Word: pole
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...days after settling in their "student quarters" temporarily refurbished with carpets, pole lamps, and coffee tables, the Chinese pundits were shepherded into Harvard's most recent architectural monstrosity, the Science Center, and accorded another parchment: "This is to certify that-----has participated as a member of Harvard Alumni College sponsored by the Associated Harvard Alumni at the Harvard Summer School July...
...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. The stakes were high for both men: the polar itch had become the obsession of their lives, but there were also publishing contracts and lucrative lecture tours...
...stand pat on the slushy record. Cook's boosters, like California Biographer Hugh Eames, author of Winner Lose All, tend to heap benefits where there is clearly doubt and portray their man as an unworldly underdog, victimized by the Establishment. Eames' assertion that Cook reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908, is not even borne out by Cook himself, who would not vouch for the accuracy of his instrument readings beyond a "reasonable certainty." It is also reasonably certain that Peary's friends, who included newspaper executives, took special care and relish in destroying Cook...
Dennis Rawlins, a former professor of physics and astronomy at New Jersey's Upsala College, appears to have come closer to the truth. It is most unlikely, he concludes, that either Peary or Cook ever reached the North Pole, 90° north latitude, 0° longitude. The odds against their finding it were too great. For the North Pole is a purely theoretical location hovering over immense seas of drifting, heaving ice. To Rawlins, Peary's claim that he made a beeline to the Pole over such terrain in-50° F. temperatures is hard to swallow, particularly...
...then was the first man to verify beyond doubt reaching the North Pole on a journey over the ice? Revising history is frequently a comedown for the hero (and antihero) worshiper. But for the record: it was not one man at all but a U.S.-Canadian team led by one Ralph Plaisted of Minnesota. The party arrived April 19, 1968, without so much as a mush. They were riding Ski-Doos...