[HN Gopher] The headline-grabbing debate over which explorer rea...
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       The headline-grabbing debate over which explorer reached the North
       Pole soonest
        
       Author : samclemens
       Score  : 9 points
       Date   : 2023-08-20 22:50 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | canvascritic wrote:
       | 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
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Funny what people can obsess about, I couldn't care less.
        
         | hnburnsy wrote:
         | The story is really about the media not the explorers and the
         | media loves to cover themselves.
        
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       (page generated 2023-08-21 23:02 UTC)