| 20 weeks 8 hours 42 min ago Bowdoin honors alum who discovered North Pole
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(Marnie MacLean, NECN: Brunswick, Maine) - It has been nearly 100 years since Admiral Robert Peary set off on the journey of a lifetime to discover the North Pole. His amazing achievement is being honored with a new exhibit at his alma mater, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.
It's time for some last minute touch ups before the public is invited in to see the new exhibit chronicling Robert Peary’s quest to reach the North pole. The Peary-Macmillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College has brought together more than three hundred artifacts and photos, some of which have never been seen publicly before.
Susan Kaplan, Museum Director: "We have opened this exhibit a year in advance, to awaken interest and appreciation of the man and the people who assisted him in his endeavors to get to the North Pole."
When Peary set out on his journey in 1908 he was part of a competition among nations to reach the North Pole. Different countries hoped they would have the right to claim any land that might be there.
Kaplan: "No one knew what was there...we knew more about what the moon was like than people
knew about what the north pole was like."
Peary was an explorer...and inventor. He designed his own boat for the trip..."The Roosevelt" was the first icebreaker ever built. The boat could only go so far, and then Peary and his team traveled by sleds like this one, with dog teams. It took nearly a year...but Peary reached the pole and placed this flag
on the ice. He recalled the moment in his personal journal: "The pole at last!" he would write, "The prize of three centuries, my dream and ambition for 28 years, mine at last."
Instead of coming home triumphant after his discovery, Peary came home to controversy..Dr. Robert cook claimed he had discovered the North Pole a year before Peary.
The long running argument of who was first, continues even today. And ironically, though the North Pole didn't have any land to claim, it is once again considered a big prize to be won.
Kaplan: "Today there is another land grab, but because people realize there are oil and
gas reserves under the ocean floor....that all the nations around the Arctic Ocean are competing for."
The new exhibit at Bowdoin will give people a chance to see close-up how the first competition for the North Pole captured the spirit of a true explorer.
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