Why Go to the North Pole?

Mental Floss Presents: The Quest for the North Pole

The North Pole has attracted explorers for centuries. They faced an unbelievably harsh and dangerous climate, lost fingers and toes to frostbite, or even cut off their own body parts to survive. Many adventurers risked everything to claim it—but why? In our first episode, we’ll meet the generations of explorers who searched for passages to Asia, like Martin Frobisher, William Barents, and Henry Hudson. And we’ll examine how, by the mid-19th century, those quests had turned into an all-out race to the North Pole led by Robert Peary and Matthew Henson.

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