhale and fall to the ground with a crackling sound.  In fact, the coldest temperature recorded in the northern hemisphere was actually recorded 320 kilometers south of the Artic Circle.  A temperature of -70 degrees C. (-96 degrees F.) was recorded in January 1964 in the village of Oymyakon in Eastern Siberia.

High altitude and continuous darkness in winter team up to make the interior regions of Antarctica the coldest place on earth.  The lowest temperature that has ever been recorded on August 24th, 1960.  The temperature reached a low of -126.9 degrees F. as a the Russian station of Vostok at about 11,000 feet above sea level.

The famed Winter Palace in Russia was considered to be a death abode while it was being constructed.  In 1839, the Marquis De Custine noted that “a considerable number (of workers) died each day.”  As it turned out, the workers died because the spent their days working in the interior of the Palace which was kept at a toasty 86 degrees.  However, they would often catch pneumonia when they left for the day and shocked their unprepared lungs when they walked out into the -20 degree weather outdoors.

Small flat icebergs have been known to have been fitted with sails and piloted thousand of miles.  Two examples are iceships  that sailed more than 2,400 miles from Antarctica to Valparaiso, Chile and to Cakkaiub, Peru.

The terrain of Antarctica is surprisingly varied.  antactica< which is almost one and a half times bigger than the United States, has snow covered plains, majestic jagged mountains, an ice-covered lake whose depths register 80 degrees Fahrenheit and a smoking volcano.

It is a little known fact that for most of the history of our planet Earth, the North and South Poles have been free of ice.