Has Anyone Ever Been Born in Antarctica?
March 9th, 2009, 8 Comments »
Sometimes odd questions occur to me. I write them down, and, by asking people or the Internet, try to learn the answer. This is one such question:
I wrote it on a piece of cardboard, and it subsequently went through the wash.
This question was easy to answer, courtesy of Wikipedia:
At least ten children have been born in West Antarctica. The first was Emilio Marcos Palma, born on January 7, 1978 to Argentine parents at Esperanza, Hope Bay, near the tip of the Antarctic peninsula. In 1984, Juan Pablo Camacho was born at the Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva Base, becoming the first Chilean born in Antarctica. Soon after, a girl, Gisella, was born at the same station. In 2001, National Geographic reported that eight children had been born at Esperanza alone.
As you might expect, a baby born in Antarctica doesn’t get an Antarctic passport–there’s no such thing. Instead, they receive their parents’ nationality. What happens if their parents come from different nations? I’m not sure.
