Nathaniel Brown Palmer was born in Connecticut and was a prominent seal hunter. Seal skins were of great value, and he became captain of a ship at the age of 21. During 1820, Palmer and his crew were searching everywhere for seal colonies, but hit upon something slightly different.
On this day November 18th, in 1820, Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer and his crew become the first American group to discover Antarctica. They were the third to have seen its existence.
Palmer hit the Antarctica Peninsula, the northernmost point of the continent. It is completely covered in ice, and beneath it is bedrock. Penguins and polar bears are known to inhabit the areas. Twenty years after the discovery, Palmer ended his career as a seal hunter and decided instead to focus on express shipping, literally. He helped develop the Clipper Ship, a vessel with a minimum of three masts and a square base that sailed extremely fast.