Antarctic Peninsula

Mountainous peninsula of West Antarctica extending 1,930 km/1,200 mi north toward South America.

The peninsula lies south of Cape Horn within the British Antarctic Territory. Before 1964 the British called the entire peninsula Graham Land and the Americans called it Palmer Land, after a US navigator, Captain Nathaniel Palmer (1799–1877), who was the first to explore the region in 1820. From 1964 the northern area was universally known as Graham Land, the southern area as Palmer Land, and the peninsula as a whole as the Antarctic Peninsula. The area was claimed by the UK in 1832, Argentina in 1940, and Chile in 1964.