Courtesy of Encarta

Robert Peary: Probably the first to reach the North Pole.

Courtesy of NASA
Apollo 13 in April 1970.

April

Spirit of adventure

On 4 April 1909, a team led by American explorer Robert Peary became the first recorded people reaching the vicinity of North Pole.

Peary, who was a U.S. Navy civil engineer, made his first trip to Greenland in 1886 with young African-American sailor Matthew Henson.

In 1891, Peary led another expedition, again with Henson. They explored the northeast of Greenland, then known as Peary Land. In 1898, Peary and Henson attempted an expedition to the North Pole. However, they got only as far as latitude 84 degrees. In a second attempt in 1906, they stopped at latitude 88 degrees, 150 miles short of their goal.

In 1909, they raced across a hundred miles of ice and reached latitude 90 degrees, the North Pole. Although it was widely acclaimed that Peary and Henson were the first people to reach the North Pole, many people argued that Peary and Henson’s calculations were flawed, so they did not arrive at the precise point of the North Pole.

About 60 years later, the moon, instead of North Pole, become the new challenge for mankind. Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission, was launched in Florida.

But 56 hours into the flight, one of the oxygen tanks on the spacecraft exploded. Normal supplies of oxygen, electricity, light and water became impossible. The astronauts on Apollo 13 decided to continue the journey to the moon, circling it before returning to the earth. The most difficult question faced by the astronauts was how to stabilise the spacecraft and its oxygen supply. With careful and precise calculations, Apollo 13 returned safely on 17 April 1970.