Damoy Point

This humble structure, packed in snow, was built by British researchers in the 1970s. With the weather in Antarctica fluctuating as drastically as it does, the hut served as a halfway point for scientists en route to research stations farther south, hence its nickname as the world’s most southerly waiting room. With enough beds here to house fifteen adventurers, groups would wait for weeks at a time for the weather to improve— consuming books, playing board games, or etching poems into the wall. The menu was entirely canned— from bacon to banana pudding. But one recent discovery shed light on the drinks menu.

In 2010, conservationists found Ernest Shackleton’s stash of booze beneath the floorboards of the polar explorer’s abandoned hut (not unlike this one). Among several crates of whiskey and brandy were three bottles of rare, nineteenth-century scotch sloshing around. A century of subzero temperatures had not frozen the liquor. They remain unopened, with the exception of one.

Distillers chartered the bottles to Scotland and, using a syringe, withdrew just enough to reformulate the lost recipe, then created fifty thousand new bottles. A percentage of the proceeds went to the Antarctic Heritage Trust, and the original bottles were returned to Shackleton’s hut to preserve the era’s legacy.

The waiting hut at Damoy Point was not the site of any scientific epiphanies but became essential to research that would affect the entire world. Teams have passed through on the way to making discoveries like the hole in Earth’s ozone and other crucial findings about our climate. The hut was retired in 1993, with a grateful nod to modern aviation and meteorology—which rendered a waiting room unnecessary. But the historic importance of the shed is still recognized. Today, it’s a museum with a caretaker. Introversion is a likely prerequisite for the role; a taste for whiskey also wouldn’t hurt.

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