Photo by NOAA / Unsplash

1909 - The first step to the top of the earth (North Pole)

History Nov 13, 2020

The American explorer Robert Peary first discovered the most inaccessible region of the Earth’s North Pole and began to unravel the mysteries of the world’s most unknown region.

Photograph of Peary dressed in furs to survive winter
By Unknown author - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3a10850. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, Link

Story Behind North Polar Territory

It was early morning on April 6, 1909. Up to the horizon, there was nothing but snow. The mercury of the thermometer was showing 50 degrees below zero in the atmosphere of the cooling wind! Suddenly, from a distance, some human figures began to appear in the distant icy region where no human population could be found! A team of explorers was advancing uninterruptedly on a land in which mankind had not yet set foot.

Robert Edwin Peary, commander of the U.S. Navy, led the team, along with his years-old servant Matthew Hanson and four other Eskimos, crossing Greenland to reach the Earth’s the North Pole. For days his skin had become very rough after being hit by extremely cold and stormy winds. The sun’s rays reflected off the ice, leaving the eyes half-blind and deep. Peary rubbed his dry tongue over his dry lips and measured the surrounding area with his eyes and his pale eye sparkled. Putting his hand in the heavy bag he carried on his shoulder, he pulled out a packet.

Ipy-conger1 figure-01.jpg
By Adolphus Greely, Carlheim-Gyllenskiöld - Report on the proceedings of the United States exepedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Grinnell Land, International Polar Expedition, Washington, Government Printing Office (pdf), Public Domain, Link

Exhausted by the sight, Hanson’s body suddenly recovered. Probably the destination of the continuous journey that started in August 1908! Peary took the American national flag of silk out of the packet, tied it with a flagpole, and dropped the flagpole into the snow. Standing in his place, he wrote in his logbook with deep satisfaction, “The pole at last!” This short sentence of four words was shouting the stick of the great Doug of mankind.

After excavating almost every continent of the earth, the researchers were left to dig only the poles. They were completely unaware of the polar animals, birds, sponges, plants, insects, etc., as mankind had not yet set foot there. Commander Peary was the world’s first adventurer to reach the far north of the earth. Surrounded by the Arctic Ocean, the polar region has been an inaccessible area for mankind for years due to the deadly cold and unpredictable blizzard – and that is why all the efforts of mankind to conquer the region full of uncertainties were futile.

Photograph of the Robert Peary Sledge Party Posing with Flags at the North Pole - NARA - 542472.jpg
By Unknown author or not provided - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, Link

History of North Polar Territory

  • Before Robert Peary set foot on the North Pole, an American adventurer named Charles Hall was only a few kilometers from the North Pole in 1871, but his health proved to be worse than his luck. The killer cold took its toll just before it hit the target.
  • In 1893, a Norwegian named Friedoff Nansen set out to conquer the North Pole. He embarked on a specially designed ship. Of course, due to inclement weather, it was only a matter of time before he stopped traveling.
  • Then in 1897, Solomon Andy, a Swedish adventurer, ventured into the pole region in a balloon, which proved fatal for him.
  • In 1906, the American journalist Walter Wellman also attempted to reach the North Pole in a hot air balloon. Of course, even that venture failed.
  • As a result, the fact that Commander Robert Peary reached the North Pole by land in 1909 seemed nowhere more surprising than it was to people around the world.

Preparation of Robert Peary

Peary himself worked hard to successfully complete the seemingly impossible venture. He had already begun to get as much detail as possible about Greenland and its northern areas. In 1891 and 1892, he also traveled a total of 1,900 kilometers, such as “Practice” near Greenland, to get an accurate idea of the difficult conditions to face in the Arctic.

Success

In 1908 he finally embarked on a seemingly impossible adventure with his colleagues, which ended on April 6, 1909, after a total of eight months! Because of Peary’s successful adventure, the world first learned about Greenland’s northern border that Greenland is actually an island surrounded by the sea. The unveiling of the region’s secrets was about to begin after Commander Robert Peary unfurled the flag of success.

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