Richard Byrd – first flight over the South Pole

Fittingly, it was a man named Byrd who made the first human flight over some of the most forbidding terrain on the planet. Byrd, the scion of an aristocratic family tracing its lineage back to Renaissance Europe, had always a sense of a fearlessness and adventure: at the of 12 he travelled halfway around the world solo to visit a relative in the Philippines. As a naval aviator, the 38 year-old Byrd flew over the North Pole on his own expedition, and then set his sights on the other pole.

On this day, November 29, in 1929, Richard Byrd, the navigator, along with pilot Bernt Balchen and two others took off from Little America, a makeshift base set up in the middle of the Antarctic wilderness, to complete the first roundtrip flight over the South Pole.

Every item carried by the plane was carefully considered and weighed to allow the plane, named Floyd Bennett, to clear the mountains, but with the cold air weighing down on them, the crew had to quickly dump cargo to gain enough altitude to clear the peaks. The choice came down to food or fuel, and Byrd decided to dump the food. With their supplies in case of a crash now overboard, the expedition had no choice but to succeed.