Word: polarity
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Numbering among its 22 passengers Sir George Hubert Wilkins, polar explorer, and Lady Wilkins, on a belated honeymoon, the Graf headed for home via Seville, was twice belabored by storms. North of Lyon, on the last day of the voyage, Dr. Eckener described the squalls as "a regular witches' cauldron...
Wilkins' plan is to equip the submarine with an ice drill, capable of piercing 50 ft. of ice from beneath, to enable him to stop the craft under the polar ice pack, take on fresh air, recharge batteries, make observations. A trolley riding on the under side of the ice would indicate the position of the boat. A pressure lock would enable men in diving suits to leave and re-enter the submerged ship...
Previous Wilkins accomplishments which make his polar submarine trip seem not incredible: extended exploration work in north polar regions with Vilhjalmur ("No Vegetables!") Stefansson, exploration of tropical Australia for the British Museum, flight from Point Barrow to Spitsbergen with the late Pilot Carl Ben Eielson, 6,000 mi. of flying in south polar regions...
...Nowadays polar explorers have airplanes, radio; reach their goal more quickly, safely, let the world know where they are, what they are doing. But the Poles were not "discovered" from the air, and the news came back no faster than the dogs and men who pulled the sledges. In 1909 Commander Robert Edwin Peary reached the North Pole by dogsled, though Frederick Albert Cook (TIME, March 31) claimed he had anticipated him; in 1912 Captain Robert Falcon Scott got to the South Pole only to find that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it by a few weeks. Scott...
Buried. Lieut. Carl Ben Eielson, famed polar flyer; during a snowstorm at Hatton, N. Dak. His body had been brought back from Cape North, Siberia, where he crashed in a blizzard flying to aid an ice-locked furship (TIME, Jan. 6 et. seq.). Two days late for the burial, an airplane from the stormy East brought Sir George Hubert Wilkins, Eielson's comrade on many a frigid flight, to lay a wreath, gaze at the white grave, fly away...