At the turn of the 17th century, shortly after Queen Elizabeth's advisor John Dee was corresponding with Gerardus Mercator regarding the Polar magnetic mountain, Queen Elizabeth's personal physician and knighted President of the College of Physicians, "Sir" William Gilbert, wrote his Opus "De Magnete," in which he argued against the prevailing belief of a polar magnetic mountain, claiming instead the Earth itself to be a great magnet. Coming in the wake of the Copernican revolution, Gilbert's new model in stark contrast to the long-held, now deemed "unscientific" notion that compass needles were attracted to a loadstone mountain at the Pole, proposed that the Copernican ball-Earth actually generated magnetism from a hypothetical molten metal core, which caused a constantly moving di-polar magnetic field over the globe.
To this day Gilbert's hypothesis remains pure speculation since no one in history has ever come close to penetrating or perceiving the supposed 3950 miles to the ball-Earth's core. In reality the deepest drilling operation in history, the Russian Kola Ultradeep, after decades of work and dozens of broken drills managed to penetrate only 8 miles down, so the entire ball-Earth model taught in schools showing detailed descriptions of a crust, outer-mantle, inner-mantle, outer-core and inner-core layers are all purely speculative as we have never even broken through beyond the crust. Furthermore, there is nowhere in nature that molten metal retains any significant magnetic properties once heated past the "Curie Point," let alone create some convoluted constantly moving di-polar field as Gilbert claimed then and proponents of the globe still maintain today.
Several decades after Gilbert's De Magnete made its impression on the world, another knighted president of the Royal Society, "Sir" Isaac Newton, would write the influential "Principia Mathematica," where he proposed the concept of "gravity" to account (among other things) for how people could exist without falling off the under-side of Copernicus' ball-Earth. Coincidentally (or perhaps conspiratorially) a couple centuries later, it would be yet another royally knighted man, "Sir" Ernest Shackleton of the Royal Navy, who would allegedly complete that upside-down journey under the globe becoming the first person to reach the so-called "Southern Magnetic Pole."
Back when the Earth was perceived as a level plane, there was only one Pole, the North Pole, directly below Polaris, which was both geographically and magnetically the center-point of Earth. Due to the hypothetical globe's hypothetical di-polar magnetic core, however, there suddenly became new frontiers to discover. Not only did Earth have a geographic North Pole in the Arctic, but now its geographic antipode, the South Pole in the Antarctic. Since Gilbert's magnetic poles were caused by perpetually shifting molten metal, there now also came into existence, constantly moving Northern and Southern Magnetic Poles as well. And lastly, Earth's magnetic field was claimed asymmetrical, so that the constantly moving North/South magnetic poles were not even antipodal, meaning a straight line drawn from one to the other failed to pass through the geometric center of their globe. To account for this, two more theoretical poles known as the Geomagnetic North and Geomagnetic South Poles were also added into the convoluted mix.
With this, after centuries of failed expeditions to the Pole, the first decade of the 20th century would suddenly claim the discoveries of the Northern Magnetic Pole, the Southern Magnetic Pole, and shortly thereafter, both the Geographic and Geomagnetic North/South poles as well. This turn of the century rush to the Poles was not without its problems, however, and many explorer's supposed polar achievements during this era are now regarded even by mainstream historians as being riddled with fraud and falsehoods.
Before the alleged 20th century successes, many attempts were made to reach the North Pole during the 19th century all of which failed. In 1827 knighted British Royal Navy Rear-Admiral "Sir" William Parry reached a record 82°45′N latitude before being forced to turn back due to impassable thick ice. In 1845 another knighted British Royal Navy Officer "Sir" John Franklin and his ill-fated two-ship, 129-man crew all died during their attempt at the Pole, after becoming stuck in the ice and everyone subsequently succumbing to starvation, hypothermia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning, zinc deficiency, and/or scurvy. In 1875 yet another knighted British Royal Navy Officer, in fact, the Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Bath, Admiral "Sir" Albert Markham made an attempt at the Pole, reaching a new record 83°20′N latitude before turning back due to rampant scurvy and lack of equipment. In 1895 Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen made a record breaking 86°14′N attempt before turning back because of lack of food and supplies. Then in 1899 Duke of the Abruzzi, member of the Royal House of Savoy, and Italian Navy Admiral Prince Luigi Amedeo set another record just barely beating out the Norwegians reaching 86°34′N latitude before becoming stuck in the ice and losing two fingers to frostbite.
Finally on September 1st, 1909, Arctic explorer Frederick Cook became the first person in modern times to claim attainment of the North Pole when he cabled from the Shetland Islands after a 15-month trek back, alleging to have reached the Pole on April 21st, 1908. That day the Evening Mail headlined: "Dr. Cook Reaches North Pole," and the next day The New York Herald headlined "The North Pole is Discovered by Dr. Frederick A. Cook, Who Cables to the Herald an Exclusive Account of How He Set the American Flag on the World's Top." The news sent America and the rest of the world into a frenzy of media-fueled excitement hailing Cook as a hero.
Meanwhile, another Arctic explorer, U.S Navy Admiral Robert Peary happened to be at that very moment traveling home from his own polar expedition. Just five days after Cook's cable, on September 6th, 1909, Peary cabled from Labrador that he too had recently "Nailed the American Flag to the Pole," on April 6th, 1909, a year after Cook's claim. When informed of Cook's news, Peary cabled that Cook's claim "should not be taken seriously," as he just stood atop the Pole and found no trace of Cook or anyone else having been there. On September 7th, The New York Herald headlined, "Robert E. Peary, After 23 Year Siege, Reaches North Pole," but to Peary's utter disappointment his claim to be first to the Pole was not widely accepted. Peary immediately sprang into action obtaining and cabling confessions from Cook's Eskimo guides making the Evening Telegram headline for September 8th, 1909, "Peary Quotes Eskimos as Saying Cook was Not Out of Sight of Land," and with this began a heated rivalry between two former friends and Arctic travel companions that would eventually end with both men and their polar attainment claims being completely discredited.
“The claimed attainment of the North Pole generated enormous controversy and acrimony. Both Cook and Peary boasted that they were the first to reach the pole. Cook’s North Polar Expedition, which dates from July 3, 1907 to September 21, 1909 began from Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was sponsored by John Bradley. Cook visited Etah in northwest Greenland and then proceeded north to Anoritoq. Here he became convinced that he could reach the North Pole. Subsequently he returned to Etah in order to prepare for the journey, and solicited assistance from Inuit. They advanced again to Anoritoq, and on February 19, 1908 set out for the North Pole. Cook’s route took him and his men via Smith Sound to Cape Sabine, to Flagler Bay, and then across Ellesmere Island to Bay Fiord. From there they proceeded to Eureka Sound, and established a camp at Cape Stallworthy, located at the northern extremity of Axel Heiberg Island where most of his party remained. Cook himself set out for the Pole with two Inuit, Ahwelah and Etukishook, two sledges and twenty-six dogs. He insisted that he reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. Peary’s polar venture occurred between July 6, 1908 and September 21, 1909. It was sponsored by the Peary Arctic Club, and the party strived to reach the North Pole from Ellesmere Island. Peary’s ships, the Roosevelt and Erik, collected 22 Inuit men and 17 Inuit women in addition to 246 dogs in northwest Greenland. Winter quarters were at Cape Sheridan in northeast Ellesmere Island. After arriving there on September 5, 1908, Peary transferred stores to Cape Columbia, located on the north of the island, and the selected place from which the assault on the Pole was to be made. Peary’s polar advance commenced in February, 1909. Support parties led by Bartlett, Borup, Marvin, Macmillan and Godsell had the task of carrying provisions, establishing a trail, and providing igloos for Peary and Henson who were to lead the assault on the Pole. The support parties turned back. The last to do so was led by Bartlett who retreated on April 1, 1909 from latitude 87.47N. Peary, Henson and four Inuit continued their approach to the Pole, which they claimed to reach on April 6, 1909. A Cook/Peary controversy resulted. On September 2, 1909 Cook published his claim to have reached the Pole. Peary’s rival claim was submitted four days subsequently.” -Paul Simpson-Housley, “The Arctic, Enigmas and Myths” (120-1)
So after centuries of unsuccessful ill-fated attempts at the Pole, within the space of just 4 days, two American explorers claimed to be the first successes. Cook's journal description of his heroic arrival at the Pole reads more like a piece of poetic fiction than an actual experience, however, which has raised questions from skeptics. He wrote, “Constantly and carefully I watched my instruments in recording this final reach. Nearer and nearer they recorded our approach. Step by step my heart filled with a strange rapture of conquest. At last we step over colored fields of sparkle, climbing walls of purple and gold - finally, under skies of crystal blue, with flaming clouds, we touch the mark. The soul awakens to a definite triumph; there is sunrise within us, and all the world of night-darkened trouble fades. We are at the top of the world. The flag is flung to the frigid breezes of the North Pole. The first realization of actual victory, of reaching my lifetime’s goal, set my heart throbbing violently and my brain aglow. I felt the glory which the prophet feels in his vision, with which the poet thrills in his dream. I saw silver and crystal palaces, such as were never built by man, with turrets flaunting ‘pinions glorious, golden.’ The shifting mirages seemed like the ghosts of dead armies, magnified and transfigured, huge and spectral, moving along the horizon and bearing the wind-tossed phantoms of golden blood-stained banners. I was at a spot which was as near as possible, by usual methods of determination, five hundred and twenty miles from Svartevoeg, a spot toward which men hand striven for more than three centuries - a spot known as the North Pole, and where I stood first of white men.”
Peary's journal description of his arrival at the pole sounded more down to Earth and believable, but doubt would soon be cast on his claims as well. He wrote, “The Pole at last. The prize of three centuries. My dream and goal for twenty years. Mine at last. I cannot bring myself to realize it. It seems all so simple and commonplace. While we travelled, the sky cleared, and at the end of the journey, I was able to get a satisfactory series of observations at Columbia meridian midnight. These observations indicated that our position was then beyond the Pole … in a march of only a few hours, I had passed from the Western to the Eastern Hemisphere and had verified my position at the summit of the world. It was hard to realize that, on the first miles of this brief march, we had been travelling due North, while, on the last few miles of the same march, we had been travelling South, although we had all the time been travelling precisely in the same direction. In travelling the ice in these various directions, as I had done, I had allowed approximately ten miles for possible errors in my observations, and at some moment during these marches and countermarches, I had passed over or very near the point where the North and South and East and West blend into one.”
Thus, starting in September 1909 a huge public debate fueled by the newspapers raged over who was truly first to the North Pole with The New York Times showing unwavering support for Peary and The New York Herald doing the same for Cook. The demand of proof in the form of navigational records was issued and subsequently avoided by both sides. Cook never produced any detailed original navigation records to substantiate his polar claim, and on December 21, 1909, after examining what little evidence Cook did submit, a commission at the University of Copenhagen ruled there was no proof he had reached the Pole. Cook's Inuit guides would also testify in hand-written documents that during their final push for the Pole, they actually traveled South, not North, and never once did they travel out of sight of land! Meanwhile Peary outright refused to submit his records for the Copenhagen commission forcing them to also conclude a lack of proof for his claim.
Cook later alleged to have kept copies of his sextant navigation data and in 1911 published some, only to be exposed as having an incorrect solar diameter during his calculations. The National Geographic Society held Peary's papers for decades, refusing researchers any access to them, and when finally independently examined, were also shown to be lacking. The released documentation listed only three solar observations without giving the date, no mention of which limb of the Sun Peary observed, and claimed the star Betelgeux present when it could not have been detected by a sextant during that time of year. Peary never produced records of compass readings, observed data for steering, for his longitudinal position at any time, and for the final stage in his expedition never took latitudinal or transversal readings, and had no accompanying colleagues trained in navigation who could confirm or deny his work.
Even though Cook's own navigational data was found to be flawed, he would still publicly criticize Peary's alleged sextant readings stating, “Mr. Peary’s polar claim rests upon the impossible observations of a sun at an altitude of less than 7 degrees above the horizon. The three armchair geographers, seldom out of reach of dusty book-shelves, passed upon these worthless observations. Not one out of one hundred thousand honest sextant experts would credit such an observation as that upon which Mr. Peary’s case rests - not even in home regions, where for centuries tables for corrections had been gathered.”
Not only were Cook and Peary's testimonies dubious and navigational records unsatisfactory, but the speeds claimed on their final pushes to the Pole were also incredulous. Cook recorded on the fourth and fifth days before his support party left, that even with full sledge loads, he was able to traverse 29 and 22 miles respectively those days, around double their usual distance covered, yet his Inuit guide Etukishook claimed that they remained in the same place for two nights. Polar researcher and author Randall Osczevski in his book "Frederick Cook and the Forgotten Pole," wrote that, "Cook had needed to invent additional mileage to make up the distance he said he had covered in reaching the Pole, and to bring him back to land on a reasonable date. Some of this padding is found in distances claimed for days when they did not travel, but some could have been created by simply changing the units. Since his mileage figures came from a pedometer, it is likely that he originally recorded these figures as statute miles. Pretending that they had really been nautical miles would add 15% to the distance."
Peary's supposed speeds during his final push to the Pole were even less believable than Cook's, allegedly averaging up to an implausible 71 miles per day. His last five marches while accompanied by experienced navigator Captain Bob Bartlett averaged no more than 13 miles per day. Once his last supporting party turned back and Captain Bartlett was ordered southward, Peary's alleged speeds immediately doubled for the next five marches. Then Peary claimed during the final eight days that his speed quadrupled from a base camp to the Pole and back, covering 296 miles, 198 of them in just 4 days, giving an average of 49 miles a day. This figure, however, is before factoring many more miles of admitted detours due to navigation errors, drift, avoiding pressure ridges and open water leads, which critics claim bring the figure closer to 71. No other explorer before or since has ever claimed such ridiculous speeds. Polar researcher and author Paul Simpson-Housley wrote in his "The Arctic Enigmas and Myths," that, "those records fail to confirm that Peary reached his goal, and such observations could certainly have been faked. Peary fails to provide a detailed account in his diary. Moreover, he should have presented a well-kept log of his final approach that included checks on compass variation and on his latitude and longitude made by providing altitudes of the sun, planets and stars at various locations. Polar pack-ice is difficult terrain to traverse. The ice-drift deviates from wind direction to the right by 28 degrees to 30 degrees in the northern hemisphere at a speed of 1/50 of the wind forcing it. Peary provided no wind speeds in either his diary or published reports. It is highly likely that he would be propelled to the left of his 70 degree meridian. His desire to reach the Pole was certainly in excess of his intent to produce records. In addition, Peary’s chronometer displayed an error of ten minutes and this would have influenced his heading."
More doubt would eventually be cast on both Cook and Peary through public scrutiny. In 1906 Cook had previously claimed himself the first man to reach the summit of the tallest mountain in North America, Mount McKinley, only to be dethroned upon further investigation. It turned out the picture Cook provided as proof of his summit attainment was actually taken on a small outcrop on a ridge beside the Ruth Glacier, 19 miles away, and at only 5,338 feet high, nearly 15,000 feet lower than McKinley's true peak! Cook's sole companion during the 1906 climb, Ed Barrill, would also later sign an affidavit admitting that they had not reached the summit, including a map showing the location of what would become known as "Fake Peak," where Cook's picture was actually taken. Belmore Browne, an experienced mountaineer who assisted Cook in the weeks before his alleged summit achievement, claimed McKinley too expansive and treacherous to have allowed Cook such quick access in the time frame given. He would later call Cook untrustworthy, and state for the record that he, "knew that Dr. Cook had not climbed Mount McKinley the same way a New Yorker would know that no man could walk from the Brooklyn Bridge to Grant's tomb in ten minutes." Decades later Cook would also be indicted and eventually charged and found guilty of 14 counts of fraud for startup oil companies he promoted and was sentenced to 14 years, 9 months in prison.
As for Peary, his obsession with the Pole caused him in the first 23 years of his marriage to spend only 3 with his wife and family, missing the birth and tragic death of his son. While in the Arctic, Peary cheated on his wife with a 14 year-old Inuit girl named Aleqasina who would eventually bear him two children named Kaala and Karree. During Peary's 7 long Arctic expeditions made between 1886 and 1909, a black man named Matthew Henson was technically more responsible for their successes than Peary himself. Henson took care of the other men, dogs and supplies, spoke the Inuit language, pulled and fixed the sledges, and Henson even drag Peary himself around during their final expedition since Peary had lost 8 toes to frostbite on their previous journey and could barely walk. Even still, Peary had secretly planned to leave Henson and the Inuit guides behind for the final stint so that he could claim the Pole solely for himself. His plan never came to fruition, however, and upon realizing he would have to share the fame, Peary immediately stopped speaking to Henson, the man who had engineered his success, saved his life on a previous expedition, and remained unwaveringly loyal to him for over two decades. As Peary had once written in a letter to his mother, "I must be the peer or superior of those about me to be comfortable." Historian Fergus Fleming called Peary, "the most unpleasant man in the annals of polar exploration," and polar researcher and author Beau Riffenburgh wrote that, "He was perhaps the most self-serving, paranoid, arrogant, and mean-spirited of all nineteenth-century explorers. He was suspicious of and hateful to those he considered rivals either in actual geographical discovery or as heroic figures. He was condescending and insensitive to his subordinates, and he was ingratiating and servile to those he felt could help his quest for personal glory."
Another man preparing for a North Pole expedition in 1909 was accomplished Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Upon hearing word of Cook and Peary's alleged successes, however, Amundsen decided to turn his attention towards the Antarctic and the South Pole instead. Unsure his patrons and crew would accept this change in plans, for the next two years Amundsen lied to everyone about his true destination, telling even his entire crew that they were traveling North to the Arctic Pole right up until their ship "The Fram" was departing from their final port of call, Madeira, when he let everyone know they would actually be going to the Antarctic in search of the South Pole. After some initial insubordination ultimately everyone went ahead with his drastic change of plans. Upon reaching Antarctica, Amundsen brought 5 men and 52 dogs with him for the final push to the Pole, and instead of bringing enough food along for everyone, Amundsen had his team kill and eat over half of the dogs used to carry them there. On December 14th, 1911 they would allegedly reach the Geographic South Pole to be confirmed by Robert Falcon Scott of the British Royal Navy who just happened to be in the Antarctic about to launch his own polar expedition. Just one month after Amundsen's alleged attainment of the South Pole, Scott's team already en route would arrive and confirm Amundsen's claim.
The problem with Amundsen, Scott, and all subsequent South Polar claims, however, is the following: On the globe-Earth model, the Geographic South Pole is located at 90 degrees South latitude where all 360 degrees of longitude converge to one hypothetical point in the middle of an Antarctic continent. In reality though, the Antarctic is not a continent, but an encircling icy perimeter of unknown length, and on our planar Earth, lines of longitude only converge upon the North Pole center-point and project out straight southwards from there. One degree of latitude is approximately 68 miles and the Antarctic ice begins around 70 degrees South latitude (depending on access point), therefore no matter what meridian of longitude followed, after traveling South across the ice significantly far enough to the 90 degree mark (several hundred miles), the "Pole" has been achieved. In other words, the so-called "Geographic South Pole" is just an arbitrary point in the Antarctic, along any line of longitude, significantly far enough south, where all lines of longitude on the globe converge and become 0 degrees. For ease of transportation, supplies and navigation, all South Pole explorers just retrace their paths back to their boats, though if Earth was truly shaped like a ball, conceivably they should be able to simply continue a straight line path and come out the other side of Antarctica. No explorer on foot or by air has ever done such a South-North circumnavigation however because it is impossible, as the Earth is not a globe.
For posterity Roald Amundsen would be credited not only with being first to the Geographic South Pole, but also first to winter in the Antarctic, and then subsequent expeditions to the Arctic would claim for him titles of first through the Northwest Passage, first to cross and first to circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean, first to the Ice Pole (the Arctic Ocean point farthest from land-masses), and after widespread distrust and dispute of Cook/Peary's claims, a 1926 expedition would see Amundsen reclaim being first to the Geographic North Pole as well!
Reminiscent of the 1909 Cook/Peary controversy, however, a similar media-fueled heated debate raged in 1926 as U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd allegedly reached the Pole by plane just 3 days before Roald Amundsen did by dirigible! Both Byrd and Amundsen were aware of each other's concurrent expeditions, and due to recent advances in aviation technology, both decided to reach the Pole via air rather than land/sea as previous explorers attempted. Similar to Scott's follow-up confirmation of Amundsen's South Pole claim, the plan was for Admiral Byrd to fly over first and dump a load of hundreds of large American flags directly at the Pole, which Amundsen would then find and confirm a few days later during his own polar flight.
So on May 9th, 1926 Byrd and his co-pilot departed in their Fokker tri-motor airplane, "The Josephine Ford," from the Norwegian island Spitzbergen and attempted to fly over the Pole. Just 15 hours and 57 minutes later, including an alleged 13 minutes of circling the Pole, Byrd landed back at Spitzbergen claiming to have reached the Pole and traveled a distance of 1,535 miles. Upon return to the United States, Byrd became a national hero, promoted to the rank of Commander, and was awarded a Presidential Medal of Honor at the White House. Roald Amundsen's airship "the Norge," allegedly floated over the Pole 3 days later on May 12th, but was unable to confirm Byrd's attainment, because Byrd never ended up dropping his cargo of U.S. flags over the Pole, nor provide a public explanation of why.
At first Byrd's polar claim was widely accepted and Amundsen reduced to second-fiddle, but after new evidence came to light, and further investigations made clear, Byrd never dropped the flags because he never actually reached the Pole. The first public skepticism of Byrd began a year after his death in 1958 when Byrd's colleague, personal pilot during his South Pole flight, and helper in Spitzbergen for the North Pole flight, Bernt Balchen, published his book "Come North With Me," which questioned the feasibility of Byrd's 1926 polar claim.
Essentially, Byrd's sextant-locked 61 knot mean-speed for the first 6 1/4 hours of the flight, per his own records in a recorded 7:07 GCT sextant shot, required that to reach the Pole at the reported time he would need to have suddenly after taking the reading jumped his average speed over double from 61 to an implausible 148 knots in order to cover the final 284 miles in the alleged time allotted. In addition, once supposedly reaching the Pole and circling around it for 13 minutes, his written calculations contradictorily still claimed constant 85mph straight-line speed northward. Apologists and defenders of Byrd dismissed Balchen's objections insisting prevailing winds may have helped him along, until in 1960 Gosta Liljquist, Professor of Meteorology at University of Uppsala, examined the meteorological records and concluded there were absolutely no polar winds strong enough on May 9th, 1926 to propel Byrd so swiftly to his destination.
Another exposure of Byrd's hoax surfaced in 1971 with Richard Montague's book "Oceans, Poles, and Airmen," in which he interviewed Bernt Balchen, who claimed that Floyd Bennet, Byrd's North Pole co-pilot had confessed to him before his death that the Josephine Ford had actually developed an oil leak early in the flight, lost a motor several hundred miles from the Pole, and subsequently turned back circling out of sight of land without making an effort to reach the Pole.
The final nail in Byrd's coffin came with the 1996 release of his personal diary and papers recording the May 9th, 1926 flight. His official sextant reading typewritten in his June 22nd report to the National Geographic Society taken at 7:07:10 GCT claimed a solar altitude of 18°18'18". In his diary however, an erased but still legible recording shows his apparent observed solar altitude at 7:07:10 to have been 19°25'30". Not only this, but a scrap piece of paper found in Byrd's diary, also in his hand-writing, shows a third scribbled solar altitude for 7:07:10 as being 18°19'18". This intermediate scrap paper calculation between the diary recording and official typewritten report shows evidence of gradual doctoring of the raw data in an effort to fudge a believable figure. In addition, Byrd's official recorded sextant data was overly precise far beyond the capabilities of his or any other sextant available at the time. Dead-reckoning latitudes were recorded with 1000 times better precision than physically possible, again pointing towards an attempt to over-compensate the perceived accuracy of his inaccurate fudged data.
To summarize, Byrd's 1926 primary record includes several mysterious erasures, back and forth diary entries, confirmed fabrications and contradictions including two takeoff times, three Pole-arrival times and 7:07 sextant altitudes, and four different speeds! In documents including his diary from the time we see intermediary steps of his forging calculations for the most believable and accurate times, air speeds, distances, and solar altitudes. He never dropped the cargo of U.S. flags as intended and could not have attained the Pole at the speeds recorded.
"In brief: Byrd's diary and his typescript describe two quite different trips. Indeed, there are actually FOUR distinct trips, because the diary has three separate and contradictory sections: the sextant-observations are for a 70mph celestially-navigated trip; the radioed distances are for an 80mph dr trip; while the last-minute dr data are for an 85mph trip. But the later neat typescript claims that the mean northward speed was over 90mph. The typescript trip does not agree with ANY of the three disparate diary trips. If you are caught keeping two sets of fiscal books, you go to jail. Not even the wildest defense lawyer would try alibiing the accused by treating the differences between the two documents as exculpatory or mysterious when the whole point of the indictment IS the discrepancies. Question: did any other explorer in history leave us manuscript astronomical observations for position which grossly to his disadvantage invariably differed from his published observations?" -Dennis Rawlins, "Amundsen: Cheated and Uncheated"
Since Cook, Peary and Byrd's North Pole claims have all been found fraudulent, it is now generally accepted that Roald Amundsen's dirigible flight of May 12th, 1926 did cross the Pole, and he is credited with being the first explorer to both the South and North Poles. Even Wikipedia states that, "three prior expeditions led by Frederick Cook (1908, land), Robert Peary (1909, land) and Richard E. Byrd (1926, aerial) – were once also accepted as having reached the Pole. However, in each case later analysis of expedition data has cast doubt upon the accuracy of their claims." This is also Irish journalist Anthony Galvin's conclusion in his book, “The Great Polar Fraud: Cook, Peary and Byrd - How Three American Heroes Duped the World into Thinking They Had Reached the North Pole.”
Ever since Amundsen's dirigible "the Norge" allegedly successfully floated over the Pole, many more explorers have also continued the legacy. Norge designer and pilot Umberto Nobile along with several scientists and crew allegedly crossed the Pole a second time on May 24th, 1928 in the airship "Italia," which crashed before returning killing half the people onboard. In May 1937 the Soviet government established the world's first North Pole ice station allegedly just 13 miles from the Pole. Interestingly enough, this station was found by ice-breakers just 9 months later off the Eastern coast of Greenland, over 1700 miles away! This was explained as being caused by swift "ice drifts," which radically displaced them. In May 1945 David Cecil McKinley of the Royal Air Force claimed to flyover both the Geographic and North Magnetic Poles. The Soviet "Sever 2" expedition in May 1948 claimed to set foot on the Pole, and in May 1949 Soviets Vitali Volovich and Andrei Medvedev claimed being first to parachute to the Pole. In May 1952 U.S. Air Force Lieutenants Joseph Fletcher and William Benedict claimed the first aerial landing at the Pole. The U.S. Navy submarine U.S.S. Nautilus allegedly crossed the Pole in August 1958, and in March 1959 the U.S.S. Skate claimed first to surface at the Pole, breaking through the ice above it. An April 1969 British Trans-Arctic expedition claimed first to reach the North Pole by foot, August 1977 the Soviet icebreaker Arktika claimed first surface ship to reach the Pole, and on the list of alleged polar firsts continue from first by dogsled to first by motorcycle! In 1985, for a particularly interesting media-hyped "first," Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to stand on the summit of Mount Everest, and Neil Armstrong, the alleged first man to stand on the Moon, claimed to land a small twin-engine ski plane and stand together at the North Pole.
As is abundantly clear to anyone who has objectively studied the NASA Apollo missions, Freemason Neil Armstrong most certainly did NOT land on the Moon, so it is fair and wise to be skeptical of whether he and his royally knighted colleague "Sir" Edmund Hillary actually stood foot on the Geographic Pole as well. As for the Magnetic Poles, the North was allegedly discovered by James Clark Ross in 1831 at the Boothia Peninsula, named after his father's patron "Sir" Felix Booth. This peninsula located at 70 degrees North latitude, however, strangely placed the Magnetic Pole well over a thousand miles from the Geographic Pole. Roald Amundsen during his 1903 Arctic expedition was also credited with discovering a new position of the Magnetic North Pole just 30 miles north from where Ross claimed. It was later in 1947 allegedly found again by Canadian government scientists Paul Serson and Jack Clark, of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, who claimed the Pole had moved near Prince of Wales Island at 72 degrees North latitude. Since then the North Magnetic Pole has continued to be "discovered" time and again at random places in the Arctic following no discernable pattern. Likewise the South Magnetic Pole was first allegedly discovered by "Sir" Ernest Shackleton during his 1909 expedition, and has ever since been found randomly moving all over the Antarctic.
The idea of constantly randomly moving Magnetic Poles divorced from their Geographic counter-parts makes it conveniently impossible to independently confirm or deny polar claims by compass. In other words, since the invention of the video camera, any claim to have found the North or South Magnetic Pole, can and should be easily proven. By holding a compass and walking in a circle around the North Pole, the compass should always point directly towards it, and by walking in a circle around the South Pole, the compass should always point 180 degrees away in the opposite direction. To this day, however, no such simple experiment has been performed to prove to the public that these are truly magnetic poles at all.
Similarly, there are no videos from the Geographic Poles that provide the public with any concrete evidence that they are anywhere but some indistinct undisclosed snowy tundra. North Pole documentaries always show some man with an icicle mustache and a Garmin counting up their GPS latitude until reaching 90 degrees. There are never stellar readings made showing Polaris exactly 90 degrees above. There is no footage of the 6 months of constant day and 6 months of constant night supposed to exist at the Pole. GPS, the "Global" Positioning System, is based on a non-existent "globe" and created by the U.S. Military, so why should we trust that a GPS 90 degree north reading is truly the North Pole?
Why are the annals of Polar exploration so abundant with frauds and hoaxes? Why should we accept all these more recent Polar claims as being legitimate when the original discoveries and discoverers continue being exposed as false and liars? Why is there such an inordinate number of royal knights and Freemasons involved in Polar exploration? Admiral Byrd himself was a high-ranking Freemason from Federal Lodge No. 1 in Washington D.C. and financed by none other than fellow 33rd degree Freemason and Illuminati bloodline elite John D. Rockefeller. Roald Amundsen even had Masonic lodge No. 6-48 in Sacramento, California named after him.
If these explorers truly reached the North Pole, then where is the magnetic mountain, encircling whirlpool, four directional rivers, and surrounding inhabited islands mentioned by Adam of Bremen, Paul the Deacon, Gerald of Wales, Guido Guinizelli, Nicholas de Lynn, Jacobus Cnoyen, Gerard Mercator, John Dee, the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Shinto, Taoists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, the Norse, the Egyptians, the Persians and literally every single ancient culture on Earth? Are these all to be discounted as completely false stories with no factual impetus? And if the polar magnetic mountain truly is just fanciful mythology and non-sense, how do we account for this same ("false") concept originating and flourishing independently in nearly every ancient culture worldwide?
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