The Hat Herald Issue 1
Peary vs. Cook - The Battle of who reached the North Pole first.
This is one of my favorites pieces of history. Is one of those stories I find very interesting and almost unimaginable that something like this could happen.
The late 1800's and early 1900's saw some epic triumphs of mankind over nature, with some explorers conquering Antartica and some others conquering the North Pole (well that's what they claimed).
The battle began on 1909 with a publication in the New York Times titled "Peary Discovers the North Pole after Eight Trials in 23 Years". Robert E. Peary was awarded with the triumph of conquering the North Pole in an expedition that lasted around 9 months with 23 men of which just Peary and four men "reached" the pole.
Peary's success story was quickly diminished by the fact that another newspaper, the New York Herald, had published a story five days earlier titled "The North Pole is Discovered by Dr. Frederick A. Cook" expressing that Dr. Cook made it the North Pole the year before on 1908. This came in like a wrecking ball to Peary, Cook was his former friend and shipmate in other expeditions, but what was really strange for Peary was that Cook had been missing and presumed dead in the past year, then all of a sudden he was back claiming to have reached the North Pole, stealing his victory and fame.
Obviously Cook was praised with the victory by public opinion, in the end his story had been the first one in the eyes of the public. Lots of people welcomed him at the port when he arrived in New York and newspapers all over the country talked about Cook's voyage.
Peary quickly began calling in favors with newspapers in an effort to discredit Cook's story. Cook was confident that he could provide proof of his journey with some of his stuff and pictures he had taken during his expedition. All this stuff was in Greenland so Cook asked a friend if he could bring it over to New York, unfortunately the ship on which his friend tried to bring the stuff was Peary's ship, who refused to let Cook's stuff on board.
With the evidence not turning up, Cook became really depressed as he could not prove his claim and he went in exile to Europe. Peary used this in his advantage, with the New York Times publishing articles about the disappearance of Cook and how he managed to fool the people with his story. Some say the New York Times was actively supporting Peary's story because it had purchased the rights to publish his story before the expedition.
Backed by the New York Times and The National Geographic Society, Peary's story soon took over Cook's, when in reality neither of them reached the North Pole.
Today's consensus is that neither of them made it within a 100 mile radius of the pole and both fabricated evidence claiming they did. Cook's evidence consisted of pictures taken at the North Pole, which resulted in pictures of an earlier trip to Alaska.
With Cook's evidence demolished, most people took Peary's story as the absolute truth. Cook was already portrayed as a liar so Peary's story must be true, right? Well not quite. Peary's hard evidence consisted of a dairy supposedly kept by him during the expedition, but the diary submitted was in pristine condition, something very unusual for the harsh conditions experienced during an expedition to the North Pole. He also refused to let anyone take a look of his records, which brought a lot of suspicion.
Right now the consensus is that neither of them reached the pole, it was until 1968 that using snowmobiles Ralph Plaisted and his crew were the first men to have conquered the pole.
If you want to read more about this story check out the book "Truth: A Brief History of Total Bull****" by Tom Phillips.
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