By the turn of the 20th century, little of Earth's surface remained unexplored by humans. Chief among the final frontiers to be traversed and charted were the polar regions. From 1907 to 1909, the desire to push the boundaries of human exploration pitted two former friends and veteran polar explorers-Americans Frederick A. Cook and Robert E. Peary-against each other in a fierce rivalry to be the first to cross the frozen Arctic to reach the North Pole. Cook, who studied medicine and worked as a physician, began his Arctic expedition in 1907 and claimed to have reached the pole first, in April 1908, but his failure to provide sufficient evidence in the form of sextant measurements and other data cast doubt on his claim. Peary's expedition began in February 1909, and he claimed to have reached the pole on April 6 of that year. Further confounding matters, Cook did not make his claim publicly until September 1, 1909, just five days before Peary, a commander in the U.S. Navy, emerged from the Arctic to lay claim to victory. While the press prominently lauded Cook initially, the narrative quickly changed in Peary's favor, although recent investigations have called into question the veracity of his claim.
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