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.

Frederick A. Stokes
Peary’s book about his 1909 expedition, The North Pole, was published in September 1910. Near the end of the month, its publisher, Frederick A. Stokes, received a night letter [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
On January 28, 1915, Lillian Kiel gave testimony before the Education Committee of the House of Representatives relevant to the controversy between Cook and Peary over which, if either, explorer reached the North Pole. [...]

On September 4, 1909 Dr. Cook landed in Copenhagen to the adulation of the masses assembled along the shore of the Danish capital’s harbor to greet the explorer as he disembarked from the Hans Egede.
He was swept in a mad crush to the Meteorological Department building, where he gave a little speech from the [...]

Cook started out in the petroleum industry in Wyoming in 1917, but quickly moved on to Texas with news of the fabulous oil strikes there in 1918. He established his first petroleum company that year as The Texas Eagle Oil Co. The company was capitalized at $300,000 in February 1919. It issued [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
In February 1910, a bill, eventually known as the Bates Bill, was introduced in Congress proposing that Robert E. Peary be given the Thanks of Congress and retired with the rank of Rear [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
When Peary reached North Star Bay on August 23, 1909, according to Matt Henson, “The Jeanie was there waiting for us, and lay alongside until the next day. The Eskimos came out [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
1914 was a climactic year in the Cook-Peary saga. Cook’s congressional lobbyist, Ernest C. Rost, had managed to get several authoritative speeches under the names of several members of Congress inserted into [...]

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 [...]