According to an astronomer Robert Peary was not the first to reach the North Pole in 1909. Who, then, was?

lanfranco

An astronomer named Dennis Rawlins, who seems to have established a dubious career as a professional debunker, found a document in the Peary archives that he misinterpreted as navigation notes -- indicating that Peary and his team hadn't gotten closer than 100 miles to the Pole. Rawlins was apparently forced to retract this claim when the document turned out not to involve navigation notes at all. However, his view seems originally to have been that Roald Amundsen was the first to reach the pole when he flew over it in 1926. One site claims that Rawlins had a racial agenda, given that Peary's team included four Inuits and a Black man, Matthew Hensen. In fact, there has been much controversy over whether Peary or Frederick Cook first reached the North Pole (or whether either of them did), and some argument concerning the precedence of Amundsen or Byrd when it comes to flights. The sites on Rawlins' claim are not particularly good, and I can't be certain that I've got the details right, but here's a link: http://www.matthewhenson.com/didthey.htm May 28 05, 2:08 PM

Arpeggionist

Even before Peary though, there were plenty of inuit cultures that knew the place. Just because there's no record of those people reaching the pole before 1909 does not mean that the people living on the Arctic weren't traveling there regularly. May 28 05, 2:43 PM

gmackematix

Dennis Rawlins aside we will probably never know if Peary ever actually made it to the North Pole in 1909. All we know is that a recent journey by a British explorer suggested Peary's account was possible, Peary's photos and measurements suggest he was somewhere near it and that Peary himself desperately wanted people to believe he had reached it. Of course, the whole argument gets clouded a little by the racial issue and the whole Frederick Cook fiasco. May 28 05, 8:16 PM

Arpeggionist

And the fact that the North Star's wabble would be most noticed at the pole itself. May 28 05, 11:47 PM