Pictured on the right is Greenland, and smack in the middle of it is Eismitte. It's not a town or anything; who would live in one of the most remote places on Earth? The average temperature is -30°C (-22°F). Not exactly a place to camp out for the winter.

Well... someone did just that. Camp out, that is. Back in the early 1930s, German explorer Alfred Wegener led an expedition smack to the middle of Greenland. His goal was to build a wintering station, which is what Eismitte became. (It literally means Mid-ice. Oh, Germans do have a way of naming things!)

This was Wegener's third arctic expedition, but it didn't fare as well as his first two. He perished in Greenland, with Fritz Loewe taking over command. Loewe didn't have it easy either; he and two others had to spend the winter in a makeshift hole in the ground. His toes had to be amputated with a pocket knife, but he did make it back, with some very important measurements on the density and temperature of firn. (Firn is a type of snow left over from previous seasons and recrystallized. We're sure it was worth a human life and some toes.)

As a Jew, Loewe was forced to emigrate from Germany and settled in Australia, where he became one of his country's leading meteorologists. He even took part in more polar expeditions... but not to the extreme emptiness of Eismitte, we're willing to bet.