From Hero to Humbug

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
The evidence concerning “The Eskimo Testimony” was the subject of this blog for more than a year and ran to 18 parts, concluding with the post for April 2024. Since then the [...]

Exactly 115 years ago today, as mentioned in the last post, Frederick Cook was the first American to be offered the Freedom of the City of New York. Only the Prince of Prussia and Charles Dickens before him had been accorded this honor, and it was protested by the pro-Peary interests. General Thomas [...]

In the wake of his triumphal return to New York, and despite Peary’s charges that Cook’s prior claim to the North Pole was a “gold brick,” the Arctic Club of America decided on a gala dinner in his honor to be held on September 23 at the Waldorf-Astoria. A grand assembly of 1,185 guests [...]

Not long after returning to the United States from nearly a year of “exile,” in December 1910, Dr. Cook went to Chicago, then the center of the film industry.
The result was the formation of the North Pole Picture Co. Its production, The Truth about the North Pole, in which Cook played himself, was [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.

This is how I portrayed Dr. Cook’s stop at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands to announce his claim to have attained the North Pole on September 1, 1909 in my book, Cook & [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
Peary had given his longtime expedition member, Matthew A. Henson, the cold shoulder ever since their “arrival” at what Peary claimed was the North Pole. Henson reported Peary practically said nothing to [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.

In the latest book on the Polar Controversy, author Darrell Hartman focuses on the Press’ role in making the 1909 dispute between Cook and Peary a national obsession. He agrees with me [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
There can be no doubt that Frederick Cook intended to make a real attempt to reach the North Pole. Numerous accounts by others recall him saying it was his “life’s ambition.” When [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
We have now come to the penultimate installment of this series, having examined the first leg of Cook’s journey from Annoatok to Cape Thomas Hubbard and the third leg of his journey from his [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
Immediately upon the publication of Peary’s statement about what Cook’s Inuit said appeared, partisans of both sides noticed the extreme differences in the route on Peary’s map compared to the one published by Cook [...]