100-year-old chocolate bar sold

LONDON, England -- A bar of chocolate dating back 100 years and belonging to pioneering Antarctica explorers has been auctioned for £470 ($686).

The 10-centimetre (four inch) chocolate bar was part of a 3,500-pound load of cocoa and chocolate taken by British explorer Captain Robert Scott on his 1901-1904 expedition to the frozen continent.

The trip was one of the first major attempts to explore the interior of Antarctica.

Scott died in 1912 after his unsuccessful race against Norwegian Roald Amundsen to be the first man to reach the South Pole.

The British explorer and his team arrived at the pole only to find the Norwegian flag had already been planted there five weeks earlier, on December 11, 1911.

The chocolate bar was auctioned at Christie's on Tuesday at a special Polar Auction which also included the diary of Alexander Macklin, the assistant surgeon who was on The Endurance, a polar exploration vessel that sunk off the coast of Antarctica in 1915.

The diary, which records the crew's plight as they sat marooned on floating ice for several months, was bought for £104,950 ($153,227), nearly twice the expected price.

A blubber-stained photo of The Endurance carried by polar adventurer Sir Ernest Shackleton sold for more than £15,000 ($21,900).

A copy of the "Aurora Australis," edited by Shackleton and published in 1908 at the winter quarters of the British Antarctic Expedition, sold for £35,250 ($51,465).

The edition, presented by the explorer to his wife, is said to be the world's southern-most produced book.