Word: polarize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Because the sun's rays strike it more directly, the earth's equatorial zone heats up more than either polar region. If some of this heat were not transported away from the tropics, average equatorial temperatures would probably begin to rise dangerously. Fortunately, the earth has some handy mechanisms for carrying heat from the tropics toward the poles. Perhaps a third of this heat is distributed by ocean currents. The rest is transported by movement of the atmosphere. A large portion of this atmospheric heat−the exact percentage is unknown−is picked up from...
Winter, which brings down ferocious cold from the polar icecap, used to be a comparatively closed-down season, a deep hibernation. Snowmobiles, for better and for worse, have changed that. Many Minnesotans now worry about the ubiquitous high-pitched snarls of snowmobiles churning across the winter landscapes. Still, snowmobiling is the state's fastest-growing sport. Some 340,000 vehicles are licensed...
...world, far north of the Arctic Circle, snow falls only in the summer. The rest of the year is too cold for precipitation, for vegetation and, one would suppose, for human life. Yet a few hundred nomadic polar Eskimos prowl the icy region, always shadowed by the imminence of death from cold or starvation. They describe themselves simply as Inuit...
...Arctic hardships that included the loss of his toes, Peary became the first man to stand at the North Pole. It is a nearly perfect schoolboy legend of endurance and courage rewarded with honor and wealth. There is even a touch of Melville in Peary's faithful black polar companion, Matthew Henson, who wound up with a $900-a-year job as a messenger at the U.S. Customs House...
...history, the saga of Robert Peary was fissured from the beginning. Peary was never reticent about his hunger for glory. Like Douglas MacArthur, he wrote ringing letters about ambition to his mother. Resting in his igloo after the last polar trip, he contemplated elaborate designs for his mausoleum. But according to Matt Henson's recollections, Peary was sullen and evasive about their exact positions at the top of the world. He asserted his claim to the Pole only after returning to civilization and learning that the world was already crediting the achievement to Frederick A. Cook, a Brooklyn physician...