On this day in 1912, Captain Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole after travelling over 850 miles of glaciers and ice fields in a bid to become the first ever to complete the journey. Upon arrival, they found that he had been beaten (by just five weeks) by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. The symbolism of a flag planted in new territory can carry imperialist overtones—something that artist Santiago Sierra explored in 2015 in Black Flag. For this, he travelled to the South Pole to plant a black flag—the universal symbol of the anarchist movement—at the geographic South Pole, latitude 90º S.
