Word: boothia
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...True North" is the direction in which one points to the North Pole, but compass needles point in the direction of the magnetic pole, which is on the Boothia Peninsula in Northern Canada. Hence, only when a compass is roughly on a prolongation of the line from the geographical pole to the magnetic pole does it point true north. From other points in the world the needle, pointing to magnetic north, makes an angle with true north, and that angle mariners call variation. In the Pacific Ocean the needle points as much as 30° east of the geographical pole...
...Long pondered by explorers like Ross, Franklin and Amundsen were the possibilities of Bellot Strait, named in 1852 after its discoverer Joseph Rene Bellot, French naval lieutenant. This lies at the extreme northerly point of North America's mainland, 2,000 miles directly above Minneapolis, and separates Boothia Peninsula from Somerset Island. (Barrow Strait, 150 miles further north, separates Somerset Island from Cornwallis Island.) Bellot Strait, situated on the 72nd parallel 400 miles inside the Arctic Circle, is also just 150 miles north of the North Magnetic Pole-so close that ships' compasses are useless. Explorers have known...
...across Northern Alaska and the Mackenzie River Delta to Canada (TIME, Jan. 7).* Quarreling with other drivers two years ago, he packed up a sledge, mushed off eastward alone. By dint of catching fish bare-handed to feed himself and his dogs, he reached the North Magnetic Pole on Boothia Peninsula last summer, photographed it, started South. A mosquito bit his left arm which swelled, became useless. Game was so scarce he had to lie on his back, lure seals, which he munched raw, by waving his feet in the air. Three dogs froze and Adventurer Irwin lashed himself...
...They told me, too, they had found skulls and bones of white men washed up along the coast from Prince of Wales Island right down to Boothia Peninsula...