Sabine Island, near Greenland, was first discovered by the British geographer Sir Edward Sabine in 1823, but an 1869 map showed it was actually a quarter of a mile farther west than its discoverer had mapped. This interested Alfred Wegener, a young geographer working in Greenland in 1910. He thought the error too great to be explained.

Wegener himself took measurements and found that since 1869 the island had moved another five eighths of a mile. After checking the position of other Arctic landmasses, he concluded that all of them were drifting westward at different speeds.

From this finding, Wegener developed his floating continent theory. He imagined an original super continent making up the infant earth, finally the mass broke up into several pieces—the present continents. The continents do seem to fit together like pieces of a puzzle, and what’s more, some of the mountain ranges of different continents line up rather well, as if the landmasses were at one time connected. However, believable as Wegener’s argument appeared, many geographers refused to accept it. Exactly how the continents were formed is still a leading mystery in geography, though today many geographers are returning to the continental drift theory.