The headline-grabbing debate over which explorer reached the North Pole soonest

This reminds me. One time on vacation during winter break back in college, I was in a second-hand bookstore in the heart of Vermont. I was bored to death waiting for my bus back to school and aimlessly navigating the aisles and came across this faded hardcover, an old historical account of amateur explorers from the midwest in the late 1800s, and it turned out to be by a local who had an obsession with the arctic.

The first few pages were filled with meticulous notes about preparations, sketches of sleds and diagrams detailing his intended route. there were lists of provisions, calculations of distances, and references to navigation techniques. The calculus that goes into these sorts of expeditions is really interesting and something I'd like to learn more about. But anyway I am rememmbering this because this local had a fierce rivalry with another aspiring explorer from a neighboring town. Their rivalry was spread out over letters and town meetings was documented in this book

I loved a particular account where one of the explorers crashed a party the other explorer had thrown to gather funds for his expedition. I guess fueled by a mix of jealousy and alcohol he confessed to drinking, the former ended up challenging his rival to a duel right then and there and getting beaten and left for dead. I think he never made it to the pole and ended up dying in an accident before it even happened.

But the spirit of their rivalry and the lengths they went to one-up each other is so much like this Cook-Peary saga.

The passion, the pride, the need for validation – it was all there. And while cook and peary's story was magnified by the global media and shaped historical records, it looks like similar dramas have played out on a smaller scale, in small towns, documented in these tomes that languish mostly forgotten on the lower shelves of used bookstores. Kinda gives Ozymandias vibes

Frederick Cook was quite a guy. He also claimed to have made the first ascent of Mt. McKinley (or if you prefer, Denali).

Funny what people can obsess about, I couldn't care less.