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The Nimrod Expedition was the first of three expeditions to the Antarctic led by Ernest Shackleton. Its ship, Nimrod, departed from British waters on 7 August 1907, fewer than six months after Shackleton’s first public announcement of his plans. Initially, the expedition's public profile was much lower than that of Scott’s Discovery Expedition six years earlier. However, nationwide interest was aroused by the news of its achievements. The South Pole was not attained, but the expedition’s southern march reached a farthest south latitude at 88°23′S, and it could thus claim that it had got within a hundred miles of the Pole. This was by far the longest southern polar journey to that date and a record convergence on either Pole. During the expedition a separate group led by Welsh-born Australian geology professor Edgeworth David reached the estimated location of the South Magnetic Pole, and the first ascent was made of Mount Erebus, the lofty Ross Island active volcano. The scientific team,essays which included the future Australian Antarctic Expedition leader Douglas Mawson, carried out extensive geological, zoological and meteorological work. Shackleton’s transport arrangements, based on Manchurian ponies, motor traction, and sledge dogs, were innovations which, despite limited success, were later copied by Scott for his ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition. (more...)

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March 10

• 1475 – Moldavian-Ottoman Wars: Stephen the Great and his Moldavian forces successfully repelled an Ottoman attack led by Hadân Suleiman Pasha, the Beylerbeyi of Rumelia, near Vaslui in present-day Romania.
• 1776 – Common Sense by English revolutionary Thomas Paine, a document denouncing British rule which contributed to stimulating the American Revolution among the populace of the Thirteen Colonies, was published.
• 1810 – Napoleon, childless after 14 years of marriage, divorced his first wife Joséphine (pictured).
• 1863 – Service began on the Metropolitan Railway between Paddington and Farringdon Street, today the oldest segment of the London Underground.
• 1946 – The first session of the United Nations General Assembly convened at the Westminster Central Hall in London with representatives from fifty-one member states.

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The most detailed full-disc view of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and second-largest in the Solar System. The brighter region on the right side and equatorial region is named Xanadu, and the large, dark region at the center is Shangri-la. This image has been processed to reduce the effects of the atmosphere and to sharpen surface features. It has been trimmed to show only the illuminated surface and not the atmosphere above the edge of the moon.

Image credit: Cassini orbiter

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