Thinking Sideways: Frederick A. Cook

evidently on a historical mystery bank. Some of us are, Yeah, like we did the room Stone, Yeah, that was mine even, Yeah, yeah, we really have That was a scary one. We're gonna we're gonna deal some killing soon. Yeah. Yeah. From my from my most my last one that we just did, I was I was like, you know, knife edge, do I do it? Disappearance to a murder? I was, And I was leading heavily towards towards murder knife Edge. So the next one, I think it's gonna be a real bloody,

disgusting murder. Sweet, Well, let's talk about this non bloody, non murder story. The mystery. We're going to talk about today is did Frederick Cook make it to the North Pole to be the first man in recorded history to make it there? Um, Now, before we get into story, of course, as normal, we got this from one of our listeners, because you guys suggest so many great stories. Yes, yes, thanks listeners. We got this one from Dawn. Thanks. I can't remember if done was on Facebook or email, but

thank you, don regardless of how you sent it into us. Yeah, and that the other weird thing about trying to reach be the first person to reach the North Pole is how do you prove it? You know, you can't plan a flag there, you can't. And yeah, we're gonna go into some of that. But but part of what makes this mystery so weird is that Frederick Cook, when he came back, he shortly thereafter discovered that he wasn't the only one claiming to have reached the North Pole at

the same time. Basically, there's a guide. I know, Devan's gonna laugh because she's been laughing all day. But according to the history books, the man to reach the North Pole first was Rear Admiral Robert Perry. I don't think he did. Yeah, it's I've got my opinions. But I'm gonna hold that till we get through all of this. So let's talk about Mr Cook. Captain Cook, not Captain Cook. Frederick Cook was born in New York in eighteen sixty five, and he grew up. He became a surgeon. He almost

immediately started exploring. He kind of had the bug. Initially, he wasn't really big on the idea, but his wife and child they died in childbirth and he wanted to get away and it was a great excuse, and so he started going on expeditions. Initially he was serving as the surgeon of the team that he would go with, and then after several years started making his or getting his own expeditions set up and then finding people to finance it, and he'd go out in the world. And

his first expedition was with Robert Perry. It was with Robert Perry. They were actually on better terms once upon a time. Yes, they were um and and you know that's the thing is it was the two Arctic expedition is the one that he went on with Perry. But and yeah, there was no bad blood between him. Actually, I'm pretty sure that if I remember correctly, Cook saved his life. He did because he broke because Perry broke

his legs so badly. Yeah, well there was that time, and also the time that Perry was kind of lost or around up there, and oh yeah, and he when he went hunted him down, hutting him down and treated him for sickness and brought him back. So he really saved his bacon twice. Yeah. So, yeah, these guys got along. You know, they didn't have any animosity, at least in

the beginning. Though. I will say that from everything that I've read, Cook was a bit different than Perry and most of the explorers who were operating at the end of the nineteenth in the beginning of the twentieth century, right in that nine hundred time frame. Most guys they go to an area, they'd hire on a local crew, and then they would tell them what to do and ignore them. That was kind of the status quo. Cook

wasn't like that. He learned the language, he got to know the people, and he was sometimes he's more interested in the locals, or as much interested in the locals as what he was there to find, which like being a good guy or whatever. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I think I think Cook actually wasn't a decent guy despite all the bad things have been said about him. I would

agree with that absolutely. The first record that Cook wanted to set or tried to set, was in nineteen o six when he tried to be and said that he successfully was the first man to climb to the peak of Mount McKinley. You might or you might not be familiar with the name McKinley because today, officially the name is not McKinley. I believe it's Denali. Isn't but the traditional indigenous name for it, Yes, but most most folks

in the would know it as McKinley. And we're going to keep using that name because anytime you do the reading, it's always referred to that. So just to keep it because it was it was at the time. Yeah, the reason that he wanted to climb it is if you don't know McKinley, it's in the basically the middle of Alaska. It's in the is it the Denali Range? Yeah, aston it's like a national park. Yeah, but it's like and it's it's a huge mountain. It's absolutely huge. It is here.

Let me grab the number eighteen thousand feet from base to peak and The peak itself is just over twenty feet above sea level, so it's really freaking high up there mountain, and a lot of people had tried to to make it to the peak, and a lot of people would climb the lower reaches of it and then stop. I believe I think most people would go to what's called the gateway. That was the farthest they would go. But what happens. Cook says I'm going to climb this.

He takes his party, they get most of the way up, then he takes one other man with him and he climbs to what he says is the top, takes pictures, comes back and says I made it to the top, and everybody would okay, cool, great, okay, well congrats, we'll put your name in this little book we have right here of people who did things first. Yeah, but there was obviously some dispute about that later right there. That will Yeah, we're talking about this now because it does

come up later. Oh and because this is going to be important. Remember I said he took one person with him to the top of McKinley. That guy's name is Ed Barill, So remember that name because it will come up in a bit so the climb on McKinley was in nineteen o six. Did he plant a flag or anything like that when he went up there? He went up there. I've seen a photo that is him holding a flag, but he's on the tippy top peaky bit, you know, like there's not a whole lot at the

actual peak top. So I don't know that he planted the flag. There's a picture of him holding it, but I don't. I never saw anything that said he specifically planted it, but he did that nineteen o six. Then he went home and he began planning his next Arctic expedition, and the nine seven he went to Greenland, and while he was in Greenland he then announced that what he was gonna do was try to reach the North Pole. And I think he made the announcement. I want to

say it was in August of seven. He couldn't actually leave, I believe until February because that was when, Yeah, yeah, he had to, So the timing of it was very very specific. The thing that you need to know about where he left is he left from a place and I hope I get this right. A Noah talk, I believe, is how you pronounced the name of the village. It's an Inuit village in Greenland. It's on the northwest tip

of Greenland, so it's really pretty far up there. Okay. Well, the trip from that village to the actual where they say the North Pole is going to be is seven hundred miles. So it's a seven hundred mile overland journey in ice and snow and basically terrible conditions. Is what he's gonna do, Glad. I think get out For the first part of it. I think there was still like caribou or things like that were wandering around them. There there were animals around and out on the so you

could actually they were actually able to hunt. Yes they were, They weren't for part of the beginning, and it wasn't as if he took for the final bit of his race to the North Pole. He took two local Inuit with him, but he didn't just start out with those two guys. I think he left, if I remember correctly, he left as part of a bigger party, and then he and that party split ways. They were going to do something else, and then he made his run for the North Pole. The trip wasn't expected to take but

a month or two. Everybody figured Cook was gone. When a year had gone by, they figured that everybody had died. He and his companion showed back up at the village fourteen months later, looking a little worse. Yeah, absolutely worse from where. What happened is they made the run for the North Pole. They got there. According to Cook, they made it to the north Pole, and they didn't take

into consideration the movement of the ice flows. They didn't think that, I guess that they were gonna be a problem, but they totally were. They ended up hitting open water. They had to make all these detours, and they ended up south west of where they wanted to be by two or three hundred miles. Yeah, I think they were. He wasn't expecting the ice to move eastward and wind up moving westwards. And yes, that's yeah, it was. Yeah,

that's exactly. It went the opposite direction. So he's like, well, I'll just keep going straight south and it will always be okay. But everything's moving under your feet. That doesn't work. Here is the I guess the data bits that the data points it will use here for his actual trip from when they split off of that larger party, they traveled, according to Cook, three hundred and sixty miles, and they

did that in twenty four days. That comes out to an average of about fifteen miles a day, which is pretty pretty good space in the Arctic when you consider it's not smooth ice, it's gonna be ice floes that are gonna heave, it's craggy, it's nasty. I went, you know, I decided I'd go ahead and take a look and pull a Joe. I'd go on Google Earth and Google Maps and take a look at the North Pole. Well, it turns out you can't because there's nothing there. There's

no streets. And here's the problem. Unlike the South Pole, there is no land mass at the North Pole, so it's not a actual fixable point. You can't, as you said, with the top of the mountain, plant the flag. You can, but it's not gonna stay in the same thing that's to move off. Very very supposedly planted a flag. He know, well he did, and he didn't. He planted ceremonially a flag and then pulled it down, left a bit of

it in a tube and a crevasse. But he didn't actually even bother to try to leave the flag there, because that just wasn't going to do any good. That doesn't mean anything. But the point is it's constantly It's like it's a moving target. As I said, though you know, of course they missed the mark when they were coming home. I found the number here. It was four hundred miles because they ended up living in a cave on what is known as Devon Island. So it's your Islandah, not

according to the Internet. That's true. App it's Steve and Joe Islands anywhere nearby, No, there isn't. But they ended up living in a cave. They barely survived off of local animals that I mean they were killing. They were hunting when they ran out of Ammo. They were hunting with spears, which is pretty hardcore with used me in the Arctic. Yeah, they managed to get back to the village. They arrived in the spring of nineteen o nine, So they left February of oh eight and arrived back fourteen

months later in oh nine. So that's a heck of a long trip, Yeah, it is. Cook would eventually make the a initial announcement that he had made it to the North Pole. That would be uh, the date that he said he got there would be the twenty second of April nineteen o eight, which means that you know, he made it there in about two months for when

he initially left, which is pretty good time. Mad I think Joe was that said, they were looking a little worse for wear, for living cough of just whatever animal they could kill, hiking and freezing conditions. Yeah, I probably at least to some degree, but they when they got back to the village. Of course, Cook wasn't just going to turn around and head home. He hung out for a while to recuperate. While he was in the village, he met a man named Harry Whitney, and they became

kind of buds. They were both English speakers. I'm sure that helped in a village where you know, it's it's Inuits, and he could speak the local language. Both of them could, but it's always nice to be able to use your native tongue. I'm sure that was something to bond over. Whitney was there on I wouldn't call it a safari, but he was on kind of a sportsman's trip. So

he had been dropped off by a ship. It was set to come back for him several months later, and he was just kind of having a good time, and he told um. He told Cook, hey, you know, I got the ship coming. If you want, you could just hook a ride with me and I'll take you back down to New York and you can go home. Should have done huh? Well, I think he probably should have yes and no because of the way things turned out.

But but Cook didn't want to wait that long, so instead he decided to book or plan out another overland journey. Need to head down the coast of Greenland by sled and go all the way to go home, or as far south as he could till he could catch a boat at one of the major lanes. What ended up happening, though, is he had two guys set up to go with him. The day before he's gonna leave, one of them got sick and so it was just gonna be Cook and

one other Inuit. And that really put him in a bind because he couldn't take all of his stuff with him, because one sled down means one sleds worth of stuff you can't pack, and you're gonna have to bring other stuff like food. He's got to bring food. So Whitney, being a good guy, said, hey, you know, if you want to leave that stuff with me. When my ship gets here, I'll totally bring it to you. No big deal.

So he left all the heavy stuff that he didn't need, so his navigational tools, like a sex stant, all of his records except for his own personal diary or his journal. I guess it wouldn't be a diary. His journal was his journal. They call it his journal. It's manly if it's a journal. You know, just because he had stars and it was pink doesn't count it. That dear diary

at every jury. Doesn't mean it was a diary. But he left all that stuff with him because it was heavy and he didn't he didn't need any navigational equipment because he was just heading down the coastline. It's pretty easy to follow the coastline. So he goes ahead, he heads south. He eventually gets home. He makes the announcement that he had done it and great. On the first September, the world learns that Frederick Cook was the first man to make it to the North Pole. He didn't just

tweet it out. He didn't tweet it out. He didn't have service there. Yeah, way up there. Can't just do that and t'll cover you up there. No, I've never tested it. It'll cover me in my house. That's where I'm going to leave cook story for the moment. But we're talking about Cook, we are, But there's another, a big player, and we need to switch gears. And we've talked about him a little bit already, and that's Robert Perry. Perry, as we had talked about before, he had made a

bunch of Arctic expeditions. You know, he'd gone with Cook, or Cook had been with him a couple of times. Perry had made if I remember the number, it's something like eight or nine attempts to get to the North Pole. Yeah, and then that eight or nine failed attempts before his last attempt, which he will learn he says was successful. Yeah, And that the reason Cook did stopped going along with him in these expeditions. Did you hear about that? He? Uh,

he wanted to sign up. But then Perry put down the requirement that nobody was allowed to write their memoirs at the expedition before he published his Yes, which is a financial reason, because of course everybody sold their story. So that means that, oh, great, I'll pay you whatever I pay you, but you can't make any actual bonus money. Until it's you know, your story is worthless pretty much.

And one of the things I think Cook was writing more about things like the locals and that kind of stuff, which wasn't even gonna step on on Perry's toes, but that you're right, that is the reason that they they did part ways. On the first of March nineteen o nine, Perry left for the North Pole. He he went ahead, he was already in the Arctic. He says, I'm gonna go. He gets his big party together, and he and this large party that he has, they had two hundred eighty

miles north heading towards the North Pole. And they didn't leave from Greenland. They left from a different location that actually longitudely put them closer to the North Pole. But he was still kind of in that same region because that evidently is where you start from the Arctic Circle. Yes. Yes. On the first of April of nineteen o nine, Perry split off from the main big group that he had with him. He took five other guys with him and they then would make the final dash for the North Pole.

They did that in six days. This was a year after Cook that he had, right, this is when Cook is still presumed missing. So, yeah, I just wanted to make sure you know. So this it is weird when you read it because yeah, technically Cook found it a year prior the before Perry ever got there. But yeah, so he's missing. So Cook, you know, Perry's like, well, nobody's got it yet, I'm going for it because that evidently was his white whale at that point, he was

everybody's white whale to do it. Um. So so he goes with these guys and they go to what Robert Perry says is the North Pole. He says, we've got the North Pole. He plants his ceremonial flag. He then, like I said, tore a strip of it, put it in a little jar and buried in gravoss and they beat feet back out of the circle. And when he got back to the party, then they go back to their launch point. Everything's hunky dory, um, except that at that point he kind of just starts a lolligag around

the areas. You know, they're steaming from place to place, they're going on a little hunting trips. They're just kind of having a good old time. He's in no hurry to get back to the civilized world. And announced that he made it to the North Pole. I would too, but maybe it was I'm basking in the fact that I finally did it, I finally achieved what I'm after all this time. I mean, I'm sorry, did you just did you say earlier that he said they were at

the North Pole? Can you clarify that? Yeah, Perry is was the only one of the six because he had the five other men with him who had the ability to navigate, that could use a sextant right right now, And and you got to remember is that and this is I'm Joe might have to help me out on this how you would navigate. But you know, you use a sextant to find to fixed points and figure out the distance between them, and as they change, you use that figure out your longitude. Is that correct, Joe? Um?

I think that's how it works. Okay, I don't. I have I don't use the sex and I don't either. But the point is is that you use it to fix on this point. And so he would have to take readings and when nothing is north of you, everything is south, that means youre at the North Pole. But he's the only one who could do it, so he's the one doing all of the readings. So he's the one that has done all of that. I'll call it

the hard math. Figure it out, isn't it? Recall something in the story around that one of his assistants was it was a black guy remember his name now, And they're just at this place and one day this this this assistant says, you know, this place has kind of a north Pole feeling to it, don't you think admiral something like? And he says, and he says, basically, yeah, I think you're I think you're out of something there, and he pulls out the flag. Yeah that that is

that what that guy says, Yeah, you're absolutely right. Um, that's not the version I know that you will read from Perry himself. He's not gonna put it that way. Well, I think in retrospect, if I were either one of these guys, cook Er Perry, I would have made sure I had several people in my party and that every

single one of them knew how to navigate. Actually, you know, the funny point is what we're getting into here is that if you haven't already figured it out from what we're leading up to, there becomes dual claim for being the first person to go to the North Pole, between Perry and Cook, the guy who ended up being the first man to reach the South Pole because of every and I think he did it in nineteen eleven, but everything that went on between these two, which it turns

into a giant public battle, this guy made sure to double triple check all kinds of things and leave all kinds of signs and all kinds of markers, like he dotted every T or he lost every T and dotted every eye that backwards that was Was that Amondson or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was his first name, And I don't I'm not positive on the pronunciation. I listened to it a couple of times and I'm still not sure. But the point is that's why he went to such extremes. Smart movies.

So Perry finally makes it to Greenland. He gets to Greenland, and when he gets there, he starts hearing rumors that Cook is Clay is back, the Cook wasn't dead, and then he's back and that hey, he's also claiming that he made it to the North Pole the year before you did. And he's like, wait a minute, that's not possible. And he ends up getting to the same village where where Whitney and Cook where it had been. And of course Whitney is still there because he's just having his

his little sportsman vacation. And Perry talks to him and says, well, what do you know about this Cook and Whitne? He had talked and Cook had told him, he said, listen, don't tell anybody until I've made my official announcement. Don't tell anybody, and so he plays dumb. He's like, well, I don't know. I mean, he he said he went north and had some expedition, but I'm not really sure.

Perry then goes on and tracks down the two Inuit that went with Cook, and he he interviews them and he basically interrogates them, and he takes away from it and he will later learn he makes all these statements about how they disagreed with what what Cook is claiming. But what you need to know is that natives of the area at that time, they didn't have an understanding of latitude and longitude. They knew distances in days. Took me a day to get there, so we walked north

for X number of days. That's all they knew. And it was Perry Perry didn't speak the language. He didn't speak the language. So there, you know, when he he's shown them maps and they're just kind of drawing on it. Whitney, who does know the language, talks to them after the fact, and he has he went on record and said they they said they didn't know what the angry white man was asking them, and what the pieces of paper that he kept pointing at meant. They didn't They just they

didn't understand. But Perry didn't care um. So once he once he figures that out, well dead lights a fire underneath him to get back to back to the main land and uh and stop all this. Here's the other thing that really really really bites cook in the rear, and that is the fact that Whitney, remember he had a ship charter to to come back and pick him up.

His ship never showed up, so that meant he'd have to wait there at the tip of Greenland for another six months before another ship would come to take him home. And he really wasn't keen on that idea. Well, being such a nice guy, Perry says, hey, we'll give you a ride home, no big deal, except when he brings all of his stuff down to the ship to load

it up. Harry specifically stops him and says, hey, is any of that stuff Cooks And he has to admit, well, yeah, there's these trunks here that belonged to him, and he says, I don't want any of that on my ship. Total jerk move, uh And I actually I do. Some of the things that go on in this story make me think that he did that very intentionally, knowing that it was gonna screw Cook over. So poor Whitney, what's he doing?

He goes over to some rocks, he digs a big hole and he buries them, so at least they're sort of secure and Cook come back for him. I mean, has anybody actually gone out looking for these things? But they've never shown up, which makes me feel that probably if anybody found him after a couple of years, they were probably destroyed any you know, I mean, they probably they would have been buried in permour frost, which is okay, but still their their trunks, not like they're totally waterproof.

There is going to be some moisture and that's going to just destroy paperworking tools in no time flat. But so we move forward. Perry now gets to work on destroying Cook's claim. He meets up with some of his supporters. What what are these guys called? They are the Yes the Periarctic Club, which is a bunch of well off dudes who's who financially back his expeditions, and they get together and they start doing some kind of devious stuff.

First off, what Perry does is he tells everybody, of course that hey, I got there, and Cook is totally full of it. He communicates that a week after Cook has said he got there, Perry's information comes through and says, hey, hey, I totally got there and be Cook's a liar and

I've got the evidence to prove it. Then when he gets back to the world, everybody says, well, great, let's see your your documents, and he says, no, I will go ahead and put out my full I will give you my fully authorized version as soon as Cook gives you his. A bit of a game of I'll show you mine if you show me yours, knowing full well that Cook can't because he made made Whitney bury it

all in the Arctic um. And I gotta say I think that between this two, not to give it away or anything, I think Cook behaved with a lot more class, and this he did. Cook ended up for the rest of his life getting the short stick. He absolutely got the short stick, though in a way it seems to have given him peace. But he really got hosed a bunch after this. Oh that was where I was headed though, was the periarctic? What the McCall it? What were they?

The club? Thank you? Yeah, his his fan club. They did. What was so common at that time and so despicable is if you remember we talked about how Cook had been the first to go all the way to the top of Mount McKinley, and he took the other gentleman,

Berrill with him. Well, for years Brill had been going around publicly saying we made it the top, it's so awesome, telling everybody about it, until suddenly on the fourth of October nine nine and AffA David from him that his sign comes out saying that they faked the whole thing and it's a total lie. What would make somebody do that. It's somewhere between five and ten thousand dollars at the time,

so they totally blatantly paid him off. They made no claim that they hadn't done it, or Burrill never ever even pretended that he hadn't been paid off. Uh that's it's equivalent to like a hundred and five grand US today, So that's a huge chunk of change. I could see why he would turn on him for the money. I mean, it's kind of despicable, what I understand. But then he bye bye, pretty much acknowledging that he was bribed to sign that after David he did. Yeah, then you know,

it doesn't that provide a little ammunation to Cook. It should have, Yeah, it should have. And I never I never could get a good clear understanding of what why Cook went about doing things the way he did. He had his journal and so he could provide that, and in the beginning the public believed him, but because of all the underhanded moves that he was pulling, they started not believing him. And I think he just he realized he was defeated and he stopped fighting. I think that's

probably what happened. For the most, probably spent a lot of time, like you know, on McKinley thing, Probably spent a lot of time just really really wishing that he had buried something at the top of the mountain. Yeah. Probably. Yeah, Well, after after that affidavit shows up that of course, this is where Perry comes out with his account of what cooks Inuits Inuit h what would they wouldn't be companions?

I was, I couldn't think of the right word from his companions quote unquote said about him and what the route that they took um. I won't go into detail, but basically they, according to him, sketched out this completely different route, meaning that Cook just took him kind of in a circle and in a completely the wrong direction intentionally. It's what this is making it out to be. Did Whitney ever show his head again? No? No, oh not really. I mean Whitney came out and said, hey, I had

to do this. He publicly said I had to do this. This is what Perry made me do. Stuff behind, leaving the stuff behind. And he you know, he said that Cook had told him that he had made it to the North Pole. But it's second hand information. Yeah, you don't know, but that's but but he had overheard the conversation when Perry was interrogating the two Anuits, right, correct? And so did he ever show up and say, hey, no that the Innuits did not say this to Perry.

He's lying we we know that there are written accounts of it. I I get, I don't. I don't know the exact interaction of did he show up as some legal proceeding or something, because it really was only one legal proceeding and by that time that happened, it was way too late and so it may have been wasted breath. Or maybe he was on SARI again again. Yeah, probably,

I think probably. The nail that really kind of sealed the coffin for Cook, though, was the National Geographic Society, because they had they were a big backer of Perry. They loved him, they were, you know, totally supported him, always published his stuff. He was he drew in people for them. They went ahead and they immediately said that Perry was right and Cook was wrong. And then later on they set up a committee to go ahead and investigate the whole thing, which, of course, because there was

no papers from Cook, that was easy. They went ahead and checked out Perry's story. They didn't matter of three days, that's all it took for them to go ahead and figure ferry story. This committee was like mostly his friends. Yes, two of the people he knew extremely well, and one of them said that I think he came out and said that he was the skeptic. He was a total skeptic. But I get the feeling. He also knew Perry as well personally. They all knew him personally, so it was

totally inside job. And that really was the end of it. And for years and years and years, everybody learned that Robert Perry went ahead and made it to the North Pole, and he was the first one. And nobody really knows who Cook is. He's not really in any of the history books. He's just one little footnote because of this schmear campaign, the campaign absolute mud flinging contest. Yeah, was not a classic guy. But that is That is the end of our story, which means we are now into

the theory section. So this is really it's it's three simple theories. There's the only three headings here, and the first one is, of course that Cook made it there before Perry. We don't have any documents to back this up, but he was one of the first or he was the first person to ever describe the frozen polar ce uh you know, as being in continuous motion um and

at eighty eight degrees north. The fact that it was he basically encountered a giant, flat topped, as he described it, ice island that was higher and thicker than the sea ice surround it. Yeah, and that was something that was backed up by later explorers into the area. They found the same thing. Yeah, Perry never ever that I know of, makes any mention of that. Of course, if you want a different route, he could have missed it. And absolutely true.

Perry or Cook excused me, also seemed to be pretty good at his navigation. I mean, he knew how to use the sex, and he had been guiding himself for a while on these kind of Arctic things or expeditions things expeditions. I don't know why I said things stream of consciousness here and he'd stopped. But overall, as you said, he's Joe, he seemed to be a pretty honest guy, and he didn't seem to be the kind of guy that would just to to grab glory say that he

did something. Yeah. That's my personal impression. Yeah, And it's my impression too, is that Cook had a much deeper sense of honor than Harry had, and that he wouldn't have deliberately faked a gentleman's own. There was, Yeah, there was, I think there was some question that he was making mistakes in his navigation, which is entirely possible, entirely, Yeah, it is entirely possible and quite possibly probably true even but if they were honest mistakes, so he might have

honestly thought that he was at the North Pole. Yeah, and I gotta tell you, there's an easier way than using a sextant. He just laying the ground looking straight up, and when the when the north Star is right over you there with the North Pole nothing to it. Not easy, Yeah, it's easy. Yeah, yeah, dude, if only they had known that, this whole thing would have been solved day. On my back the north Star was directly above me. There you go, I felt really north North Pole. Yeah yeah, Okay, we're

gonna let that go. Our next our next theory is, of course, that Frederick Cooke faked the entire thing. The quote unquote loss of all of his data, well that means that we can't confirm that he really did it, And it could be that if we had gotten his records, we didn't figured out quite easily that he was full of it and that he didn't know what he was doing.

So there is that absolute possibility I mean, you also got to think about the fact this guy was lost for a year in the Arctic, and when he got back to his starting point, he could have said, you know what, I survived, that I deserve something for going through all that crap. I'm going to say that I got there because I've earned it, or you know, for all I know, we got there. Yeah, and intentionally, you know, directly knowing that he was pretty sure that he didn't

actually doing Yeah, that's completely plausible. Um. One thing, and again this is this my lack of understanding of the sextant. Though I've read about it so many times, it's still

just doesn't sink in. One of the things that his detractors will point out is the fact that trying to use a sextant at that time of the year is gonna be not exactly reliable because you a lot of times you use the sun as a reference point, but the sun was so low in the horizon all the time that it's basically a useless point to to fix two. But the UH and I have no idea how often they had clear days. You could also use stars. That's a good point. And and I haven't seen any data.

I mean none of us have actually that says was it cloudy or was it clear when they were making that final drive. If it was clear, it totally makes sense. But this information gives me the impression that it wasn't clear days and so he was fixing his position based on the sun. Yeah, it would be h it would be hard if it was cloudy and the sun the horizon. Well, yeah, yeah, it's not. You know, I mean you've we've all seen the sun go down and it's on the horizon and

it's kind of it's not exactly a fix. It's not because of the atmosphere. It's not going to look or be where it actually is. It's going to have the distortion issue. Final theory, they both either intentionally or not faked it. Both Perry and Cook didn't get to the North Pole, and both of them probably knew it. That's

that's what this theory is getting at. Okay, well, we've we've already talked about Cook, So I think probably we need to talk about the second half of this, which is Perry turns out there's problems with the writings that he left behind his data from the trip. Now, if you remember I said that he wouldn't release anything, or hardly anything, just very basic details. Eventually that his papers would get released about a decade and a half ago, that's how long they were under wraps before almost a

hundred years now. The National Geographic Society had them and they had looked at them, but they didn't release them. And it wasn't until about ten or fifteen years ago that they finally were put out and people could really really analyze them. And well, it turns out that his numbers didn't exactly work. People have tried to trace the route based on what he had and it doesn't work. So he was probably about a hundred miles south of the North Pole. Yeah, and that's interesting that they wouldn't

release him. But he had a lot of buddies in the NGS. Didn't he he did. He did, That's why they didn't release him. He is the other really hinky thing. And I don't know why this this flu but we in the beginning, Devon was laughing at Rear Admiral because that was the status that was bestowed upon him by the U S House of Representatives. They gave him the title.

There was well, there was an act that was passed through that and then Congress that gave an act how do you become a rear admiral that it's it's an it's an honorific okay, So it's like it's it's an honorary title. So he was never like, you know, he never he didn't work his way up to the rank. They gave him an honorary title. Was he ever even in the navy. He might have, actually he might have been at one point. But the point is he was

given this title. But one of the things that had to happen first was he had to go and and talk to a Naval Affairs subcommittee, and he had to give them some of his stuff to look at, and he gave them his journal that he said he had used on his entire trip to the North Pole. Here's the thing. When these guys are are up in the North Pole, it's not like they're packing, you know, kale and carrots and all these great veggies to eat. They're

eating what they can. And one of the things that Arctic explorers in the day took with them is what is called pemmican. Kind of looks gross. It's a greasy mix of fat and meat all pressed together. It's kind of like jerky like you see it kind of in a ball sometimes a sort of flat cakes hockey. Yeah, if you've ever picked up greasy meats and eating them by hand, you know how much of that stuff gets

on your fingers. Now, then combine that with the fact that they're in the Arctic, it's not like they can wash their hands off and their stuff off. That the fingerprints of that stuff should be on every thing. His journal was pristine, to the point that the subcommittee asked him about it, and he stood by the fact of Nope, that's it. That's the one I used. It totally is and they just kind of shined it on and let

it go through. So this is they actually swore because you know, if you if you were totally b essay, I think what I would have said is, you know it was it was such a disgusting mess that I just copied the whole thing over to it to a new book. Yeah, that's what's I would have told him. Yeah, I mean that, and nobody probably would have said anything if he had said, listen, the other one is kind of going. You know, it's going a little off now because all that Greece. Yeah, it's a little rancid, so

I had to transfer it. They probably wouldn't have worried about that. Yeah, but the um this was way back in the day though, right, and then that and did that book? Did that journal go back to the National Geographic Society or did Perry keep it? I'm not positive Perry's papers are in more than one place, and I don't know who holds that journal. Sure somebody somewhere has got probably. There's also some issues with the speed that Perry said he traveled. Basically, he kind of set some

land records. He really did. He set some land records so that he and his five companions, what is it they they traveled each day they traveled twenty five miles, twenty miles, twenty miles miles, and then forty miles final day. They traveled forty miles in that final day to make their destination. That's twenty six miles a day in the Arctic on foot bit fast, right, Oh yeah, yeah, Cook

was averaging fifty miles, which is still pretty good. But yeah, you want to you want to hear my favorite detractor

of of Perry. This is my absolute face favorite, and that is there is a man by the name of Marshall B. Gardner, and he wrote a book called A Journey to the Earth's Interior, which is all a hollow Earth book, all about the fact that the Earth is actually hollow, and he says that there is no way that either man actually made it to the North Pole, because as they went north, they would have discovered that the temperature was rising, the ice was melting, and it

was gonna be open sea because the sun's beams are all focused at the North Pole. And of course if they had gotten on a boat, they would have gone to the North Pole and discovered the entry to the hollow Earth and then been able to explore that. So that obviously is why neither man actually made it to the North Pole. Of course that makes sense. I don't understand fast well, but uh so, I guess that's one

of the reasons. Then if the National Geographics Society eventually went back and looked at his and declared that he didn't actually make it, improve it yeah, yeah, it's yeah. They they went from totally to totally did it you made it to the North Pole? Claim is unproven. Yeah. Now, of course I still left Cook's claim as disproven because he couldn't he didn't have anything, so they said, well, you're totally making it up. Everything support this claim, so

we're just going to throw it out. If I was going to believe one of them, I would believe Cook. Yeah. Well, you know. And the thing is, here's the great thing about Cook his claim to Mount McKinley. Everybody was saying that his pictures were of different areas of the mountain, not pass what is called the Gateway, which is the final ascent. People have started looking at his writing and there was actually a Russian team that followed his route based on his writing, and it turns out they made

it to the peak. Yeah, there's there was. People have actually duplicated his route. It's a completely unconventional or unstandard way to go to the top, and that's why most people seem to have thrown it out. But it appears that he was telling the truth on that, which is why I'm inclined to believe he probably, at least to the best of his knowledge, was telling the truth about getting to the North Pole too. Yeah. So I mean, personally, yeah,

I I think he did it, you know, super close. Anyway, I don't think I think officially the first man to make it to the North Pole. It didn't happen until it's a guy on skis, and I want to say it was in the nineteen eighties that he did it, and he was supported the whole way by air drops of supplies. That's the only way that this guy managed to do it. Um And of course the air drops helped figure out if he's really But you know, so it's it wasn't an easy thing to get to. No,

it's not. That's nothing. It's something I probably wouldn't even try to get to. But yeah, I mean a lot of these guys like that, they have you know, they have some pretty rough times. Like it was months ago that I read Endurance by F. A. Worsley, who was, oh, yeah, that's about about Ernest Shackleton and his try his his attempt to get to the South Pole. And that's an amazing story. I'd highly recommend that story, by the way. And I know we're talking to the other end of

the earth, but it's kind of a similar thing. And we're talking sleds and dogs and ships crushed in the ice and and you know, some tales of of incredible survival and these guys wants you an amazing set of adventures. Well, I mean, over the years, there's countless people have died trying to get to those places. So it's it is, it's like it's the what I called it earlier. It's kind of the white whale is I'm going to be

the one who gets it. And that could be why some of these guys say, to hell with it, I'm gonna lie, because I've tried so hard I deserve it. Yeah. I still think that Cook probably thought he got there, and I think Perry knew well as a lying jerk, that he didn't get there, but couldn't. I couldn't admit that he had failed yet again, and so went on that that nasty little smear campaign that he launched. Yeah.

And then and by the way, when he when he went public with this whole thing about the UNU, he said, they just want put one out a few miles and then just sort of circled around and came back. Well, that's obviously a lie. They didn't circle around, but they went a totally wrong way. Yeah, but they didn't. Yeah, but you know, if they had just like sort of gone out there intending to fake it, and you know, and then decided to ask girl let's go back home. Well,

why were they gone for fourteen months? Got lost? Yeah, I guess I cut off on the ice. Yeah. Yeah, they were never really lost. No, they knew what they were because this floating ice flow, and they figured it out, and he figured out where they were. That's how he knew how to navigate back to the village. Yeah. He uh, you know, that was his his big mistake though he should have taken it, should have taken a few more people with them, and he should have made sure everybody

in the expedition knew how to use a secctant. Again, that's why heading to the South Pole was so well documented, to make sure that didn't happen. Smart move there. Yeah, but that's all I've got. It sounds like year in agreement with me on it, Joe. I think that's it's quite quite likely that Perry lied. And I think it's quite likely, well, I know he lied about some stuff. Yeah, he was not an honorable guy. It was no, No,

it was not. I think it's quite possible that Cook actually did make it to the North Pole or somewhere very close to where he you know, maybe through errors in navigation. You know, I felt that he was on the exact spot. I think he was pretty damn close. If he wasn't actually on the exact spot, I agree, I think yeah, I think Perry seems like a jerk. I saw you starting to use the letter A and then UM, and I think Cook, you know you really kind of He's a sympathetic character. You wanna be on

his side? Yeah, And you know the hard part for Cook, Remember how I told you he kind of got He kind of got the short in the stick. For the rest of his life he got I think it was about ten years later. He he started investing in oil fields and he was sending correspondence and projecting the value

of the output of his his oil field. And simple version is that somebody challenged it and then they charged him with mail fraud for fraudulent claims about the value of something, and they sent him to jail for like ten years, which was everybody couldn't believe what a harsh judgment it was. The judge apparently the prosecutor thought it was overly harsh, but the judge was, guess what a friend to Perry. And the worst part is turns out that part of Cook's oil field was on one of

the giant oil reserves. Yeah, he wasn't lying at all, he was. He actually undercut the amount, he was shy the production. Yeah, for this, he gets, you know, a good long a good long stay in jail. But part

of that due to Perry. Yeah. Well, and that's that's the thing is I almost wonder if it was a good thing for him, because he said that being in prison, he was a surgeon, he was a doctor in jail, in prison, and it was very peaceful for him and very calming, and he could just get away from all the crap that was going on because he can never outrun it. So it might have, in a way been the best thing that Perry could have done for him. Yeah. Yeah, Still,

the poor guy really suffered. I think. Yeah, I feel bad. Okay, we settled that, my mistress. We totally well, at least settled it. You want to talk about now, Um, how about our website? Oh yeah, because we've got one of those, Yes, we do. It's at Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Were of course, this episode and all other episodes around the website gonna have links to research on their If you're not listening to us on the website, you can always

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