Polar exploration
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Discovery of the North Pole: The South Pole soon to follow
Featured Map: The detailed map showing Cook and Perry’s journey to discover the North Pole made in the first decade of the early 20th century. There is controversy over who the true discoverer of the North Pole really is. There is no doubt, however, that Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) American explorer and physician, along with another American explorer, Robert Edwin Peary, Sr. (May 6, 1856 – February 20, 1920), both claimed (though separately achieved) to have reached the ultimate unconquered destination of the era; the frozen unknown at the geographic north point of the Earth’s axis of rotation, where children imagine Santa Claus lives. (A…