Who Discovered the North Pole?

100 years ago this week, the front page of the Capital Journal had an article titled: “Cook insists on discovery of the North Pole”. The article describes a letter written by Frederick a. Cook (who wrote the letter from a federal prison Leavenworth where he was serving time for mail fraud) where he challenged the claim that Admiral R. E. Peary had reached it first. Cook wrote that Peary did not actually reach the pole, and that his logbooks documented that his location was actually far away from the actual North Pole. Dr. Cook stated that future explorations would demonstrate that his claim is accurate. In 1988, when a re-examination of his records commissioned by the National Geographic Society, a major sponsor of Perry’s expeditions, concluded that Peary's evidence never proved his claim and suggested that he knew he might have fallen short. If you want to learn more, in addition the books published by Cook and Peary- The Library of Congress has the Frederick Albert Cook Papers If you want to see a silent film created in 1912 by Frederick Cook – you can find it on YouTube- if you search for “The Truth About the North Pole”. Peary’s original papers, including his 1909 expedition diary are held at the National Archives in Washington DC.