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• 
  

• 
  Antarctic
  The Antarctic ( /ænˈtɑrktɪk/ or  /ænˈtɑrtɪk/) is a polar region, specifically the region around the Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica and the ice shelves, waters, and island territories in the Southern Ocean situated south of the Antarctic Convergence. The region covers some 20% of the Southern Hemisphere, of which 5.5% (14 million km²) is the surface area of the continent itself.
  The maritime part of the region constitutes the area of application of the international Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), where for technical reasons the Convention uses an approximation of the Convergence line by means of a line joining specified points along parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude. The implementation of the Convention is managed through an international Commission headquartered in Hobart, Australia by an efficient system of annual fishing quotas, licenses and international inspectors on the fishing vessels, as well as satellite surveillance.
  
  wn.com/Antarctic
• 
  Antarctica
  Antarctica
  
  This map uses an orthographic projection, near-polar aspect. The South Pole is near the center, where longitudinal lines converge.
  Antarctica (ⁱ/æntˈɑrtɨkə/ or /ænˈtɑːktɨkə/) is Earth's southernmost continent, containing the geographic South Pole. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14.0 million km² (5.4 million sq mi), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages at least 1 mile (1.6 km) in thickness.
  Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Antarctica is considered a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm (8 inches) along the coast and far less inland. The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89 °C (−129 °F). There are no permanent human residents, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Only cold-adapted organisms survive there, including many types of algae, animals (for example mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades), bacteria, fungi, plants, and protista. Vegetation where it occurs is tundra.
  
  wn.com/Antarctica
• 
  Arctic Ocean
  The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, although some oceanographers call it the Arctic Mediterranean Sea or simply the Arctic Sea, classifying it as one of the mediterranean seas of the Atlantic Ocean. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be seen as the northernmost part of the all-encompassing World Ocean.
  Almost completely surrounded by Eurasia and North America, the Arctic Ocean is partly covered by sea ice throughout the year (and almost completely in winter). The Arctic Ocean's temperature and salinity vary seasonally as the ice cover melts and freezes; its salinity is the lowest on average of the five major oceans, due to low evaporation, heavy freshwater inflow from rivers and streams, and limited connection and outflow to surrounding oceanic waters with higher salinities. The summer shrinking of the ice has been quoted at 50%. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) uses satellite data to provide a daily record of Arctic sea ice cover and the rate of melting compared to an average period and specific past years.
  
  wn.com/Arctic_Ocean
• Brusilov Expedition
  The Brusilov Expedition (Russian: Экспедиция Брусилова, Ekspeditsiya Brusilova) was a Russian maritime expedition to the Arctic led by Captain Georgy Brusilov, which set out in 1912 to explore and map a route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific via a northeast passage known as the Northern Sea Route. The expedition was ill-planned and ill-executed by Brusilov, and disappeared without trace. Earlier searches were unsuccessful, and its fate was not known until 2010.
  The expedition set out from Alexandrovsk on August 28, 1912, so late in the summer that in October the Saint Anna became locked in the polar ice of the Kara Sea off the Yamal Peninsula. Supplies were abundant, and officers and crew prepared themselves for wintering over, hoping to be freed in the following year's thaw.
  However, during 1913 the sea remained completely frozen. By early 1914 the Svyataya Anna had drifted far north in lazy zigzags with the Arctic ice. In the summer that year she reached 83° of latitude, NW of Franz Josef Land, and had no chance to be freed in 1914 either. To make matters worse, captain and crew had succumbed to scurvy. Navigator and second-in-command Valerian Albanov, believing that their position was hopeless, requested permission from Captain Brusilov to be relieved from his duties as second-in-command in order to leave the ship and attempt to return to civilization on foot. Albanov hoped to reach Eva Island in Hvidtenland, the northeastermost island of Franz Josef Land. He used Fridtjof Nansen's inaccurate map, full of dotted lines where the archipelago was still unexplored. After a gruesome ordeal, Albanov and Alexander Konrad, one of the crewmen of the Svyataya Anna, finally made it back to Russia. They were the only two survivors. One of the members of the expedition was the second Russian woman to go to the Arctic, Yerminia Zhdanko, a 22-year-old nurse and daughter of a general who was a hero in the Russo-Japanese War.
  
  wn.com/Brusilov_Expedition
• 
  Cape Columbia
  Cape Columbia is the northernmost point of land of Canada, located on Ellesmere Island in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut. It marks the westernmost coastal point of Lincoln Sea in the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's northernmost point of land outside Greenland and the distance to the North Pole is 769 km (478 mi).
  
  
  In 1876, Pelham Aldrich was the first European to reach Cape Columbia. He was a lieutenant with the expedition (1875-76) of British explorer George Nares.
  Robert Peary chose the Cape as the location for the northernmost depot of his final attempt to reach the Pole (1909), not only for its proximity but because it lay far enough west to be out of the ice current setting down Robeson Channel. From Cape Columbia his party planned to strike straight north over the ice of the Arctic Sea. His winter camp and ship the Roosevelt were situated some 90 mi (140 km) southeast, at Cape Sheridan near Alert.
  Peary's sledge divisions left the Roosevelt from February 15 to 22, 1909, rendezvoused at Cape Columbia, and on March 1 the expedition left Cape Columbia, heading across the Arctic Ocean for the Pole. The 84th parallel was crossed on March 18, the 86th on March 23. The final position reached by Peary is doubtful, as the speeds he claimed after departure of the last independent witness are suspicious at best. Peary returned to land at Cape Columbia again on April 23.
  
  wn.com/Cape_Columbia
• 
  Discovery Hut
  Discovery Hut was built by Robert Falcon Scott during the Discovery Expedition of 1901–1904 in 1902 and is located at Hut Point on Ross Island by McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Visitors to Antarctica, arriving at either the US Base at McMurdo or New Zealand's Scott Base are likely to encounter Discovery Hut as all three are located on Hut Point. Discovery Hut is just 300m from McMurdo Base.
  Some confusion arises because Discovery Hut can correctly be referred to as Scott's Hut, in that his expedition built it, and it was his base 'ashore' during the 1901–1904 expedition. But the title 'Scott's Hut' correctly belongs to the building erected in 1911 at Cape Evans.
  Discovery Hut was designed by Professor Gregory, (appointed as leader of the scientific staff, he resigned before the Discovery headed south) and prefabricated by James Moore of Sydney (cost: £360.14.5d) before being brought south by ship. It is essentially square, with verandas on three sides. The pyramidal roof is supported by a central post. Insulation was provided by felt placed between the inner and outer wood plank walls. This was found to be insufficient, and the hut was difficult to keep warm.
  
  wn.com/Discovery_Hut
• 
  Edith Ronne
  Edith "Jackie" Ronne (born October 13, 1919 - June 14, 2009) was an American explorer of Antarctica and the first woman in the world to be a working member of an Antarctic expedition. She is also the namesake of the Ronne Ice Shelf.
  She was born October 13, 1919, in Baltimore, Maryland and received a degree in history from George Washington University. She married Finn Ronne on March 18, 1941, and on the expedition of 1946–1948 that her husband commanded, she became the first American woman to set foot on the Antarctic continent. She and Jennie Darlington, the wife of the expedition's chief pilot, became the first women to overwinter in Antarctica. They spent 15 months together with 21 other members of the expedition in a small station they had set up on Stonington Island in Marguerite Bay.
  As the expedition's recorder & historian, Ronne wrote the news releases for the North American Newspaper Alliance. She also kept a daily history of the expedition's accomplishments, which formed the basis for her husband's book, Antarctic Conquest, published by Putnam in 1949, as well as making routine tidal and seismographic observations.
  
  wn.com/Edith_Ronne
• 
  Fram
  Fram ("Forward") is a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912. It was designed and built by the Norwegian shipwright Colin Archer for Fridtjof Nansen's 1893 Arctic expedition in which Fram was supposed to freeze into the Arctic ice sheet and float with it over the North Pole.
  Fram is said to have sailed farther north (85°57'N) and farther south (78°41'S) than any other wooden ship. Fram is preserved at the Fram Museum in Oslo, Norway.
  Nansen's ambition was to explore the Arctic farther north than anyone else. To do that, he would have to deal with a problem that many sailing on the polar ocean had encountered before him: the freezing ice could crush a ship. Nansen's idea was to build a ship that could survive the pressure, not by pure strength, but because it would be of a shape designed to let the ice push the ship up, so it would "float" on top of the ice.
  
  wn.com/Fram
• Framheim
  Framheim was the name of explorer Roald Amundsen's base at the Bay of Whales on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica during his quest for the South Pole. It was used between January 1911 and February 1912.
  The hut was constructed in sections by a master carpenter, Jørgen Stubberud and erected at Amundsen's home in Norway, then dismantled for shipment to Antarctica on the Fram. The term literally means "home of the Fram". During its construction in Norway, Amundsen maintained that the hut was for "observation", which would fit in nicely with his supposed intent to head to the North Pole. To the more than casual student of exploration, it was obvious that the hut was intended as living quarters. Amundsen was, in fact, headed to the South Pole.
  The cabin was an early example of a pre-fabricated structure, and employed a custom dining table which could retract to the ceiling for cleaning beneath. It measured five by four meters, and the walls were made up of four layers of three inch wooden boards with cardboard between for insulation.
  
  wn.com/Framheim
• 
  Frederick Cook
  Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) was an American explorer and physician, noted for his claim of having reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. This would have been a year before April 6, 1909, the date claimed by Robert Peary.
  Cook was born in Brooklyn, in Sullivan County, New York. His parents were Dr. Theodore A. Koch and Magdalena Long, recent German immigrants to the United States.
  Cook attended Columbia University, receiving his M.D. in 1890. In 1889 he married Libby Forbes, who died in 1890. On his 37th birthday he married Marie Fidele Hunt; they had one daughter, Helene. In 1923 they were divorced, possibly for financial reasons related to an upcoming fraud trial.
  Cook was the surgeon on Robert Peary's 1891–1892 Arctic expedition, and on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899 led by Adrien de Gerlache. He contributed greatly to saving the lives of the crew when their ship (the Belgica) was ice-bound during the winter. A fellow crew-member was Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, with whom he established a friendship and life-long relationship of mutual respect. In 1898, during this expedition, Cook visited Tierra del Fuego, where he met Thomas Bridges shortly before his death. As a result of that meeting, Cook brought back the manuscript of Bridges' Yamana dictionary, and several years later acquiesced in the attempted publication of the dictionary as his own work.
  
  wn.com/Frederick_Cook
• 
  Gjøa
  Gjøa was the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. With a crew of six, Roald Amundsen traversed the passage in a three year journey, finishing in 1906.
  The 70 by 20 ft (21 by 6.1 m) square-sterned sloop of 45 net register tonnage (4,500 cu ft, 130 m³) was built by Kurt Johannesson Skaale in Rosendal, Norway in 1872, the same year Amundsen was born. She was named Gjøa after her then owner's wife. (Gjøa is a modern form of the Norse name Gyða - this again is a compressed form of Guðfríðr, a compound of guð 'god' and fríðr 'beautiful'.) For the next 28 years the vessel served as a herring fishing boat.
  In 1900, Amundsen bought her from Asbjørn Sexe of Ullensvang, Norway, for his forthcoming expedition to the Arctic Ocean. Gjøa was much smaller than vessels used by other Arctic expeditions, but Amundsen intended to live off the limited resources of the land and sea through which he was to travel, and reasoned that the land could sustain only a tiny crew (this had been the cause of the catastrophic failure of John Franklin's expedition fifty years previously). Her shallow draught would help her traverse the shoals of the Arctic straits. Perhaps most importantly, the aging ship was all that Amundsen (who was financing his expedition largely by spending his inheritance) could afford.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Gjøa
• 
  Greenland
  Greenland (Kalaallisut: Kalaallit Nunaat, "Land of the Kalaallit";Danish: Grønland) is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe (specifically Norway and later Denmark) for more than a millennium. Greenland is, by area, the world's largest island. With a population of 56,615 (January 2011 estimate) it is the least densely populated dependency or country in the world.
  Greenland has been inhabited, though not continuously, by Arctic peoples via Canada for 4500–5000 years. In the 10th century, Norsemen settled on the uninhabited southern part of Greenland. In the 13th century, the Inuit arrived, and in the late 15th century the Norse colonies were abandoned. In the early 18th century, contact between Scandinavia and Greenland was re-established and Denmark established rule over Greenland.
  
  wn.com/Greenland
• 
  Iceland
  Iceland ⁱ/ˈaɪslənd/ (Icelandic: Ísland, IPA: [ˈislant]) is a Nordic European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The country has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km² (40,000 sq mi). The capital and largest city is Reykjavík, with the surrounding areas in the southwestern region of the country being home to two-thirds of the country's population. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active. The interior mainly consists of a plateau characterised by sand fields, mountains and glaciers, while many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a temperate climate despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle.
  According to Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in AD 874 when the chieftain Ingólfur Arnarson became the first permanent Norse settler on the island. Others had visited the island earlier and stayed over winter. Over the following centuries, Norsemen settled Iceland, bringing with them thralls (slaves) of Gaelic origin. From 1262 to 1918 Iceland was part of the Norwegian and later the Danish monarchies. Until the 20th century, the Icelandic population relied largely on fisheries and agriculture, and the country was one of the poorest and least developed in the world. Industrialisation of the fisheries and aid from the Marshall Plan brought prosperity in the years after World War II, and by the 1990s it was one of the world's wealthiest countries. In 1994, Iceland became party to the European Economic Area, which made it possible for the economy to diversify into economic and financial services.
  
  wn.com/Iceland
• 
  Mangazeya
  Coordinates: 66°41′38″N 82°15′17″E / 66.6938292°N 82.2546387°E / 66.6938292; 82.2546387
  Mangazeya was a Northwest Siberian trans-Ural trade colony and later city in the 16-17th centuries. Founded in 1600, it was situated on the Taz River, between the lower courses of the Ob and Yenisei Rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean.
  Russian settlers of the White Sea coasts of Russia (pomors) founded a route along the Arctic coast to Arkhangelsk to trade with Norwegian, English and Dutch merchants. Mangazeya accumulated furs and ivory (walrus tusks) around the year to be shipped out during the short Northern summer. Trade also occurred along the Siberian River Routes' Northern Route.
  The Northern Sea Route was forbidden in 1619 under the penalty of death, for two reasons: the state was unable to collect on it, and there was a fear of English trading penetration into Siberia. The city strived to exist for some 50 years more, but eventually Mangazeya was abandoned. Following the catastrophic fire of 1662, the remaining population was evacuated to Turukhansk at the junction of the Yenisei with the Lower Tunguska, which was known as New Mangazeya until the 1780s.
  
  wn.com/Mangazeya
• 
  McMurdo Station
  McMurdo Station is a U.S. Antarctic research center located on the southern tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program, a branch of the National Science Foundation. The station is the largest community in Antarctica, capable of supporting up to 1,258 residents, and serves as the United States Antarctic science facility. All personnel and cargo going to or coming from Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station first passes through McMurdo.
  The station owes its designation to nearby McMurdo Sound, named after Lieutenant Archibald McMurdo of H.M.S. Terror, which first charted the area in 1841 under the command of British explorer James Clark Ross. British explorer Robert Falcon Scott first established a base close to this spot in 1902 and built Discovery Hut, still standing adjacent to the harbour at Hut Point. The volcanic rock of the site is the southernmost bare ground accessible by ship in the Antarctic. The United States officially opened its first station at McMurdo on Feb. 16, 1956. Founders initially called the station Naval Air Facility McMurdo. On Nov. 28, 1957, Admiral George J. Dufek was present with a U.S. congressional delegation during a change of command ceremony.
  
  wn.com/McMurdo_Station
• Mirny Station
  Mirny (Russian: Мирный, literally Peaceful) is a Russian (formerly Soviet) science station in Antarctica, located on the Antarctic coast of the Davis Sea in the Australian Antarctic Territory. Named after support vessel Mirny captained by Mikhail Lazarev during the First Russian Antarctic Expedition (led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen on Vostok).
  The station was opened on February 13, 1956 by the 1st Soviet Antarctic Expedition. It was originally used as main base for the Vostok Station located 1,400 km from the coast, this function is now served by Progress Station. In summer, it hosts up to 169 people in 30 buildings, in winter about 60 scientists and technicians. The average temperature at the location is –11°C, and on more than 200 days per year the wind is stronger than 15 m/s, with occasional cyclones.
  Main areas of research are glaciology, seismology, meteorology, observation of polar lights, cosmic radiation, and marine biology.
  Coordinates: 66°33′9.66″S 93°0′34.05″E / 66.5526833°S 93.0094583°E / -66.5526833; 93.0094583
  
  wn.com/Mirny_Station
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  New Swabia
  New Swabia (German: Neuschwabenland) is a cartographic name sometimes given to an area of Antarctica between 20°E and 10°W in Queen Maud Land, which within Norway is administered as a Norwegian dependent territory under the Antarctic Treaty System. New Swabia was explored by Germany in early 1939 and named after that expedition's ship, the Schwabenland, itself named after the German region of Swabia.
  Like many other countries, Germany sent expeditions to the Antarctic region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of which were scientific. The late 19th century expeditions to the Southern Ocean, South Georgia, the Kerguelen Islands, and the Crozet Islands were astronomical, meteorological, and hydrological, mostly in close collaboration with scientific teams from other countries. As the 19th century ended Germany began to focus on Antarctica.
  The first German expedition to Antarctica was the Gauss expedition from 1901 to 1903. Led by Arctic veteran and geology professor Erich von Drygalski, this was the first expedition to use a hot-air balloon in Antarctica. It also found and named Kaiser Wilhelm II Land. The second German Antarctic expedition (1911–1912) was led by Wilhelm Filchner with a goal of crossing Antarctica to learn if it was one piece of land. As happened with other such early attempts, the crossing failed before it even began. The expedition discovered and named the Luitpold Coast and the Filchner Ice Shelf. A German whaling fleet was put to sea in 1937 and, upon its successful return in early 1938, plans for a third German Antarctic expedition were drawn up.
  
  wn.com/New_Swabia
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  North Pole
  Coordinates: 90°N 0°W / 90°N 0°W / 90; -0
  The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It should not be confused with the North Magnetic Pole.
  The North Pole is the northernmost point on Earth, lying diametrically opposite the South Pole. It defines geodetic latitude 90° North, as well as the direction of true north. At the North Pole all directions point south; all lines of longitude converge there, so its longitude can be defined as any degree value.
  While the South Pole lies on a continental land mass, the North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amid waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice. This makes it impractical to construct a permanent station at the North Pole (unlike the South Pole). However, the Soviet Union, and later Russia, have constructed a number of manned drifting stations on a generally annual basis since 1937, some of which have passed over or very close to the Pole. In recent years, a number of studies have predicted that the North Pole may become seasonally ice-free due to Arctic shrinkage, with timescales varying from next year to fifty years or more.
  
  wn.com/North_Pole
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  Northern Canada
  Northern Canada, colloquially the North, is the vast northernmost region of Canada variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to the three territories of Canada: Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Similarly, the Far North (when contrasted to the North) may refer to the Canadian Arctic: the portion of Canada north of the Arctic Circle.
  These reckonings somewhat depend on the concept of nordicity, a measure of northernness that other Arctic territories share. Canada, a country in northern North America whose population is concentrated along its southern frontier with the United States, is frequently reckoned to not have a 'south.' As such, the 'South' is only perceived as a region when it is contrasted to or viewed from those in the North.
  
  wn.com/Northern_Canada
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  Northern Hemisphere
  Coordinates: 45°0′0″N 0°0′0″E / 45°N 0°E / 45; 0
  The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of its equator—the word hemisphere literally means “half sphere”. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator. Earth's northern hemisphere contains most of the planet's land, and roughly 90% of its human population. See also Arctic, Temperate zone, Tropics, Seasons and Climate
  Due to the Earth's axial tilt, winter lasts from the winter solstice (typically December 22) to the vernal equinox (typically March 20), while summer lasts from the summer solstice (typically June 21) through to the autumnal equinox (typically September 21).
  The Arctic is the region north of the Arctic Circle. Its climate is characterized by cold winters and cool summers. Precipitation mostly comes in the form of snow. The Arctic experiences some days in summer when the Sun never sets, and some days during the winter when it never rises. The duration of these phases varies from one day for locations right on the Arctic Circle to several months near the North Pole.
  
  wn.com/Northern_Hemisphere
• Operation Tabarin
  Operation Tabarin was a World War II military undertaking by the Admiralty and the Colonial Office in 1943 to establish a permanent British presence in Antarctic.
  There have been several reasons cited for Tabarin. Prior to the start of the war, German aircraft had dropped markers with swastikas across Queen Maud Land in an attempt to create a territorial claim, see New Swabia. In 1943, British personnel from HMS Carnarvon Castle removed Argentine flags from Deception Island. There were also concerns within the Foreign Office about the direction of United States' post-war activity in the region. So the chief reason was to establish solid British claims to various uninhabited islands and parts of Antarctica, reinforced by Argentine sympathies toward Germany.
  A suitable cover story was the need to deny use of the area to the enemy. The Kriegsmarine was known to use remote islands as rendezvous points and as shelters for commerce raiders, U-boats and supply ships. Also, in 1941, there existed a fear that Japan might attempt to seize the Falkland Islands, either as a base or to hand them over to Argentina, thus gaining political advantage for the Axis and denying their use to Britain. Deception Island, in the British South Shetland Islands, possessed a sheltered anchorage with an old Norwegian whaling station. In 1941, the British (aboard HMS Queen of Bermuda) had taken the precaution of destroying coal dumps and oil tanks there, to prevent their possible use by the Germans.
  
  wn.com/Operation_Tabarin
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  Orcadas Base
  Coordinates: 60°44′25″S 44°44′33″W / 60.74028°S 44.7425°W / -60.74028; -44.7425
  Base Orcadas is an Argentine station in Antarctica, and the first permanent Antarctic station in the area defined by the Antarctic Treaty System. It is located on Laurie Island, one of the South Orkney Islands (Spanish: Islas Orcadas del Sur), at 4 meters (13.1 ft) above sea level and 170 meters (558 ft) from the coastline.
  The nearest port is the Argentine city of Ushuaia, which is 1,502 km (933 mi) away. The base has 11 buildings and four main topics of research: continental glaciology, seismology, sea-ice-zone glaciology (since 1985) and meteorological observations (since 1903).
  In 1903 Dr William S. Bruce's Scottish National Antarctic Expedition established Omond House, a meteorological station on Laurie Island. During the expedition, however, the crew became stuck in the ice and, unable to sail off, were trapped in the station for the winter.
  Bruce left the station in December of that year for Buenos Aires to fix the ship, leaving a few men to continue keeping observations.
  
  wn.com/Orcadas_Base
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  Qikiqtaaluk Region
  Qikiqtaaluk Region, Qikiqtani Region (Inuktitut: ᕿᑭᖅᑖᓗᒃ) or Baffin Region is an administrative region of Nunavut, Canada. Qikiqtaaluk is the traditional Inuktitut name for Baffin Island. Although Qikiqtaaluk Region is the most commonly used name in official contexts, several notable public organisations, including Statistics Canada and Nunavut Tourism prefer the term Baffin Region.
  The region consists of Baffin Island, the Belcher Islands, Akimiski Island, Mansel Island, Prince Charles Island, Bylot Island, Devon Island, Cornwallis Island, Bathurst Island, Amund Ringnes Island, Ellef Ringnes Island, Axel Heiberg Island, Ellesmere Island, the Melville Peninsula, the eastern part of Melville Island, and the northern parts of Prince of Wales Island, and Somerset Island, plus smaller islands in between. The regional seat is Iqaluit (population 7,250). The Qikiqtaaluk Region spans to the northernmost, easternmost, and southernmost areas of Nunavut.
  Before 1999, Qikiqtaaluk Region existed under slightly different boundaries as the Baffin Region, District of Keewatin, Northwest Territories.
  
  wn.com/Qikiqtaaluk_Region
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  RRS Discovery
  The RRS Discovery was the last traditional wooden three-masted ship to be built in Britain. Designed for Antarctic research, she was launched in 1901. Her first mission was the British National Antarctic Expedition, carrying Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first, successful journey to the Antarctic, known as the Discovery Expedition. She is now the centrepiece of visitor attraction in her home, Dundee.
  On 16 March 1900, in the context of significant donations to the approaching expedition by patrons Llewellyn W. Longstaff and the British Government, construction on the Discovery began in Dundee, Scotland, by the Dundee Shipbuilders Company. She was launched into the Firth of Tay on 21 March 1901 by Lady Markham, the wife of Sir Clements Markham, President of the Royal Geographical Society.
  
  wn.com/RRS_Discovery
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  Russia
  Russia ⁱ/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
  
  wn.com/Russia
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  South Pole
  Coordinates: 90°S 0°W / 90°S 0°W / -90; -0
  The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole. Situated on the continent of Antarctica, it is the site of the United States Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which was established in 1956 and has been permanently staffed since that year. The Geographic South Pole should not be confused with the South Magnetic Pole, which though geographically nearby, is defined based on the Earth's magnetic field.
  For most purposes, the Geographic South Pole is defined as the southern point of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface (the other being the Geographic North Pole). However, the Earth's axis of rotation is actually subject to very small 'wobbles', so this definition is not adequate for very precise work; see Polar Motion for further information.
  
  wn.com/South_Pole
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  Southern Ocean
  The Southern Ocean (also known as the Great Southern Ocean, the Antarctic Ocean, and the South Polar Ocean) comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60°S latitude and encircling Antarctica. It is usually regarded as the fourth-largest of the five principal oceanic divisions. This ocean zone is where cold, northward flowing waters from the Antarctic mix with warmer subantarctic waters.
  Geographers disagree on the Southern Ocean's northern boundary or even its existence, with many considering the waters part of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans instead. Others regard the Antarctic Convergence, an ocean zone which fluctuates seasonally, as separating the Southern Ocean from other oceans, rather than the 60th parallel.Australian authorities regard the Southern Ocean as lying immediately south of Australia.
  The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) has not yet ratified its 2000 definition of the ocean as being south of 60°S. Its latest published definition of oceans dates from 1953; this does not include the Southern Ocean. However, the more recent definition is used by the IHO and others.
  
  wn.com/Southern_Ocean
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  Soviet Union
  The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] ( listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
  The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
  The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
  
  wn.com/Soviet_Union
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  Svalbard
  Svalbard (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈsʋɑlbɑɖ]) is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude (inside the Arctic Circle), and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the largest island, followed by Nordaustlandet and Edgeøya. The administrative center is Longyearbyen, and other settlements include the Russian mining community of Barentsburg, the research community of Ny-Ålesund and the mining outpost of Sveagruva. The archipelago is administered by the Governor of Svalbard.
  The islands were first used as a whaling base in the 17th and 18th centuries, after which they were abandoned. Coal mining started at the beginning of the 20th century, and several permanent communities were established. The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 recognizes Norwegian sovereignty, and the 1925 Svalbard Act made Svalbard a full part of the Kingdom of Norway. This act also established Svalbard as a free economic zone and a demilitarized zone. The Norwegian Store Norske and the Russian Arktikugol are the only mining companies remaining on the islands. Research and tourism have become important supplementary industries. Two major research facilities are the University Centre in Svalbard and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. No roads connect the settlements; instead snowmobiles, aircraft and boats serve inter-community transport. Svalbard Airport, Longyear serves as the main gateway to the rest of Europe.
  
  wn.com/Svalbard
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  Svyataya Anna
  The ship Svyataya Anna (Russian: Святая Анна), named after Saint Anne, was the Philomel-class gunvessel HMS Newport launched in England in 1867. She was sold in 1881 and renamed Pandora II. She was purchased again in about 1890 and renamed Blencathra, taking part in expeditions to the north coast of Russia. She was bought in 1912 by Georgy Brusilov for use in his ill-fated 1912 Arctic expedition to explore the Northern Sea Route. The ship became firmly trapped in ice; only two members of the expedition, Valerian Albanov and Alexander Konrad, survived. The ship has never been found.
  The Philomel-class gunvessels were an enlargement of the earlier Algerine-class gunboat of 1856. The first six of the class were ordered by the Admiralty from the naval dockyards between April 1857 and April 1859. Another twelve were ordered on 14 June 1859 to be constructed by contract in private yards, receiving their names on 24 September the same year; these were then fitted out at naval dockyards. The last eight of the class, of which Newport was the first, were ordered on 5 March 1860 for construction in naval dockyards, although six of them were later cancelled.
  
  wn.com/Svyataya_Anna

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  Adolphus Greely
  Adolphus Washington Greely (March 27, 1844 – October 20, 1935), was an American Polar explorer, a United States Army officer and a recipient of the Medal of Honor.
  Greely was born March 27, 1844 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He entered the United States Army at the age of 17, after having been rejected twice before. He had achieved the rank of brevet Major by the end of the Civil War. Greely joined the regular Army in 1866 as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry; in 1873, Greely was promoted to First Lieutenant.
  In 1881, First Lieutenant Greely was given command of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition on the ship Proteus. Promoted by Henry W. Howgate, its purpose was to establish one of a chain of meteorological-observation stations as part of the First International Polar Year. The expedition also was commissioned by the US government to collect astronomical and polar magnetic data, which was carried out by the astronomer Edward Israel, who was part of Greely's crew. Another goal of the expedition was to search for any clues of the USS Jeannette, lost north of Ellesmere Island.
  
  wn.com/Adolphus_Greely
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  Adrien de Gerlache
  Baron Adrien Victor Joseph de Gerlache de Gomery (2 August 1866 – 4 December 1934) was an officer in the Belgian Royal Navy who led the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897 to 1899.
  Born in Hasselt, Belgium, de Gerlache was educated in Brussels. He studied Engineering at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and spent his holidays as a cabin boy on board transatlantic ocean liners. After graduating in 1885, he joined the Belgian Navy on 19 January 1886.
  After graduating from the nautical college of Ostend as first lieutenant, he was assigned to the Belgica, a hydrography ship. It was while serving there that he came up with his plan to explore Antarctica.
  In 1896, de Gerlache purchased the Norwegian-built whaling ship Patria, which, following an extensive refit, he renamed as the Belgica. With a multinational crew, which included Roald Amundsen, Frederick Cook, Antoni Bolesław Dobrowolski, Henryk Arctowski and Emil Racoviţă, he set sail from Antwerp on 16 August 1897.
  
  wn.com/Adrien_de_Gerlache
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  Aeneas Mackintosh
  Aeneas Lionel Acton Mackintosh (1 July 1879 – 8 May 1916) was a British Merchant Navy officer and Antarctic explorer, who commanded the Ross Sea party as part of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. The Ross Sea party's mission was to support Shackleton's proposed transcontinental march by laying supply depots along the latter stages of the march's intended route. In the face of persistent setbacks and practical difficulties, Mackintosh's party fulfilled its task, although Mackintosh and two others died in the course of their duties.
  Mackintosh's first Antarctic experience was as second officer on Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, 1907–09. Shortly after his arrival in the Antarctic a shipboard accident destroyed his right eye, and he was sent back to New Zealand. He returned in 1909 to participate in the later stages of the expedition; his will and determination in adversity impressed Shackleton, and led to his Ross Sea party appointment in 1914.
  Mackintosh's operational orders were confused through communication failures, and he was uncertain of the timing of Shackleton's proposed march. His difficulties were compounded when the party's ship, SY Aurora, was swept from its winter moorings during a gale and was unable to return. Despite this loss of equipment, supplies and personnel, Mackintosh and his stranded shore party managed to carry out its depot-laying task to the full. Mackintosh himself barely survived the ordeal, owing his life to the actions of his comrades. He and one companion then attempted to cross the 13 nautical miles (24 km; 15 mi) of sea ice separating the party from its base, but the pair disappeared during a blizzard and are presumed to have fallen through the ice. Their bodies were never recovered.
  
  wn.com/Aeneas_Mackintosh
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  Aleksandr Dralkin
  Aleksandr Gavrilovich Dralkin (Russian: Александр Гаврилович Дралкин) (born November 3, 1911) was a Soviet oceanologist, geographer and polar explorer. He was a leader of the Fourth Soviet Antarctic Expedition and the Seventh Soviet Antarctic Expedition. He also worked on the North Pole-4 drifting ice station (1954–1957) in the Arctic Ocean.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Aleksandr_Dralkin
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  Aleksei Chirikov
  Aleksei Ilyich Chirikov (Russian: Алексей Ильич Чириков) (1703 – November 1748) was a Russian navigator and captain who along with Bering was the first Russian to reach North-West coast of North America. He discovered and charted some of the Aleutian Islands while he was deputy to Vitus Bering during the Great Northern Expedition.
  In 1721, Chirikov graduated from the Naval Academy. In 1725–1730 and 1733–1743, he was Vitus Bering's deputy during the First and the Second Kamchatka expeditions.
  In May 1741 Chirikov in the St Paul and Vitus Bering in the St Peter left Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and headed east. Some time after 20 June they were separated by a storm and never saw each other again. On 15 July 1741 Chirikov saw land at Baker Island off Prince of Wales Island at the south end of the Alaska Panhandle. This is about 450 miles southeast of Bering's landfall near Mount St. Elias at the north end of the panhandle. Unable to find a harbor he sailed north along Baranov Island past the later Russian base at Sitka. He sent out a longboat to find an anchorage. When it did not return after a week he sent out his second longboat which also failed to return. Now without any small boats Chirikov had no way of searching for the two longboats or landing on the coast to explore or replenish his supply of fresh water. After waiting as long as possible, he abandoned the longboats to their fate and on 27 July sailed west. He sighted the Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak Island and Adak Island near the western end of the Aleutians. With water critically low he reached Petropavlovsk on 12 October 1741.
  
  wn.com/Aleksei_Chirikov
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  Alexander Kolchak
  Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak (Russian: Алекса́ндр Васи́льевич Колча́к, 16 November [O.S. 4 November] 1874 – 7 February 1920) was a Russian naval commander, polar explorer and later - the Supreme ruler of the counter-revolutionary anti-communist White forces during the Russian Civil War. As Supreme ruler of Russia (1918–1920), he was recognized in this position by all the heads of the White movement, "De jure" - Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, "De facto" - Entente States. He was also a prominent expert on naval mines and a member of the Russian Geographical Society. Among Kolchak's awards are the St. George Gold Sword for Bravery given for his actions in the battle of Port Arthur and the Great Gold Constantine Medal from the Russian Geographic Society.
  Kolchak was born in Saint Petersburg in 1874. His father was a retired major-general of the Marine Artillery, who was actively engaged in the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55 and after his retirement worked as an engineer in ordnance works near St. Petersburg. Kolchak was educated for a naval career, graduating from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1894 and joining the 7th Naval Battalion of the city. He was soon transferred to the Far East, serving in Vladivostok from 1895 to 1899. He returned to western Russia and was based at Kronstadt, joining the Polar expedition of Eduard Toll on the ship Zarya in 1900 as a hydrologist.
  
  wn.com/Alexander_Kolchak
• Alexander Konrad
  Alexander Eduardovich Konrad (Russian: Алекса́ндр Эдуа́рдович Ко́нрад) (1890 in St. Petersburg - 1940 in Leningrad) was a Russian sailor. Along with Valerian Albanov, he was one of the only two survivors, and the only surviving sailor of the ill-fated Brusilov expedition.
  There are no data about Alexander Konrad's birth and childhood.
  Alexander Konrad was a member of the crew on the Svyataya Anna, the ship of Georgy Brusilov's 1912 Arctic expedition. The expedition was ill-planned by Captain Brusilov, and the Saint Anna became locked in the polar ice of the Kara Sea in October 1912. Supplies were abundant, so officers and crew prepared themselves for wintering, hoping to be freed in the following year's thaw.
  However, during 1913 the sea remained completely frozen. By early 1914 the ship had drifted with the ice NW of Franz Josef Land and did not seem likely to be freed that year either. Albanov, believing that their position was hopeless, requested permission from Captain Brusilov to be relieved from his duties as second-in-command in order to leave the ship with some crewmen and attempt to return to civilization on foot.
  
  wn.com/Alexander_Konrad
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  Alexander Kuchin
  Alexander Stepanovich Kuchin (Russian: Александр Степанович Кучин) (1888 in Onega – 1913? in an unknown place in the Kara Sea) was a young Russian oceanographer and Arctic explorer.
  Hailing from a humble background, Alexander Kuchin became a seaman in a Norwegian ship already when he was seventeen. The young man loved the Norwegian language, which he mastered in one year.
  In 1907 Alexander Kuchin worked in Bergen, at a Norwegian Biological Station, becoming a student of oceanography expert Professor Bjorn Helland-Hansen. Meanwhile his enthusiasm for the Norwegian language was such that he wrote a “Small Russian-Norwegian dictionary” («Малый русско-норвежский словарь») in order to share his knowledge with his compatriots.
  In 1910–1911 Alexander Kuchin was the only foreigner on Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole on the Fram. He made numerous observations in the Southern Atlantic as an oceanographer and navigator. After his return to Norway, in December 1911, Alexander Kuchin married 18-year-old girl Aslaug Poulson, the daughter of a prominent Norwegian journalist.
  
  wn.com/Alexander_Kuchin
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  Alexey Tryoshnikov
  Alexey Fyodorovich Tryoshnikov (Russian: Алексе́й Фёдорович Трёшников) (April 14, 1914 in the village of Pavlovka, now in Baryshsky District, Ulyanovsk Oblast – November 18, 1991 at Saint Petersburg) was a Soviet polar explorer and leader of the 2nd Soviet Antarctic Expedition and the 13th Soviet Antarctic Expedition.
  He was involved in defending the Northern Sea Route during World War II and participated in the 1948 Soviet expedition to the North Pole. Between 1954 and 1955, he was the leader of the North Pole-3 ice station in the Arctic Ocean.
  He was also the president of the Geographical Society of the USSR since 1977 and the director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) of the Soviet Union from 1960 to 1981. In 1982 he was elected Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
  A minor planet 3339 Treshnikov discovered by Czech astronomer Antonín Mrkos in 1978 is named after him.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Alexey_Tryoshnikov
• Alfred Ritscher
  Alfred Ritscher (23 May 1879 in Bad Lauterberg - 30 March 1963 in Hamburg) was a German polar explorer. A captain in the German Navy, he led the third German Antarctic Expedition in 1938-39, which mapped the New Swabia (German: Neuschwabenland) area of Queen Maud Land. Ritscher Peak and Ritscher Upland there are named for him.
  
  wn.com/Alfred_Ritscher
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  Alistair Mackay
  Alistair Mackay was a Scottish doctor and polar explorer. He was one the trio of explorers, along with Douglas Mawson and Professor Edgeworth David, who became the first humans to reach the Magnetic South Pole.
  In 1907, Mackay joined the British Antarctic Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton as an expedition doctor. They arrived on the ship Nimrod at Cape Royds in Antarctica in February 1908 and set up camp in a small expedition hut that would house the 15-man party through the winter. In March 1908 along with Mawson and David, Mackay made up the party who undertook the first ascent of Mount Erebus.
  The following spring when Shackelton set off to attempt to reach the South Pole, he despatched Mackay, Mawson and Edgeworth David northward to reach the South Magnetic Pole which lay approximately 650 km north-north-west of Ross Island. The trek commenced on October 5, 1908 with the men hauling their own sleds and relaying the loads which meant that every kilometre gained by the sledges involved them travelling three kilometres by foot.
  
  wn.com/Alistair_Mackay
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  Allen Young
  Sir Allen Young (1827–1915) was an English master mariner and explorer, best remembered for his role in Arctic exploration including the search for Sir John Franklin.
  Allen Young was born at Twickenham on 12 December 1827, and went to sea as a midshipman in the merchant marine in 1842. By 1853 he was master of the Blackwall Frigate Marlborough and made two round voyages between England and Australia. During the Crimean War he was master of the 3000-ton troop ship Adelaide.
  In 1857 Allen Young offered himself as sailing master of the auxiliary steamship Fox under the overall command of Francis Leopold McClintock, that was to search the Franklin expedition, missing since 1845. He also donated 500 pounds to the expedition, and Lady Franklin gratefully accepted his services. The expedition went on to find the only written record of the missing expedition's fate, and Young himself undertook several lengthy overland sled journeys in the search.
  In 1874 Allen Young purchased the superseded British Royal Navy gunboat Pandora in order to make a final search for the missing written records of the Franklin expedition, with additional funding from Lady Franklin. The expedition sailed from Southampton late in June 1875, but heavy ice prevented the vessel from reaching the search area, and the expedition returned unsuccessful. By this time Lady Franklin had died. In 1876 Allen Young took the Pandora on a second voyage to the Arctic with stores to relieve the British Arctic Expedition. Young was knighted in recognition of his services.
  
  wn.com/Allen_Young
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  Anatoly Sagalevich
  Anatoly Mikhailovich Sagalevich (Russian: Анатолий Михайлович Сагалевич) (born September 5, 1938) is a Russian explorer, who works at the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (USSR Academy of Sciences until 1991) since 1965.
  Since 1979 he has been the director of the Russian (former Soviet) Deepwater Submersibles Laboratory. He received Doctor of Sciences degree in 1985. Sagalevich took part in the construction of Pisces VIII, Pisces IX and MIR Deep Submergence Vehicles (DSV) and completed more than 300 submersions as the chief pilot of DSVs. Between 1989 and 2005 he led 28 expeditions on MIR DSV. He was the pilot of MIR during expeditions to RMS Titanic, Bismarck, Soviet submarine K-278 Komsomolets, I-52,Russian submarine K-141 Kursk.
  Sagalevich holds the world record for the deepest fresh water dive, at 1,637 meters (5,371 ft) (in Lake Baikal aboard a Pisces in 1990).
  On August 2, 2007 Sagalevich was the pilot of MIR-1 DSV, that reached the seabed at the North Pole during Arktika 2007 expedition.
  
  wn.com/Anatoly_Sagalevich
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  Andrey Kapitsa
  Andrey Petrovich Kapitsa (Russian: Андре́й Петро́вич Капи́ца; 9 July 1931 – 2 August 2011) was a Russian geographer and Antarctic explorer, discoverer of Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica. He was a member of the Kapitsa family, a scientific dynasty in Russia.
  Kapitsa was the first to suggest the existence of Lake Vostok in the region of Vostok Station in Antarctica, based on seismic soundings of the thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet. These measures were obtained during the Soviet Antarctic Expeditions, in four of which Kapitsa participated. The discovery of Lake Vostok was one of the last major geographic discoveries on Earth.
  Andrey Kapitsa's father was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Pyotr Kapitsa, and his maternal grandfather was mathematician and naval engineer Aleksey Krylov. Pyotr Kapitsa's sons Sergey and Andrey were born in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where their father was conducting research.
  Andrey graduated from Moscow State University, Faculty of Geography, in 1953. He worked in the Laboratory of Experimental Geomorphology at the faculty since.
  
  wn.com/Andrey_Kapitsa
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  Anthony de la Roché
  Anthony de la Roché, born sometime in the 17th century, (spelled also Antoine de la Roché, Antonio de la Roché or Antonio de la Roca in some sources) was an English merchant born in London to a French Huguenot father and an English mother. During a commercial voyage between Europe and South America he was blown off course, and visited the Antarctic island of South Georgia, making the first ever discovery of land south of the Antarctic Convergence.
  Having acquired a 350-ton ship in Hamburg and obtained permission by the Spanish authorities to trade in Spanish America, la Roché called at the Canary Islands in May 1674 and in October that year arrived in the port of Callao in the Viceroyalty of Peru by way of Le Maire Strait and Cape Horn. On his return voyage, sailing from Chiloé Island (Chile) to Bahia de Todos os Santos (Salvador, Brazil), in April 1675 la Roché rounded Cape Horn and was overwhelmed by tempestuous conditions in the tricky waters off Staten Island (Isla de los Estados). His ship failed to make Le Maire Strait as desired, nor round the east extremity of Staten Island (i.e. make the mythical ‘Brouwer's Strait’ present on the old maps since the 1643 Dutch expedition of Admiral Hendrik Brouwer), and was carried far away to the east instead. Eventually they found refuge in one of South Georgia’s southern bays — possibly Drygalski Fjord according to some experts — where the battered ship anchored for a fortnight.
  
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  Artur Chilingarov
  Artur Nikolayevich Chilingarov (Russian: Артур Николаевич Чилингаров; born 25 September 1939) is a Russian polar explorer. He is a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1986 and the title of Hero of the Russian Federation in 2008. Chilingarov is also a member of the State Duma from Nenets Autonomous Okrug (since 1993). Member of the United Russia party.
  He was born in Leningrad. In 1963 he graduated from the Arctic faculty of the Leningrad Maritime Institute named after admiral S.O. Makarov. As an engineer-oceanographer he was directed to the Tiksi observatory of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. In 1965 he was elected first secretary of the Bulun Komsomol district committee. In 1969 he was appointed head of the drift ice station “North Pole-19” and in 1971 Chilingarov headed the Bellingshausen Station of the 17th Soviet Antarctic Expedition.
  Between 1974 and 1979 he worked in the Western sector of the Arctic as head of the Amderma Administration of hydrometeorology and environmental control. Under his direction, new forms of Arctic operative navigation support were implemented; for the first time, experimental work on cargo transfers to fast ice during wintertime were carried out in Yamal Peninsula. Chilingarov summarized his experience in navigation support on the Northern Sea Route in his dissertation for the scientific degree of a kandidat of geographical sciences.
  
  wn.com/Artur_Chilingarov
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  Arved Fuchs
  Arved Fuchs (born 26 April 1953) is a German explorer. On December 30, 1989, he and the famous mountain climber Reinhold Messner were the first to reach the South Pole without animal or motorised help, on skis and with wind-assistance (parasail). Many of his expeditions have been placed on water, such as his failed attempt to sail around North Pole on a traditional sailing boat (1991-1994). This boat, named Dagmar Aaen, is still used by Fuchs on his current expeditions.
  
  
  
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• Avgust Tsivolko
  Avgust Karlovich Tsivolko, also spelled as Tsivolka (Polish: August Cywolka, Russian: Август Карлович Циволько) (1810 – March 28 (O.S. March 16), 1839) was a Russian navigator and Arctic explorer.
  In 1834-1835, Avgust Tsivolko took part in the Pakhtusov expedition towards Novaya Zemlya. In 1837, Tsivolko commanded a schooner named Krotov during the Baer expedition towards Novaya Zemlya. He was the one to map the Matochkin Strait in the course of this expedition. In 1838 Tsivolko was put in charge of the mapping expedition and sent towards the northern and northeastern shores of Novaya Zemlya.
  Avgust Tsivolko died of scurvy during this expedition.
  A gulf in the Kara Sea and a group of islands in the Nordenskiöld Archipelago are named after Avgust Tsivolko.
  
  
  
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  Benjamin Morrell
  Benjamin Morrell (5 July 1795 – 1839) was an American sealing captain and explorer who between 1823 and 1831 made a series of voyages, mainly to the Southern Ocean and the Pacific Islands, which are recorded in a colourful memoir A Narrative of Four Voyages. Morrell's reputation among his peers was for untruth and fantasy, and claims in his partly ghost-written account, especially those relating to his Antarctic experiences, have been disputed by geographers and historians.
  Morrell had an eventful early career, running away to sea at the age of 16 and being twice captured and imprisoned by the British during the War of 1812. He subsequently sailed before the mast for several years before being appointed as chief mate, and later as captain, of the New York sealer Wasp. In 1823 he took Wasp for an extended voyage into subantarctic waters, and it was from this first voyage of a sequence of four that much of the controversy surrounding his reputation developed. Many of his claims—the first landing on Bouvet Island, a Weddell Sea penetration to 70°S, an extremely rapid passage of 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km) at improbably high latitudes, and the discovery of a coastline he called New South Greenland—have been doubted or proved false. His subsequent three voyages, in different ships, were less contentious, although his descriptions of various incidents have been dismissed as fanciful or absurd. His unreliability is also aggravated by his acknowledged habit of working the experiences of others into his narratives.
  
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  Bernt Balchen
  Bernt Balchen, (23 October 1899 – 17 October 1973), a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross was a Norwegian native, and later U.S. citizen, known as a pioneer polar aviator, navigator, aircraft mechanical engineer and military leader. His service in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II made use of his Arctic exploration expertise to help the Allies over Scandinavia and Northern Europe. After the war, Balchen continued to be an influential leader with the U.S. Air Force, as well as a highly-regarded private consultant in projects involving the Arctic and aviation.
  The son of a country doctor, Balchen was born at the farm Myren in Tveit, just outside of Kristiansand, Norway. Gaining a degree in forestry engineering at the Forestry School, Moseby, Norway in 1916, he enrolled in the French Foreign Legion then transferred to the Norwegian Army where he was sent to an artillery school but he graduated too late to see action in World War I. Under an assumed name, Balchen fought as a cavalryman in the Finnish Army against the Russians in the civil war that followed the end of major hostilities. During a cavalry charge, his horse was shot from under him and he was left for dead on the battlefield. Receiving serious wounds that necessitated a lengthy convalescence, Balchen turned to an early interest in athletics and trained strenuously as a boxer to represent Norway in the 1920 Olympics. Besides being a championship boxer, he was also an expert marksman and an accomplished skier. Balchen was very knowledgeable about wilderness and northern survival, skills that he would later exploit. While waiting for his acceptance as an Olympian, Balchen received word that he also qualified for flight training, resulting in his decision to become a pilot in the Royal Norwegian Navy Air Service in 1921.
  
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  Boris Vilkitsky
  Boris Andreyevich Vilkitsky (Russian: Борис Андреевич Вилькицкий)(22 March (3 April N.S.) 1885 — 6 March 1961) was a Russian hydrographer and surveyor. He was the son of Andrey Ippolitovich Vilkitsky.
  Vilkitsky graduated from the Naval Academy in Saint Petersburg in 1908. He participated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. In 1913—1915 he led the Arctic hydrographic expedition on the ships "Taimyr" and "Vaigach" with the purpose of further exploration of the Northern Sea Route.
  In 1913, Vilkitsky's expedition discovered Severnaya Zemlya, perhaps one of the most important Russian discoveries in the Arctic at the time. Other discoveries were an island that now bears his name (Vilkitsky Island), as well as the islands of Maly Taymyr and neighboring Starokadomsky. In 1914—1915, Vilkitsky's expedition made the first through voyage from Vladivostok to Arkhangelsk, discovered Novopashenniy Island (now Zhokhova Island), and described the southern coastline of Severnaya Zemlya.
  In 1918, Vilkitsky was appointed head of the first Soviet hydrographic expedition, which never took place due to its seizure by the interventionists in Arkhangelsk. In 1920, Vilkitsky emigrated to Britain. In 1923 and 1924, Vilkitsky led commercial expeditions in the Kara Sea at the invitation of the Soviet foreign trade organizations.
  
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  Brendan
  Saint Brendan of Clonfert or Bréanainn of Clonfert (c. 484 – c. 577) (Irish: Naomh Breandán; Icelandic: Brandanus) called "the Navigator", "the Voyager", or "the Bold" is one of the early Irish monastic saints. He is chiefly renowned for his legendary quest to the "Isle of the Blessed," also called St Brendan's Island. The Voyage of St Brendan could be called an immram (Irish navigational story). He was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.
  Saint Brendan's feast day is celebrated on 16 May by Catholics, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox Christians.
  In 484 Saint Brendan was born in Ciarraighe Luachra near the port of Tralee, in County Kerry, in the province of Munster, in the south-west of Ireland. He was baptised at Tubrid, near Ardfert, by Saint Erc. For five years he was educated under Saint Ita, "the Brigid of Munster", and he completed his studies under Saint Erc, who ordained him priest in 512. Between the years 512 and 530 St Brendan built monastic cells at Ardfert, and, at the foot of Mount Brandon, Shanakeel— Seana Cill, usually translated as "the old church"— also called Baalynevinoorach.
  
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  Cadwalader Ringgold
  Cadwalader Ringgold (1802–1867) was an officer in the United States Navy who served in the United States Exploring Expedition, later headed an expedition to the Northwest and, after initially retiring, returned to service during the Civil War.
  Cadwalader Ringgold was born August 20, 1802 in Washington County, Maryland, at "Fountain Rock", the 18,000-acre (7,300 ha) family estate. His mother was Maria Cadwalader (1776–1811), daughter of John Cadwalader (1742–1786), who was a general during the American Revolutionary War. Some sources spell his first name with two "l"s. His father was Samuel Ringgold, a Maryland politician who later served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He had an older brother, Samuel Ringgold, an army officer called "the father of modern artillery" and who died in the Battle of Palo Alto. Cadwalader was the sixth of 11 children, the youngest child of his mother, who then died. His father remarried and went on to have five more children by his second wife.
  Cadwalader Ringgold entered the U.S. Navy in 1819 and commanded the schooner Weazel in action against West Indies pirates during the late 1820s. He became a lieutenant on May 17, 1828 and that year served on Vandalia in the Pacific Ocean. He went on to serve on the Adams in the Mediterranean.
  
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  Carl Anton Larsen
  Carl Anton Larsen (August 7, 1860 – December 8, 1924) was a Norwegian Antarctic Explorer, who made important contributions to the exploration of Antarctica, the most significant being the first discovery of fossils, for which he received the Back Grant from the Royal Geographical Society. In December 1893 he became the first person to ski in Antarctica on the Larsen Ice Shelf which was subsequently named after him. Larsen is considered the founder of the Antarctic whaling industry and the settlement at Grytviken on the British-administered island of South Georgia. In 1910, after some years' residence on South Georgia, he took British citizenship.
  Carl Anton Larsen was born in Østre Halsen, Tjolling, the son of a Norwegian Sea Captain Ole Christian Larsen and his wife Ellen Andrea Larsen (née Thorsen). His family subsequently relocated to nearby Sandefjord, the home of the Norwegian whaling industry, where, at the young age of 9 he went to sea in a small barque with his father chasing seals and trading across the North Atlantic with Britain, only returning to go to school during the fall and winter. He would continue this for a number of years, until his curiosity for the sea was so strong he enrolled himself in navigation school where he passed the exam for foreign-going mate at the age of 18. Having been to Britain a few times in the previous years he realized the importance of having a second language and soon taught himself English and Spanish.
  
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  Carsten Borchgrevink
  Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink (1 December 1864 – 21 April 1934) was an Anglo-Norwegian polar explorer and a pioneer of modern Antarctic travel. He was the precursor of Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen and other more famous names associated with the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. He began his exploring career in 1894 by joining a Norwegian whaling expedition, from which he brought back a collection of the first specimens of vegetable life within the Antarctic Circle.
  In 1898–1900 Borchgrevink led the British-financed Southern Cross Expedition, which in 1899 became the first to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland and the first to visit the Great Ice Barrier since the expedition of Sir James Ross nearly sixty years previously. Borchgrevink landed on the Barrier with two companions and made the first sledge journey on its surface, setting a new Farthest South record at 78°50'S. On its return to England, notwithstanding its array of "firsts", the expedition was received with only moderate interest by the public and by the British geographical establishment, whose attention was fixed on Scott's upcoming National Antarctic Expedition. Borchgrevink's colleagues were critical of his leadership, and his own accounts of the expedition were regarded as journalistic and unreliable.
  
  wn.com/Carsten_Borchgrevink
• Carsten Richardson
  Carsten Richardson was an early 17th century Holsteinian-Danish naval officer and Arctic explorer. He is most noted for his role in King Christian IV's Expeditions to Greenland.
  Carsten Richardson was in command of one of five ships in the 1606 expedition to Greenland led by Godske Lindenov and sent by Christian IV of Denmark to locate the lost Eastern Norse Settlement and to assert Danish sovereignty. In the following year, Richardson was made leader of a failed expedition with the same purpose, equipped with two ships – the flagship Trost ("Consolation") and Grønlandske Bark ("Greenland Bark") – and 44 men. Dense sea ice prevented them from landing on the Greenland coast, which was in sight.
  
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  Charles Clerke
  Captain Charles Clerke RN (22 August 1741 – 22 August 1779) was an officer in the Royal Navy who sailed on four voyages of exploration with Captain James Cook. When Cook was killed during his 3rd expedition to the Pacific, Clerke took command but died later in the voyage from tuberculosis.
  Clerke started studying at the Royal Naval Academy in Portsmouth when he was 13. During the Seven Years' War he served aboard HMS Dorsetshire and HMS Bellona. He was in the mizzen-top of HMS Bellona when the mast was shot away in 1761 and he became the only survivor of those who consequently fell overboard.
  In June 1764 he joined Captain John Byron, aboard HMS Dolphin, on Byron's expedition to explore the Pacific. The Dolphin returned in May 1766. Its circumnavigation of 22 months was the shortest up to that point. Upon his return Clerke published an account of encountering Patagonian giants, was probably a hoax which the Dictionary of Canadian Biography attributed to his high spirits.
  Clerke's last three voyages were all under the command of Captain James Cook. He started the first voyage aboard HM Bark Endeavour (1768–1771) as a master's mate. Cook promoted him to acting lieutenant in 1771. He was HMS Resolution's second lieutenant on Cook's second voyage (1772–1775).
  
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  Charles Francis Hall
  Charles Francis Hall (1821 – November 8, 1871) was an American Arctic explorer. Little is known of Hall's early life. He was born in the state of Vermont, but while he was still a child his family moved to Rochester, New Hampshire, where, as a boy, he was apprenticed to a blacksmith. In the 1840s he married and drifted westward, arriving in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1849. There he went into business making seals and engraving plates, and later began to publish a two small newspapers, The Cincinnati Occasional and The Daily Press.
  Around 1857, Hall became interested in the Arctic and spent the next few years studying the reports of previous explorers and trying to raise money for an expedition, primarily intended to learn the fate of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition.
  In 1860, Hall began his first expedition (1860–63), gaining passage out of New Bedford on the whaler George Henry under Captain Sidney O. Budington, whose uncle James Budington had salvaged Edward Belcher's exploration ship HMS Resolute, also on the "George Henry". He got as far as Baffin Island, where the George Henry was forced to winter over. The Inuit told Hall of surviving relics from Martin Frobisher's mining venture at Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island. Hall soon travelled there to see them first-hand, drawing upon the inestimable assistance of his newly-found Inuit guides Ebierbing ("Joe") and Tookoolito ("Hannah").
  
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  Charles Wilkes
  Charles Wilkes (April 3, 1798 – February 8, 1877) was an American naval officer and explorer. He led the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 and commanded the ship in the Trent Affair during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Although credited with several "firsts", his behavior led to two convictions at court-martial.
  Wilkes was born in New York City, on April 3, 1798, as the great nephew of the former Lord Mayor of London John Wilkes. His mother was Mary Seton, who died in 1802 when Charles was just three years old. As a result, Charles was raised by his aunt, Elizabeth Ann Seton, a convert to Roman Catholicism who was the first American-born woman to be canonized a saint by the Catholic Church. When Elizabeth was left widowed with five children, Charles was sent to a boarding school, and later attended Columbia College, which is the present-day Columbia University. He entered the United States Navy as a midshipman in 1818, and became a lieutenant in 1826.
  In 1833, for his survey of Narragansett Bay, he was placed in charge of the Navy's Department of Charts and Instruments, out of which developed the Naval Observatory and Hydrographic Office. Wilkes' interdisciplinary expedition (1838–1842) set a physical oceanography benchmark for the office's first superintendent Matthew Fontaine Maury.
  
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  Dante Alighieri
  Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante (UK  /ˈdænti/, US /ˈdɑːnteɪ/; Italian: [ˈdante]; c1265–1321), was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem Commedia, later named La divina commedia (Divine Comedy), considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.
  In Italy he is known as il Sommo Poeta ("the Supreme Poet") or just il Poeta. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains" or "the three crowns". Dante is also called the "Father of the Italian language".
  Dante was born in Florence, Italy. The exact date of Dante's birth is unknown, although it is generally believed to be around 1265. This can be deduced from autobiographic allusions in La Divina Commedia, "the Inferno" (Halfway through the journey we are living, implying that Dante was around 35 years old, as the average lifespan according to the Bible (Psalms 89:10, Vulgate) is 70 years; and as the imaginary travel took place in 1300, Dante must have been born around 1265). Some verses of the Paradiso section of the Divine Comedy also provide a possible clue that he was born under the sign of Gemini: "As I revolved with the eternal twins, I saw revealed from hills to river outlets, the threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious" (XXII 151-154). In 1265 the Sun was in Gemini approximately during the period of May 11 to June 11.
  
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  David Legge Brainard
  Brigadier-General David Legge Brainard (December 21, 1856−March 22, 1946) was an American arctic explorer and soldier.
  Brainard was born in Norway, New York, the fifth son to Alanson Brainard and Maria C. Legge.
  Brainard enlisted in the US Army in 1876, and served in the Sioux, Bannock and Nez Perce campaigns in 1877 and 1878 under General Nelson Appleton Miles, where he was wounded on his face and right hand.
  In 1880, he volunteered and was selected for the Howgate Expedition, which was canceled. However, the next year he was detailed as first sergeant for the ill-fated Lady Franklin Bay Expedition under Adolphus Greely. Over the three years of this expedition he continuously kept a journal. Among the men to die on this expedition was James Booth Lockwood, second-in-command of the expedition and Brainard's companion on many excursions, including their record breaking push north to 83°23'30". Brainard wrote of his passing on April 9, 1884:
  Shortly before rescue, in the spring of 1884, freezing, starving and suffering from scurvy, he wrote:
  
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  David Scott Cowper
  David Scott Cowper is a British yachtsman, and was the first man to sail solo round the world in both directions and was also the first to successfully sail around the world via the Northwest Passage single-handed.
  Born in 1942, David Cowper was educated at Stowe School and lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne. Although he is a Chartered Surveyor and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, sailing was his passion from an early age.
  In 1974, Cowper participated and successfully completed The Observer Around Britain Race in his Wanderer-class sailboat, Airedale, designed by John Laurent Giles. In 1976, he successfully completed The Observer Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race, again in his boat Airedale.
  In 1980, Cowper completed the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe solo via Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin in Ocean Bound, a Sparkman & Stevens 41' sloop, beating Francis Chichester's record of 226 days by one day.
  Two years later, he repeated the feat, sailing against the prevailing westerly winds and rounding all five capes in 237 days, beating Chay Blyth's record by 71 days and becoming the first person to circumnavigate the world in both directions single-handed.
  
  wn.com/David_Scott_Cowper
• Dmitry Laptev
  Dmitry Yakovlevich Laptev (Russian: Дмитрий Яковлевич Лаптев) (1701 - January 31 [O.S. January 20] 1771) was a Russian Arctic explorer and Vice Admiral (1762).
  Dmitry Laptev was born in the village of Bolotovo, near Velikie Luki, in 1701. Bolotovo was the estate of his father, Yakov Laptev. Yakov's brother, Prokofiy Laptev, owned a nearby estate called Pokarevo, where in 1700 Dmitry's cousin, Khariton Laptev, was born.
  Dmitry Laptev started his career in the navy as a cadet in 1718. In 1736, he was appointed leader of one of the parties of the Second Kamchatka expedition. As a result of his voyages by land and sea in 1739—1742, Laptev described the sea coastline from the mouth of the Lena River to the Cape Bolshoy Baranov (east of the mouth of the Kolyma River), basin and mouth of the Anadyr River, and land route from the Anadyr fortress to the Penzhinskaya Bay. In 1741—1742, Laptev surveyed the rivers of Bolshoy Anyuy and Anadyr. After the expedition, he continued his military service in the Baltic Fleet. Laptev was promoted to Vice Admiral rank in 1762, and retired same year.
  
  wn.com/Dmitry_Laptev
• Dmitry Ovtsyn
  Dmitry Leontiyevich Ovtsyn (Russian: Дмитрий Леонтьевич Овцын) (unknown - after 1757) was a Russian hydrographer and Arctic explorer.
  In 1734-1738, Ovtsyn led one of the units of the Second Kamchatka expedition that charted the coastline of the Kara Sea east of the river Ob. In summer of 1737, his unit made its way from Ob to Yenisei and made the first hydrographic description of this part of the Siberian coastline. In 1741, Ovtsyn took part in Vitus Bering's voyage to the shores of America.
  A cape on the Taimyr Peninsula and a strait between the islands Oleniy and Sibiryakov bear his name.
  
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  Douglas Mawson
  Sir Douglas Mawson, OBE, FRS, FAA (5 May 1882 – 14 October 1958) was an Australian geologist, Antarctic explorer and Academic. Along with Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, Mawson was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
  He was appointed geologist to an expedition to the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in 1903; his report The geology of the New Hebrides, was one of the first major geological works of Melanesia. Also that year he published a geological paper on Mittagong, New South Wales. His major influences in his geological career were Professor Edgeworth David and Professor Archibald Liversidge. He then became a lecturer in petrology and mineralogy at the University of Adelaide in 1905. He identified and first described the mineral Davidite, named for Edgeworth David.
  
  
  Douglas turned down an invitation to join Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition in 1910; Australian geologist Griffith Taylor went with Scott instead. Mawson chose to lead his own expedition, the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, to King George V Land and Adelie Land, the sector of the Antarctic continent immediately south of Australia, which at the time was almost entirely unexplored. The objectives were to carry out geographical exploration and scientific studies, including a visit to the South Magnetic Pole.
  
  wn.com/Douglas_Mawson
• Edgar Evans
  Petty Officer Edgar Evans (7 March 1876 – 17 February 1912) was a member of the Polar Party on Robert Falcon Scott's companions on his ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole in 1911–1912. This final group of five men, personally selected for the final expedition push, attained the Pole on 17 January 1912; but all of them, including Evans, perished as they attempted to return to their base camp.
  Evans was born in Middleton, Rhossili,Wales, the son of a seaman. He attended St. Helen's Boys School from the age of six until he was thirteen, then enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1891, and in 1899 began service on HMS Majestic, where Scott was serving as a torpedo lieutenant.
  Edgar Evans then joined Scott's first Antarctic expedition in Discovery in 1901–1904. Along with William Lashly, he accompanied Scott on his "Furthest West" sledge journey to the interior of Victoria Land in 1903.
  Scott's biographer Roland Huntford described Evans as "a huge, bull-necked beefy figure" and a "beery womanizer" who was "running a bit to fat" by the time of Scott's second expedition in Terra Nova. Evans was nearly left behind in New Zealand when he drunkenly fell into the water while boarding the ship. However, held in high regard by Scott for "his resourcefulness, his strength and fund of anecdotes," Scott decided to overlook the incident.
  
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  Edgeworth David
  Sir Tannatt William Edgeworth David (commonly known as Edgeworth David) KBE, DSO, FRS, (28 January 1858 – 28 August 1934) was a Welsh Australian geologist and Antarctic explorer. A household name in his lifetime, David's most significant achievements were discovering the major Hunter Valley coalfield in New South Wales and leading the first expedition to reach the South Magnetic Pole. He also served with distinction in World War I.
  David was born in St. Fagans near Cardiff, Wales, the eldest son of the Rev. William David, a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, a classical scholar and naturalist and his wife Margaret Harriette (née Thomson). His mother's cousin, William A. E. Ussher of the Geological Survey, first interested David in what was to be his life work.
  At the age of 12, David went to Magdalen College School, Oxford in 1870. In 1876 he gained a classical scholarship to New College, Oxford. While there he was lectured by the famous John Ruskin and William Spooner. In 1878 he suffered a health breakdown and travelled to Canada and Australia to recuperate. Returning to Oxford, he attended lectures on geology by Sir Joseph Prestwich which stimulated his interest in the subject. After graduating as a Bachelor of Arts without honours in 1880, he spent the following two years in field study of the geology of Wales. In November 1881 he read his first paper, Evidences of Glacial Action in the Neighbourhood of Cardiff before the Cardiff Naturalists' Society. In the following year he briefly studied at the Royal School of Mines, London, under Professor J.W. Judd before accepting the position of Assistant Geological Surveyor to the Government of New South Wales, Australia.
  
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  Edith Ronne
  Edith "Jackie" Ronne (born October 13, 1919 - June 14, 2009) was an American explorer of Antarctica and the first woman in the world to be a working member of an Antarctic expedition. She is also the namesake of the Ronne Ice Shelf.
  She was born October 13, 1919, in Baltimore, Maryland and received a degree in history from George Washington University. She married Finn Ronne on March 18, 1941, and on the expedition of 1946–1948 that her husband commanded, she became the first American woman to set foot on the Antarctic continent. She and Jennie Darlington, the wife of the expedition's chief pilot, became the first women to overwinter in Antarctica. They spent 15 months together with 21 other members of the expedition in a small station they had set up on Stonington Island in Marguerite Bay.
  As the expedition's recorder & historian, Ronne wrote the news releases for the North American Newspaper Alliance. She also kept a daily history of the expedition's accomplishments, which formed the basis for her husband's book, Antarctic Conquest, published by Putnam in 1949, as well as making routine tidal and seismographic observations.
  
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  Edmund Hillary
  Sir Edmund Percival Hillary KG ONZ KBE (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed as having reached the summit of Mount Everest – see Timeline of climbing Mount Everest. They were part of the ninth British expedition to Everest, led by John Hunt. He was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
  Hillary became interested in mountaineering while in secondary school, making his first major climb in 1939, reaching the summit of Mount Ollivier. He served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a navigator during World War II. Prior to the 1953 Everest expedition, he had been part of the British reconnaissance expedition to the mountain in 1951, as well as an unsuccessful attempt to climb Cho Oyu in 1952. As part of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition he reached the South Pole overland in 1958. Subsequently, he also travelled to the North Pole.
  
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  Eduard Toll
  Eduard Gustav von Toll was a Baltic German geologist and Arctic explorer in Russian service. Often referred to as Baron von Toll or as Eduard v. Toll, in Russia he is known as Eduard Vasiliyevich Toll (Russian: Эдуард Васильевич Толль). Eduard Toll was born on (March 14 [O.S. March 2] 1858, in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia) and he died in 1902 in an unknown location in the Arctic Ocean). He belonged to a noble family of Baltic German origin and was married to Baroness Emmy von Toll.
  Eduard Toll graduated from the University of Dorpat (Tartu) as a zoologist in 1882. Already while he was a student he traveled to the Mediterranean and researched the fauna, flora and geology of Algeria and the Balearic Islands.
  In 1885-1886, Toll took part in an expedition to the New Siberian Islands, organized by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and led by Alexander Bunge. Eduard Toll explored the Great Lyakhovsky Island, Bunge Land, Faddeyevsky Island, Kotelny Island, as well as the western shores of the New Siberia Island. In 1886 Toll thought that he had seen an unknown land north of Kotelny. He guessed that this was the so-called "Zemlya Sannikova" (Sannikov Land), a land that Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom claimed to have seen during their 1808-1810 expedition, but whose existence had never been proved. The results of this expedition were appreciated by the Academy as "a true geographical deed".
  
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  Edward Adrian Wilson
  Edward Adrian Wilson FZS ("Uncle Bill") (23 July 1872 – 29 March 1912) was a notable English polar explorer, physician, naturalist, painter and ornithologist.
  
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  Edward Belcher
  Admiral Sir Edward Belcher, KCB (27 February 1799 – 18 March 1877), was a British naval officer and explorer. He was the great-grandson of Governor Jonathan Belcher. His wife, Diana Jolliffe, was the stepdaughter of Captain Peter Heywood.
  Belcher was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the second son of Andrew Belcher and entered the Royal Navy in 1812.
  In 1825, he accompanied Frederick William Beechey's expedition to the Pacific and Bering Strait, as a surveyor. He subsequently commanded a surveying ship on the north and west coasts of Africa and in the British seas. Belcher married Diana Jolliffe in 1833 and three years thereafter took up the work which Beechey had left unfinished on the Pacific coast of South America. He was on board the bomb vessel HMS Sulphur, which was ordered to return to England in 1839 by the Trans-Pacific route. Belcher made various observations at a number of islands which he visited, was delayed by being despatched to take part in the war in China in 1840.
  In 1841, the then Commander Belcher landed on Possession Point at the north shore Hong Kong Island and made the first British survey of Hong Kong harbour. After the war's end in 1842 he reached home and for his services was made a Knight Bachelor in the following year. He was then engaged in HMS Samarang, in surveying work in the East Indies, the Philippines, Geomun-do (Port Hamilton) and other places, until 1847.
  
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  Edward Bransfield
  Edward Bransfield (1785–1852) was a master of the British Royal Navy and considered the discoverer of the continent of Antarctica.
  Edward Bransfield was born in Ballinacurra, County Cork, Ireland, in c.1785. While little is known of Edward's family or early life, the Bransfields were thought to have been a well-known and respected Catholic family. The Bransfields may have had enough money to pay for Edward's education, but because of the Penal Laws it is more likely that he attended a local hedge school. On 2 June 1803, Bransfield, then just eighteen years old, was taken from his father's fishing boat and impressed into the Royal Navy.
  He began as an ordinary seaman on the 1st rate ship of the line (110 guns) Ville de Paris, where he shared living quarters with William Edward Parry, then a twelve year old midshipman, who would also go on to make a name for himself in Polar exploration. Bransfield was rated as an able seaman in 1805 and was appointed to the 1st rate ship of the line (110 guns) Royal Sovereign (which had taken part in the battle of Trafalgar in 1805) in 1806 as an able seaman, then 2nd master's mate in 1808, midshipman in 1808, clerk in 1809 and midshipman again in 1811. By 1812 he had achieved the rank of second master, and in the same year he was made acting master on the Goldfinch (brig-sloop of the Cherokee class with 10 guns and commanded by The Rt Hon Sir William Cornwallis).
  
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  Elisha Kane
  Elisha Kent Kane (28 February 1820 – 16 February 1857) was an American explorer, and a medical officer in the United States Navy during the first half of the 19th century. He was a member of two Arctic expeditions to rescue the explorer Sir John Franklin. He was present at the discovery of Sir John Franklin's first winter camp, but he did not find out what had happened to the fatal expedition.
  Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Kane was the son of John Kintzing Kane, a U.S. district judge, and Jane Duval Leiper. His brother was attorney, diplomat, abolitionist, and American Civil War general Thomas L. Kane. Kane graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1842. On 14 September 1843, he became Assistant Surgeon in the Navy. He served in the China Commercial Treaty mission under Caleb Cushing, in the Africa Squadron, and in the United States Marine Corps during the Mexican-American War. One battle that Kane fought in was at Nopalucan on January 6, 1848. At (sic) Napoluca, he captured, befriended and saved the life of Mexican General Antonio Gaona and the General’s wounded son.
  
  wn.com/Elisha_Kane
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  Eric Marshall
  Eric Marshall (1879–1963) was an Antarctica explorer with the Nimrod Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1907-09, and was one of the party of four who reached Furthest South at 88°23′S 162°00′E / 88.383°S 162°E / -88.383; 162 on 9 January 1909.
  
  wn.com/Eric_Marshall
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  Erich von Drygalski
  Erich Dagobert von Drygalski (February 9, 1865 – January 10, 1949) was a German geographer, geophysicist and polar scientist, born in Königsberg, Province of Prussia.
  Between 1882 and 1887, Drygalski studied mathematics and natural science at the University of Königsberg, Bonn, Berlin and Leipzig. He graduated with a doctorate thesis about ice shields in Nordic areas. Between 1888 and 1891, he was an assistant at the Geodetic Institute and the Central Office of International Geodetics in Berlin.
  Drygalski led two expeditions between 1891 and 1893, which were supplied by the Society for Geoscience of Berlin. One expedition wintered during the winter between 1892 and 1893 in Western Greenland. He habilitated 1889 for geography and geophysics with the collected scientific evidence. In 1898, Drygalski became associate professor and 1899 extraordinary professor for geography and geophysics in Berlin.
  Drygalski led the first German South Polar expedition with the ship Gauss to explore the unknown area of Antarctica lying south of the Kerguelen Islands. The expedition started from Kiel in the summer of 1901. A small party of the expedition was also stationed on the Kerguelen Islands, while the main party proceeded further south. Drygalski also paid a brief call to Heard Island and provided the first comprehensive scientific information on the island's geology, flora and fauna. Despite being trapped by ice for nearly fourteen months until February 1903, the expedition discovered new territory in Antarctica, the Kaiser Wilhelm II Land with the Gaussberg. The expedition arrived back in Kiel in November 1903. Subsequently, Drygalski wrote the narrative of the expedition and edited the voluminous scientific data. Between 1905 and 1931, he published twenty volumes and two atlases documenting the expedition.
  
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  Erik the Red
  Erik Thorvaldsson (Old Norse: Eirīkr Þōrvaldsson; 950 – c. 1003), known as Erik the Red (Old Norse: Eirīkr hinn rauði), is remembered in medieval and Icelandic saga sources as having founded the first Norse settlement in Greenland. The Icelandic tradition indicates that he was born in the Jæren district of Rogaland, Norway, as the son of Thorvald Asvaldsson, he therefore also appears, patronymically, as Erik Thorvaldsson (Eiríkr Þorvaldsson). The appellation "the Red" most likely refers to his hair color.Leif Ericson, the famous Icelandic explorer, was Erik's son.
  Erik the Red's father was exiled from Norway for the crime of manslaughter. He sailed West from Norway with his family and settled in Hornstrandir in northwestern Iceland. The Icelanders later sentenced Erik to exile for three years due to "some killings" he committed around the year 982.^{[citation needed]}
  After marrying Thjodhild (Þjóðhildr), he moved to Haukadal (Hawksdale) where he built a farm. The initial confrontation happened when his thralls started a landslide on the neighboring farm belonging to Valthjof (Valþjófr). Valthjof's friend, Eyiolf the Foul (Eyjólfr saurr), killed the thralls. In return, Erik killed Eyjiolf and Holmgang-Hrafn (Hólmgöngu-Hrafn). Eyiolf's kinsmen demanded his banishment from Haukadal.
  
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  Ernest Shackleton
  Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, CVO, OBE, FRGS (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish polar explorer, one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, from which he was sent home early on health grounds. Determined to make amends for this perceived personal failure, he returned to Antarctica in 1907 as leader of the Nimrod Expedition. In January 1909 he and three companions made a southern march which established a record Farthest South latitude at 88° 23′ S, 97 geographical miles (112 statute miles, 190 km) from the South Pole, by far the closest convergence in exploration history up to that time. For this achievement, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home.
  After the race to the South Pole ended in 1912 with Roald Amundsen's conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to what he said was the one remaining great object of Antarctic journeying—the crossing of the continent from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed before the shore parties could be landed. There followed a sequence of exploits, and an ultimate escape with no lives lost, that would eventually assure Shackleton's heroic status, although this was not immediately evident. In 1921 he went back to the Antarctic with the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition, intending to carry out a programme of scientific and survey activities. Before the expedition could begin this work Shackleton died of a heart attack while his ship, Quest, was moored in South Georgia. At his wife's request he was buried there.
  
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  Ernst Krenkel
  Ernst Teodorovich Krenkel (Russian: Эрнст Теодо́рович Кре́нкель) (December 24 (O.S. December 11), 1903, Tartu – December 8, 1971, Moscow) was a Soviet Arctic explorer, doctor of geographical sciences (1938), and Hero of the Soviet Union (1938).
  In 1924–25 and 1927–38, Ernst Krenkel was a radioman on polar stations Matochkin Shar (1924–25, 1927–28), Tikhaya Bay (1929–1930), Cape Olovyanniy (1935–36), and Domashniy Island (1936). He took part in Arctic expeditions on the Graf Zeppelin airship (1931), icebreaker Sibiryakov, steamship SS Chelyuskin (1933–1934). He was also a radioman on the first drifting ice station North Pole-1 (1937-1938). He is known to have set a world record by establishing a long-distance radio communication between Franz Josef Land and Antarctica.
  In 1938, Krenkel went on to work for Glavsevmorput. Later in his life he was employed in the radio industry. In 1951, he was hired by the scientific research institute of hydrometeorological instrument-making, becoming its director in 1969.
  
  wn.com/Ernst_Krenkel
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  Finn Ronne
  Finn Ronne (Norwegian: Finn Rønne) (20 December 1899 – 12 January 1980) was a Norwegian-born U.S. Antarctic explorer.
  Finn Ronne was born in Horten, in Vestfold county, Norway. His father, Martin Rønne (1861-1932), was a polar explorer and served in Roald Amundsen's successful expedition to the South Pole. Ronne received his education in engineering at Horten Technical College.
  In 1923 Finn Ronne immigrated to the U.S. and gained citizenship in 1929. After working at Westinghouse Electric Corporation for some years, he took part in two of Richard E. Byrd's expeditions to the South Pole, and in 1939 Ronne served as Byrd's executive officer helping discover one thousand miles of new coastline.
  After serving several years in the United States Navy, gaining the rank of Captain, Ronne returned to Antarctica in the 1940s, with support of the American Geographical Society. The Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition from 1946 to 1948 mapped and explored the Weddell Sea coastline and set a number of polar records. Ronne covered 3,600 miles by ski and dog sled—more than any other explorer in history. His wife Edith Ronne accompanied him on this expedition, serving as ‘historian and correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance’. She and the chief pilot's wife Jennie Darlington were the first women to overwinter in Antarctica.
  
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  Floyd Bennett
  Floyd Bennett (October 25, 1890 – April 25, 1928) was an American aviator who piloted Richard E. Byrd on his attempt to reach the North Pole in 1926.
  Bennett was born in Warrensburg, New York, in 1890. He was an automobile mechanic before he enlisted in the Navy in 1917, during World War I. Bennett was warranted as a machinist, then he attended flight school and learned to fly. Bennett served with Richard E. Byrd on an aviation survey of Greenland in 1925, on which Byrd came to respect his ability as a pilot.
  Byrd named Bennett as his pilot for an attempt to reach the North Pole by air in 1926. Bennett was at the controls on May 9 as the two men made their attempt, in a Fokker Tri-motor called the Josephine Ford. They returned to their airfield in Spitsbergen on the same day. Although members of the European press were skeptical of their claim (because it seemed that the plane had been away from Spitsbergen too briefly to have reached the North Pole), Byrd and Bennett were lionized as heroes in America. Bennett received the Medal of Honor for this feat. The subsequent discovery of Byrd's diary of the flight, with erased (but still legible) sextant readings, has shown that they could not possibly have reached the North Pole (see Bernt Balchen). After returning to the United States, Bennett flew the Josephine Ford on a goodwill tour of America, with Balchen as his co-pilot.
  
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  Francis Crozier
  Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier (16 August 1796–after 1848?) was born in Ireland at Banbridge, County Down and was a British naval officer who participated in six exploratory expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. He was named after Francis Rawdon, the 2nd Earl of Moira, who was a friend of his father.
  Francis Crozier was born at Avonmore House which still stands today opposite his large memorial in Church Square Banbridge, County Down, Ireland. He was the eleventh of thirteen children, and the fifth son, of attorney-at-law George Crozier, Esq. Francis attended school locally in Banbridge, with his brothers William and Thomas and lived with his family in Avonmore House in the centre of Banbridge which his father had built in 1792.
  His ancestors were of Norman descent and first emerged when they joined the armies of William the Conqueror to invade England in 1066. A certain man called William was in the service of the Church also was the carrier of Bishop Odo's Crozier (half brother of William the Conqueror) and hence took the surname Crozier. Before this date surnames did not exist. He was the founder of the family. He was well known at that time and after Bishop Odo's departure to France, he continued to live in Canterbury and is buried there.
  
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  Frank Wild
  Commander John Robert Francis Wild CBE, RNVR, FRGS (born 10 April 1873 in Skelton-in-Cleveland, North Yorkshire, died 19 August 1939 in Klerksdorp, South Africa), known as Frank Wild, was an explorer. He went on five expeditions to Antarctica for which he was awarded the Polar Medal with four bars, one of only two men to be so honoured, the other being Ernest Joyce.
  Frank Wild was the eldest of eight sons and three daughters born to school teacher Benjamin Wild and his seamstress wife Mary (née Cook). The family came from Skelton, North Yorkshire, close to Marton, birthplace of Captain James Cook, to whom the family claimed ancestry through Mrs Wild. Her father was Robert Cook, who claimed to be a grandson of the great explorer. By 1875 the Wild family had moved from Skelton to Stickford in Lincolnshire, and in late 1880 moved again to Wheldrake near York.
  Wild’s family next moved to the village of Eversholt in Bedfordshire. Here his father was appointed clerk of the Eversholt Parochial Charity at Woburn. Frank Wild was educated at Bedford. He joined the Merchant Navy in 1889 at the age of 16, receiving his early training in sail in the clipper ship Sobraon. In the Merchant Navy he rose to the rank of Second Officer. In 1900, aged 26, he joined the Royal Navy. The 1901 census shows that at that time he was serving as an Able Seaman aged 27 on HMS Edinburgh, anchored in Sheerness Harbour.
  
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  Frederick Cook
  Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) was an American explorer and physician, noted for his claim of having reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. This would have been a year before April 6, 1909, the date claimed by Robert Peary.
  Cook was born in Brooklyn, in Sullivan County, New York. His parents were Dr. Theodore A. Koch and Magdalena Long, recent German immigrants to the United States.
  Cook attended Columbia University, receiving his M.D. in 1890. In 1889 he married Libby Forbes, who died in 1890. On his 37th birthday he married Marie Fidele Hunt; they had one daughter, Helene. In 1923 they were divorced, possibly for financial reasons related to an upcoming fraud trial.
  Cook was the surgeon on Robert Peary's 1891–1892 Arctic expedition, and on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899 led by Adrien de Gerlache. He contributed greatly to saving the lives of the crew when their ship (the Belgica) was ice-bound during the winter. A fellow crew-member was Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, with whom he established a friendship and life-long relationship of mutual respect. In 1898, during this expedition, Cook visited Tierra del Fuego, where he met Thomas Bridges shortly before his death. As a result of that meeting, Cook brought back the manuscript of Bridges' Yamana dictionary, and several years later acquiesced in the attempted publication of the dictionary as his own work.
  
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  Fridtjof Nansen
  Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen ( /ˈfrɪd.tʃɒf ˈnænsən/ FRID-choff NAN-sən; 10 October 1861 – 13 May 1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In his youth a champion skier and ice skater, he led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, and won international fame after reaching a record northern latitude of 86°14′ during his North Pole expedition of 1893–96. Although he retired from exploration after his return to Norway, his techniques of polar travel and his innovations in equipment and clothing influenced a generation of subsequent Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.
  Nansen studied zoology at the Royal Frederick University, and later worked as a curator at the Bergen Museum where his research on the central nervous system of lower marine creatures earned him a doctorate and helped establish modern theories of neurology. After 1896 his main scientific interest switched to oceanography; in the course of his research he made many scientific cruises, mainly in the North Atlantic, and contributed to the development of modern oceanographic equipment. As one of his country's leading citizens, in 1905 Nansen spoke out for the ending of Norway's union with Sweden, and was instrumental in persuading Prince Charles of Denmark to accept the throne of the newly independent Norway. Between 1906 and 1908 he served as the Norwegian representative in London, where he helped negotiate the Integrity Treaty that guaranteed Norway's independent status.
  
  wn.com/Fridtjof_Nansen
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  Fyodor Litke
  Count Fyodor Petrovich Litke (Russian: Граф Фёдор Петро́вич Ли́тке), born Friedrich Benjamin Lütke, (28 September  [O.S. 17 September] 1797 – 28 August [O.S. 17 August] 1882) was a Russian navigator, geographer, and Arctic explorer. He became a count in 1866, and an admiral in 1855. He was a Corresponding Member (1829), Honorable Member (1855), and President (1864) of the Russian Academy of Science in St.Petersburg. He was also an Honorable Member of many other Russian and foreign scientific establishments, and a Corresponding Member of the French Academy of Science in Paris.
  Count Fyodor (or Fedor) P. Litke came from a family of Russianized Germans. Count Litke’s grandfather was Johann F. Lütke, a German Lutheran preacher and writer on physical science and theology. In 1745, Johann Lütke went from Germany to Moscow as pastor of a Lutheran parish in order to spread Protestantism to Russia. As a youth, Fyodor attended a Lutheran school and learned German, the language of his ancestors. He remained a practicing Lutheran.
  
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  Fyodor Matisen
  Fyodor Andreyevich Matisen (Russian: Фёдор Андреевич Матисен) (June 1 (O.S. May 20), 1872, Saint Petersburg — December 19, 1921, Irkutsk) was a lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Navy, hydrographer, and explorer.
  He became the captain of Polar ship Zarya during the last part of Baron Eduard Toll's expedition on behalf of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Polar Expedition (1900–1903). The expedition began with Lieutenant Nikolai Kolomeitsev as commander of the ship. Fyodor Andreyevich Matisen was senior officer and second-in-command. Matisen already had experience in Arctic exploration, for he had previously taken part in an expedition to Svalbard. Alexander Kolchak accompanied the expedition as third naval officer and hydrographer. All these officers were from military background.
  During the first wintering of Zarya close to Taymyr Island, the disagreements between Toll and Kolomeitsev became unsurmountable. Finally Eduard Toll sent Kolomeitsev away on a long sledge trip overland with the mission of organizing coal depots for the ship. When the former captain was gone Matisen was appointed by Toll as Zarya's commander.
  
  wn.com/Fyodor_Matisen
• Fyodor Matyushkin
  Fyodor Fyodorovich Matyushkin (Матюшкин, Федор Федорович in Russian) (7.10(21).1799 — 9.16(28).1872) was a Russian navigator, Admiral (1867), and a close friend of Aleksandr Pushkin.
  Matyushkin graduated from Tsarskoselskiy College in 1817. After having volunteered for the navy, he participated in Vassili Golovnin's world cruise on the ship Kamchatka in 1817—1819.
  In 1820—1824, Matyushkin took part in Ferdinand Wrangel's Arctic expedition to the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea. They explored and mapped Chetyrekhstolbovoy Island, the southernmost of the Medvyezhi Islands, then an almost unknown island group. Following this survey Matyushkin explored on his own a vast tundra area east of the Kolyma river and collected valuable ethnographic data.
  In 1825—1827, he joined Ferdinand von Wrangel in his world cruise on the ship Krotky. In 1828—1829, Matyushkin took part in the Russo-Turkish war, commanding different military vessels. In 1835, he served in the Black Sea Fleet, in 1850—1851 — in the Baltic Fleet. Starting from 1852, Matyushkin worked in the Department of the Navy as an admiral. In 1858, he was appointed Chairman of the Naval Scientific Committee. In 1861, Matyushkin became a senator.
  
  wn.com/Fyodor_Matyushkin
• Fyodor Minin
  Fyodor Alekseyevich Minin (Russian: Федор Алексеевич Минин) (ca. 1709 - after 1742) was a Russian Arctic explorer.
  In 1730s, Minin participated in the Second Kamchatka expedition. In 1736, he joined the unit led by Dmitry Ovtsyn. In 1738, he was in charge of a group of explorers, that would chart the Arctic Ocean coastline east of the Yenisei river. In 1738-1740, Minin made an attempt to go around the Taimyr Peninsula from the north and reached 75°15'N. Together with Dmitry Sterlegov, he mapped this part of the Arctic Ocean coastline.
  A cape at the Mammoth Peninsula, a peninsula, the Minina Skerries in the Kara Sea, a gulf, and a mountain on the shores of the Taimyr Peninsula bear Minin's name.
  
  
  
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  George Back
  Admiral Sir George Back FRS (6 November 1796 – 23 June 1878) was a British naval officer, explorer of the Canadian Arctic, naturalist and artist.
  Back was born in Stockport. As a boy, he went to sea as a volunteer in the frigate HMS Arethusa in 1808 and took part in the destruction of batteries on the Spanish coast. In the following year, he was involved in fightings in the Bay of Biscay, until he was captured by the French. Back remained a prisoner until the peace of early 1814 and during this time, practised his skills as an artist, which he later put to use in recording his travels through the Arctic.
  Following his release, Back served on HMS Akbar and HMS Bulwark as a midshipman before volunteering to serve under John Franklin in his first expedition to the Arctic in 1818. Back also served under Franklin in his two overland expeditions to survey the northern coast of North America, first on the Coppermine Expedition of 1819–1822 - when Back was responsible for all the surveying and chart making - and then a similar expedition by the MacKenzie River in 1824-1826, during which time he was promoted first to lieutenant and then to commander in 1825. Lacking appointment to a ship, Back was unemployed on the half-pay list, from 1827 to 1833. He was appointed to command a search expedition for Sir John Ross, who had been missing in the Arctic since 1829. But in May 1834, news reached Back that Ross was safely back in England, so Back decided to undertake an exploratory mission.
  
  wn.com/George_Back
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  George Francis Lyon
  George Francis Lyon (1795–1832) was a rare combination of Arctic and African explorer. By all accounts a fun loving extrovert, he also managed to be a competent British Naval Officer, Commander, explorer, artist and socialite. While not having a particularly distinguished career, he is remembered for the entertaining journals he kept and for the watercolour paintings he completed in the Arctic.
  He was, in 1818, sent with Joseph Ritchie by Sir John Barrow to find the course of the Niger River and the location of Timbuktu. The expedition was underfunded, lacked support and because the ideas of John Barrow departed from Tripoli and thus had to cross the Sahara as part of their journey^{[clarification needed]}. A year later, due to much officialdom they had only got as far as Murzuk where they both fell ill. Ritchie never recovered and died there, but Lyon survived and travelled a little further around the region. Exactly a year to the day he left, he arrived back in Tripoli, the expedition being a complete failure.
  
  wn.com/George_Francis_Lyon
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  George Nares
  Vice-Admiral Sir George Strong Nares KCB FRS (24 April 1831–15 January 1915) was a British naval officer and Arctic explorer. He commanded both the Challenger Expedition and the British Arctic Expedition, and was highly thought of a leader and a scientific explorer. In later life he worked for the Board of Trade and as Acting Conservator of the River Mersey, and died in 1915 aged 83.
  He was born on 24 April 1831, the third son and sixth child of Commander William Henry Nares, a British naval officer, and Elizabeth Rebecca Gould, at Llansenseld, near Abergavenny in Monmouthshire. He was baptised at the church of St Bridget, Llansanffraid on 22 May. He married Mary Grant, the eldest daughter of a Portsmouth banker, on 22 June 1858. They had four sons and six daughters. His two youngest sons, George Edward Nares (lieutenant, d. 1905) and John Dodd Nares (vice-admiral, d. 1957) entered the Royal Navy.
  He was educated at the Royal Naval School in New Cross, and in 1845 joined the Royal Navy aboard Canopus, an old battleship captured from the French. Following a posting to Havannah on the Australian station in 1848 during which he served as both midshipman and mate, he returned in 1851 and passed his lieutenant's exam in 1852.
  
  wn.com/George_Nares
• Georgy Baydukov
  Georgy Filippovich Baydukov (Russian: Гео́ргий Фили́ппович Байдуко́в; May 13 1907 [O.S. May 26] — December 28, 1994) was a Soviet aircraft test pilot, a Hero of the Soviet Union (1936) and a writer.
  Georgy Baydukov had been born in Taryshta railway station (Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia) to a railway worker. He became an orphan in the age of 9 and had been homeless for some time. Baidukov had been taken to orphanage and worked at railway construction for some time.
  Georgy Baydukov enlisted into the Red Army in 1926. He graduated Air Force Technical School and Kacha school for the military pilots in 1928 and served as a fighter pilot in 1928-1931.
  Georgy Baydukov had been transferred to an Air Force's Testing institute and became an aircraft test pilot in 1931. He tested number of fighter planes in 1931-1934 and had been instrumental in developing instrument flight rules for the USSR's Air Force.
  Georgy Baydukov became a student of Air Force Academy in 1934. During that time he became involved with number of ultralong flights conducted by the Soviet Union. He tried to reach North America flying from Russia through the North Pole in August 1935 as a member of Levanevsky's crew, flying the ANT-25. The flight had been terminated because of technical problems. Baydukov continued to participate in ANT-25's testing in 1935-1936.
  
  wn.com/Georgy_Baydukov
• Georgy Brusilov
  Georgy Lvovich Brusilov (Russian: Георгий Львович Брусилов;Ukrainian: Георгій Львович Брусилів) or Hryhoriy Brusylov (1884 in Mykolaiv, Russian Empire, (today Mykolaiv, Ukraine) – 1914?) was a Ukrainian Russian naval officer of the Imperial Russian Navy and an Arctic explorer. His father, Lev Brusilov, was also a naval officer.
  In 1912 Brusilov led a maritime expedition which aimed to explore and map a route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific via a northeast passage, also called the Northern Sea Route. His expedition disappeared almost without a trace, and despite searches its ultimate fate was unknown until 2010.
  In 1910–1911, Georgy Brusilov participated in a hydrographic expedition on icebreakers Taymyr and Vaygach, visiting the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea.
  In 1912, Brusilov led the Brusilov Expedition on the brig St. Anna, which aimed to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific by the Northern Sea Route. One of the members of the expedition was a 22-year-old nurse, Yerminia Zhdanko, daughter of a general who had been a hero in the Russo-Japanese War. She was the second Russian woman to go to the Arctic.
  
  wn.com/Georgy_Brusilov
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  Georgy Sedov
  Georgy Yakovlevich Sedov (Russian: Георгий Яковлевич Седов) (5 May [O.S. 23 April] 1877 — 5 March [O.S. 20 February ] 1914) was a Russian Arctic explorer.
  Born in the village of Krivaya Kosa of Taganrog district (now Novoazovskyi Raion) in a fisherman's family. In 1898, Sedov finished navigation courses in Rostov-on-Don and acquired the rank of long voyage navigator. In 1901, he took an external degree in Naval College, passed all the exams and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.
  In 1902—1903, Sedov participated in a hydrographic expedition in the Arctic Ocean. During the Russo-Japanese War he was in charge of a torpedo boat (1905). In 1909, he led the expedition that would later describe the mouth of the Kolyma river. A year later Sedov explored the Krestovaya Bay on Novaya Zemlya.
  In 1912, he suggested a sleigh expedition for reaching the North Pole. The Tsarist government refused to finance this project, and the expedition was organized with the help from independent sources. On August 14(27), 1912, Sedov's ship "Svyatoy Muchenik Foka" (Saint Martyr Foka) left Arkhangelsk and had to stay for the winter near Novaya Zemlya because of impassable ice. The expedition reached Franz Josef Land only in August 1913; however, it had to stay for the second winter in the Tikhaya Bay due to lack of coal.
  
  wn.com/Georgy_Sedov
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  Georgy Ushakov
  Georgy Alexeyevich Ushakov (Russian: Георгий Алексеевич Ушаков) (January 17(30), 1901 - December 3, 1963) was a Soviet explorer of the Arctic, Doctor of Geographic Sciences (1950).
  In 1926, Ushakov founded the first Soviet settlement on the Wrangel Island (today called Ushakovsky) and was its head for three years. In 1930-1932, Ushakov headed the Severnaya Zemlya expedition and established a polar station called Остров Домашний (Domashniy Island).
  He and geologist Nikolay Urvantsev were the first ones to explore Severnaya Zemlya and established that it was an archipelago. In 1932-1936, Georgy Ushakov was employed at the Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (Главное Управление Северного Морского Пути).
  In 1929 and 1930 the icebreaker Sedov carried groups of scientists to Franz Josef Land and also to Severnaya Zemlya, the last major piece of unsurveyed territory in the Soviet Arctic. This archipelago was completely mapped under Ushakov between 1930 and 1932. This voyage allowed to obliterate enormous "white spaces" on the Arctic map.
  
  wn.com/Georgy_Ushakov
• Gerald Ketchum
  Commander Gerald L. Ketchum (5 December 1908 – 22 August 1992) of the United States Navy commanded the icebreaker USS Burton Island (AG-88) in Task Group 68.2 during Operation Highjump, The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program 1946–1947; also known as the Fourth Byrd Anatarctic Expedition.
  He was also Commander of "Task Force 39" consisting of 500 men for Operation Windmill, an Antarctic expedition in 1947–1948.
  He was born in Bellingham, Washington and died in Plano, Texas.
  Ketchum Ridge in Antarctica is named after him.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Gerald_Ketchum
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  Gerardus Mercator
  Gerardus Mercator^{[pronunciation?]} (born 5 March 1512 in Rupelmonde in the Hapsburg County of Flanders, Holy Roman Empire, died 2 December 1594 in Duisburg, United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, Holy Roman Empire) was a cartographer. He is remembered for the Mercator projection world map, which is named after him. This proved very useful to many later navigators who could (using his map) sail across the entire ocean on approximately straight paths (called rhumb lines). He died in Duisburg.
  Mercator was born Gerard de gemor or de Cremer in the Flemish town of Rupelmonde to parents from Gangelt in the Duchy of Jülich, where he was raised. "Mercator" is the Latinized form of his name. It means "merchant". He was educated in 's-Hertogenbosch by the famous humanist Macropedius and at the University of Leuven. Despite Mercator's fame as a cartographer, his main source of income came through his craftsmanship of mathematical instruments. In Leuven, he worked with Gemma Frisius and Gaspar Myrica from 1535 to 1536 to construct a terrestrial globe, although the role of Mercator in the project was not primarily as a cartographer, but rather as a highly skilled engraver of brass plates. Mercator's own independent map-making began only when he produced a map of Palestine in 1537; this map was followed by another—a map of the world (1538) – and a map of Flanders (1540). During this period he learned Italic script because it was the most suitable type of script for copper engraving of maps. He wrote the first instruction book of Italic script published in northern Europe.
  
  wn.com/Gerardus_Mercator
• Godske Lindenov
  Godske Christoffersen Lindenov or Lindenow (d. 1612 Copenhagen) was a Danish naval officer and Arctic explorer. He is most noted for his role in King Christian IV's expeditions to Greenland.
  He was of the noble family Lindenov of Lindersvold, son of Christoffer Clausen Lindenov (d. 1593) and Sophie Hartvigsdatter Plessen. Godske Lindenov was part of the escort of Prince Hans, son of Frederick II of Denmark and Norway, on his fatal 1602 journey to Moscow to marry Xenia, daughter of the tsar Boris Godunov.
  Lindenov joined the Danish Royal Navy in 1605 and was the same year sent on the Hans Køning Expedition to Southern Greenland led by John Cunningham to assert Danish sovereignty. Lindenov was given command of the vessel Den Røde Løve ("Red Lion"). Lindenov landed near Atammik and brought two inuit back to Copenhagen. In the following year, Christian IV of Denmark sent him on a new expedition to Greenland with James Hall as a pilot. Five ships were sent: Trost ("Consolation", his flagship), Den Røde Løve (commanded by John Cunningham), Katten ("Cat", commanded by Anders Nolk), Ørnen ("Eagle", commanded by Hans Bruun) and the ex-Scottish Gilliflower (also called variously the Gillibrand, the Giltbert, and the Angelibrand, commanded by Carsten Richardson). The expedition landed in Southwest Greenland and searched for silver ore, which was not found.
  
  wn.com/Godske_Lindenov
• Gunnbjörn Ulfsson
  Gunnbjørn Ulfsson (Norwegian, lived circa 10th century), name also given as Gunnbjørn Ulf-Krakuson, was the first European to sight North America.
  Gunnbjørn was blown off course while sailing from Norway to Iceland. He and his crew sighted islands (Gunnbjörn's skerries) lying close off the coast of Greenland, and reported this find. Gunnbjørn did not land.
  Greenland is physically and culturally part of North America; it is separated from Ellesmere Island by only a narrow strait, so this constitutes the first definitively established European contact with North America.
  The exact date of this event is not recorded in the sagas. Various sources cite dates ranging from 876 to 932, but these must remain little more than guesses; but the early 10th century is probably more likely than earlier.
  The first purposeful visit to Gunnbjørn's islands was by Snæbjörn Galti around 978, followed soon after by Eric the Red who also explored the main island of Greenland, and soon established a settlement. But neither Snaebjørn nor Eric were sailing blind; they knew well of the location reported by Gunnbjørn Ulfsson.
  
  wn.com/Gunnbjörn_Ulfsson
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  Hans Egede
  Hans Poulsen Egede (January 31, 1686 – November 5, 1758) was a Norwegian-Danish Lutheran missionary who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland. He established a successful mission among the Inuit and is credited with revitalizing Dano-Norwegian interest in the island after contact had been broken for hundreds of years. He founded Greenland's capital Godthåb, now known as Nuuk.
  Hans Egede was born into the home of a civil servant on Hinnøya, in Harstad, Norway, several hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle. His paternal grandfather had been a vicar priest in Vester Egede on southern Zealand, Denmark. Hans was schooled by an uncle, a clergyman in a local Lutheran Church. In 1704 he traveled to Copenhagen to enter the University of Copenhagen, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Theology. He returned to Hinnøya after graduation, and in April 1707 he was ordained and assigned to a parish on the equally remote archipelago of Lofoten. Also in 1707 he married Gertrud Rasch (or Rask), who was 13 years his senior. Four children were born to the marriage - two boys and two girls.
  
  wn.com/Hans_Egede
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  Helmer Hanssen
  Helmer Julius Hanssen (24 September 1870 – 2 August 1956) was a Norwegian polar explorer, and one of the first five to reach the South Pole on the expedition of Roald Amundsen.
  Helmer Hanssen was born in Bjørnskinn, on the island of Andøya in the northern part of Norway. He was an experienced ice pilot, a skill he had learned while hunting seals around Spitsbergen.
  From 1903 to 1905 Helmer Hanssen participated in Roald Amundsen's successful search for the Northwest Passage, as second mate on board the ship Gjøa. On the expedition he learned from the Inuit how to drive sled dogs. In 1910 he headed south with Amundsen to conquer the South Pole. This time as an expert dog driver. He was also in charge of navigation, carrying the master compass on his sledge.
  He was one of the first five people to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911, along with Roald Amundsen, Olav Bjaaland, Oscar Wisting, and Sverre Hassel. During their stay at the South Pole, it is believed that Hanssen passed within 200 yards (180 meters) of the mathematical South Pole point. This was during one of his ski runs which Amundsen had ordered be performed to completely encircle or "box" the pole to ensure that there was no doubt that the expedition had attained the pole. For his participation in the expedition, he was awarded the Medal of the South Pole (Sydpolsmedaljen), the Royal Norwegian award instituted by King Haakon V in 1912 to reward participants in Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition.
  
  wn.com/Helmer_Hanssen
• Henry Corbin
  Henry Corbin (14 April 1903 - 7 October 1978) was a philosopher, theologian and professor of Islamic Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, France.
  Corbin was born in Paris in April 1903. As a boy he revealed the profound sensitivity to music so evident in his work. Although he was Protestant by birth, he was educated in the Catholic tradition and at the age of 19 received a certificate in Scholastic philosophy from the Catholic Institute of Paris. Three years later he took his "licence de philosophie" under the great Thomist Étienne Gilson. In 1928 he encountered the formidable Louis Massignon, director of Islamic studies at the Sorbonne, and it was he who introduced Corbin to the writings of Suhrawardi, the 12th century Persian mystic and philosopher whose work was to profoundly affect the course of Corbin’s life. The stage was then set for a personal drama that has deep significance for understanding those cultures whose roots lie in both ancient Greece and in the prophetic religions of the Near East reaching all the way back to Zoroaster. Years later Corbin said “through my meeting with Suhrawardi, my spiritual destiny for the passage through this world was sealed. Platonism, expressed in terms of the Zoroastrian angelology of ancient Persia, illuminated the path that I was seeking.”
  
  wn.com/Henry_Corbin
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  Henry Hudson
  Henry Hudson (c. 1560s/70s – 1611) was an English sea explorer and navigator in the early 17th century.
  Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find a prospective Northwest Passage to Cathay (today's China) via a route above the Arctic Circle. Hudson explored the region around modern New York metropolitan area while looking for a western route to Asia under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company. He explored the river which eventually was named for him, and laid thereby the foundation for Dutch colonization of the region.
  Hudson discovered a strait and immense bay on his final expedition while searching for the Northwest Passage. In 1611, after wintering on the shore of James Bay, Hudson wanted to press on to the west, but most of his crew mutinied. The mutineers cast Hudson, his son and 7 others adrift; the Hudsons, and those cast off at their side, were never seen again.
  Details of Hudson’s birth and early life are mostly unknown. Some sources have identified Hudson as having been born in about 1565, but others date his birth to around 1570. Other historians assert even less certainty; Mancall, for instance, states that '[Hudson] was probably born in the 1560s,” while Pennington gives no date at all. Hudson is thought^{[by whom?]} to have spent many years at sea, beginning as a cabin boy and gradually working his way up to ship's captain.
  
  wn.com/Henry_Hudson
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  Henry Kellett
  Vice Admiral Sir Henry Kellett KCB (2 November 1806 – 1 March 1875) was a British naval officer and explorer.
  Kellett joined the Royal Navy in 1822. He spent three years in the West Indies and then served on survey vessels under William Fitzwilliam Owen in Africa, and as second in command on HMS Sulphur under Edward Belcher in the East Indies and in the First Opium War with China.
  In 1845 he was appointed captain of the survey ship HMS Herald, being reassigned in 1848 to join the search for Sir John Franklin. During this voyage he sailed through the Bering Strait across the Chukchi Sea and discovered Herald Island. Kellett landed on Herald Island and named it after his ship. He also sighted Wrangel Island in the western horizon. In 1852, he commanded HMS Resolute and went to the aid of Robert McClure, whose vessel, Investigator, was trapped in the Arctic. His men constructed a storehouse on Dealy Island off the south coast of Melville Island.
  He became Senior Officer in the West Indies in 1855 and Commander-in-Chief, China Station in 1869. He retired in 1871.
  
  wn.com/Henry_Kellett
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  Henryk Arctowski
  Henryk Arctowski (1871–1958; Polish pronunciation: [ˈxɛnrɨk art͡sˈtɔfskʲi]) was a Polish scientist, oceanographer and Antarctica's explorer.
  Henryk Arctowski, PhD, was born in Warsaw on 15 July 1871, and educated in Paris, Liege, Zurich and Lemberg. He was in charge of physical observations on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition (the Belgica Expedition) of 1897–1899. This was the first expedition to spend the winter in the Antarctic. Shipmates included Roald Amundsen and Frederick A. Cook. Arctowski joined The Explorers Club in New York in 1920.
  His name has been given to a phenomenon in which a halo resembling a rainbow, with two other partial arcs symmetrical to the main one, forms around the sun as light is refracted through ice crystals in the atmosphere.
  In recognition of his work and his contribution to science, his name has been given to a number of geographical features:
  In Antarctica:
  In Spitsbergen:
  
  
  
  wn.com/Henryk_Arctowski
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  Hjalmar Johansen
  Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen (May 15, 1867 – January 3, 1913) was a polar explorer from Norway. He shipped out with Fridtjof Nansen's Fram expedition in 1893–1896, and accompanied Nansen to notch a new Farthest North record near the North Pole on what was then the frozen Arctic Ocean. Johansen also participated in the expedition of Roald Amundsen to the South Pole in 1910–1912.
  Born in Skien, in Telemark county, Norway. He was the second eldest son in a Christian family of five children. His father was a farmer and was also keen for Johansen to attend a military academy, although Johansen had ambitions to become a lawyer and attended Royal Frederik’s University, to study law in Christiania (now Oslo). However, he performed poorly at law school, due to a low attendance of lectures. At the age of 21, Johansen's father died, prompting him to leave law school. After dropping out of school, Hjalmar briefly worked in an office job, however, by that time he had already made his mark as an athlete; he was an excellent skier and gymnast. In gymnastics he became Norwegian champion in 1885 in Fredrikshald and world champion in 1889 in Paris.
  
  wn.com/Hjalmar_Johansen
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  Hubert Wilkins
  Sir (George) Hubert Wilkins MC & Bar (31 October 1888 – 30 November 1958) was an Australian polar explorer, ornithologist, pilot, soldier, geographer and photographer.
  Hubert Wilkins was a native of Hallett, South Australia, the last of 13 children in a family of pioneer settlers and sheep farmers. His birthplace at Netfield, 13 km west of Hallett (150 km North of Adelaide) is today an historic site. The original homestead has been restored by generous donation. He studied at the Adelaide School of Mines. As a teenager, he moved to Adelaide where he found work with a traveling cinema, to Sydney as a cinematographer, and thence to England where he became a pioneering aerial photographer whilst working for Gaumont Studios. His photographic skill earned him a place on various Arctic expeditions, including the controversial 1913 Vilhjalmur Stefansson-led Cana
  In 1917, Wilkins returned to his native Australia, joining the Australian Flying Corps in the rank of Second Lieutenant. Wilkins later transferred to the general list and in 1918 was appointed as an official war photographer. In June 1918 Wilkins was awarded the Military Cross for his efforts to rescue wounded soldiers during the Third Battle of Ypres. The following month Wilkins was promoted to Captain and became officer commanding No.3 (Photographic) Sub-section of the Australian war records unit. His work frequently led him into the thick of the fighting and during the Battle of the Hindenburg Line he assumed command of a group of American soldiers who had lost their officers in an earlier attack, directing them until support arrived. Wilkins was subsequently awarded a bar to his Military Cross.
  
  wn.com/Hubert_Wilkins
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  Hugh Willoughby
  Sir Hugh Willoughby of Risley, Derbyshire (died 1554) was an early English Arctic voyager. He was sent out on 10 May 1553, as captain of the Bona Esperanza with two other vessels under his command and with chief pilot Richard Chancellor, by a company of London merchants known as the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands, which later became the Muscovy Company.
  The vessels were separated by "terrible whirlwinds" in the Norwegian Sea. On 14 September 1553 Willoughby sailed into a bay near the present border between Finland and Russia. The ships with the frozen crews, including Captain Willoughby and his journal, were found by Russian fishermen a year later. It has also been suggested that Sir Hugh Willoughby and his crew were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, following their decision to insulate their ship from the bitter Arctic cold.
  Richard Chancellor was able to drop anchor in the White Sea and trudge his way overland to Moscow and Ivan the Terrible's Court, opening trade with Russia.
  
  wn.com/Hugh_Willoughby
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  Humphrey Gilbert
  Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c. 1539 – 9 September 1583) of Devon in England was a half-brother (through his mother) of Sir Walter Raleigh.Adventurer, explorer, member of parliament, and soldier, he served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and was a pioneer of English colonization in North America and the Plantations of Ireland.
  Gilbert was the fifth son born to Otho Gilbert of Compton and Greenway, Galmpton, Devon, by his marriage to Katherine Champernowne. His brothers Sir John Gilbert and Adrian Gilbert, and his half brothers Carew Raleigh and Sir Walter Raleigh, were also prominent during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James. Katherine was a niece of Kat Ashley, Elizabeth's governess, who introduced her young kinsmen to the court. Gilbert's uncle, Sir Arthur Champernowne, involved him in efforts to establish plantations in Ireland between 1566 and 1572.
  Sir Henry Sidney became Gilbert's mentor, and he was educated at Eton and the University of Oxford, where he learned to speak French and Spanish and studied the arts of war and navigation. He went on to reside at the Inns of Chancery in London in about 1560–1561.
  
  wn.com/Humphrey_Gilbert
• Ilya Perfilyev
  Ilya Perfilyev (Perfiryev) (Russian: Илья Перфильев (Перфирьев)), was a Russian explorer, polar seafarer and a founder of Verkhoyansk. In the summer of 1633 he headed a group, consisted of merchant-and-industrial people and Yenisey and Tobolsk Cossacks. In 1634 he discovered the Yana River and the Yana-Indigirka lowland.
  
  wn.com/Ilya_Perfilyev
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  Ingólfr Arnarson
  Ingólfr Arnarson (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈiŋkoul̥fʏr̥ ˈar̥tn̥ar̥sɔn]) is recognized as the first permanent Nordic settler of Iceland. According to Landnáma he built his homestead in (and gave name to) Reykjavík in 874. Although recent archaeological finds in Iceland suggest settlement may have started a little earlier, the date is probably not too far off.
  The medieval chronicler Ari Thorgilsson said Ingólfr was the first Nordic settler in Iceland, but mentioned that "Papar" – i.e. Irish monks and hermits – had been in the country before the Norsemen. He wrote that they left because they did not want to live amongst the newly arrived pagans.
  Landnáma (written two to three centuries after the settlement) contains a long story about Ingólf's settlement. The book claims he left Norway after becoming involved in a blood feud. He had heard about a new island which Garðarr Svavarsson, Flóki Vilgerðarson and others had found in the Atlantic Ocean. With his close friend Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson, he sailed for Iceland. When land was in sight, he threw his high seat pillars (a sign of his being a chieftain) overboard and promised to settle where the gods decided to bring them ashore. Two of his slaves then searched the coasts for three years before finding the pillars in the small bay which eventually became Reykjavík.
  
  wn.com/Ingólfr_Arnarson
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  Inuit
  The Inuit (Inuktitut: ᐃᓄᐃᑦ, "People") are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Greenland, Canada, the United States, and Russia. Inuit is a collective noun; the singular is "Inuk". The Inuit language is grouped under the Eskimo-Aleut family.
  In the United States, the term Eskimo is commonly used in reference to these groups, because it includes both of Alaska's Yupik and Inupiat peoples while "Inuit" is not proper or accepted as a term for the Inupiat. No collective term exists for both peoples other than "Eskimo". However, natives in Canada and Greenland view the name as pejorative and "Inuit" has become more common. In Canada, sections 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 named the "Inuit" as a distinctive group of aboriginal Canadians who are not included under either the First Nations or the Métis.
  The Inuit live throughout most of the Canadian Arctic and subarctic in the territory of Nunavut; "Nunavik" in the northern third of Quebec; "Nunatsiavut" and "Nunatukavut" in Labrador; and in various parts of the Northwest Territories, particularly around the Arctic Ocean. These areas are known in Inuktitut as the "Inuit Nunangat". In the United States, Inupiat live on the North Slope in Alaska and on Little Diomede Island. In Russia, they live on Big Diomede Island. The Kalaallit and other natives of Greenland are the descendants of migrations from Canada and are citizens of Denmark, although not of the European Union.
  
  wn.com/Inuit
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  Isaac Israel Hayes
  Isaac Israel Hayes (March 5, 1832 – December 17, 1881) was an Arctic explorer and physician.
  Hayes was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania. After completing his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Hayes signed on as ship's surgeon for an 1853-5 expedition led by Elisha Kent Kane to search for John Franklin. His 1854 exploration of the east coast of Ellesmere Island north of 79° North resulted in new and accurately mapped geographical discoveries. Hayes was apparently the first non-aboriginal explorer of Ellesmere.
  Hayes led his own expedition 1860-1 which claimed to have reached the farthest north land ever, on the Ellesmere Island coast at 81°35' North, 70°30' West. It was later found that this position is deep within Ellesmere, not on the coast, and that Hayes's resulting map of Ellesmere north of 80° North was erroneous, possibly because he had represented seriously non-noon sextant observations of the Sun as having been taken at noon, but more likely due to his having deliberately inverted the 2nd digit in his report of his farthest's lone lower limb sextant double altitude of the sun, to read 56°52′ instead of the true observation 59°52′. It is hard to explain how else he could have produced a latitude too high by one and a half degrees in tandem with an exactly correct longitude.
  
  wn.com/Isaac_Israel_Hayes
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  Isaac Schlossbach
  Ike Schlossbach was a celebrated American polar explorer, submariner and aviation pioneer.
  He was born in Bradley Beach, New Jersey and raised in Neptune Township, New Jersey where he attended Neptune High School.
  In 1911 Schlossbach became the first Jewish midshipman at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, winning letters in football and wrestling. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1915 and volunteered to go to the first submarine school. During World War I he commanded subs in the Mediterranean. In 1921, after World War I, Ike joined the aviation branch of the United States Navy. Ike was first sent to lighter than air flying school (dirigibles). In 1922 he learned to fly fixed wing aircraft. By 1925, then Lieutenant Commander, Schlossbach was leading an aero squadron. First the squadron that flew the record South American flight, and then the first squadron to serve on the first aircraft carrier, the Langley.
  Schlossbach had trouble with his left eye, and the Navy assigned him to the Naval Academy, teaching engineering, aviation and coaching the football team. In 1930 at the age of 38, Lieutenant Commander Schlossbach was forced to retire (medically discharged) from the Navy when he lost his eye.
  
  wn.com/Isaac_Schlossbach
• Ivan Lyakhov
  Ivan Lyakhov (Russian: Иван Ляхов), died around 1800, was a Russian merchant who explored large sections of the New Siberian Islands in the 18th century.
  Lyakhov began his explorations in the spring of 1770 on dogsleds in order to explore the islands off the northern Siberian coast reported by Yakov Permyakov and Merkury Vagin in 1710. In this journey he visited the southern section of the New Siberian Islands. Lyakhov's intentions were mainly commercial, for he hoped to find mammoth ivory. His theory was that both the islands he explored, and which were later named after him Lyakhov Islands, and those he sighted in the distance but was not able to explore, were mainly formed by a substratum of bones and tusks of mammoths.
  Lyakhov went on another exploratory venture to the New Siberian Islands in 1773-1774. He visited again the Lyakhov Islands, crossed the Sannikov Strait and discovered Kotelny Island.
  Lyakhov undertook his last expedition in 1775. This time there was a scientific background to his explorations, for he brought along with him a land surveyor. During this journey Great Lyakhovsky Island (Большой Ляховский) was thoroughly surveyed and described.
  
  wn.com/Ivan_Lyakhov
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  Ivan Papanin
  Ivan Dmitrievich Papanin (Russian: Иван Дмитриевич Папанин, 26 November [O.S. 14 November] 1894 - January 30, 1986) was a Russian Polar Explorer, Scientist, Counter Admiral, twice Hero of the Soviet Union awarded nine Orders of Lenin
  Ivan was born in Sevastopol (currently Ukraine) into the family of a sailor. In 1914 he was conscripted into the Russian Navy. He took part in the Russian Civil War on the Soviet side, fighting in Ukraine. In 1920 he was sent to the Crimea to organize a guerilla movement against the forces of Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel.
  In 1923-1932 he worked for Narkomat of Communications. In 1931 he took part in the expedition of the icebreaker Malygin to Franz Josef Land. In 1932-1933 he was the head of a polar expedition on Tikhaya Bay on Franz Josef Land. In 1934-1935 he was in command of a polar station on Cape Chelyuskin.
  In 1937-1938 he was in charge of the famous expedition North Pole-1. Four researchers: Ivan Papanin, Ernst Krenkel, Evgeny Fedorov and Petr Shirshov landed on the drifting ice-floes in an airplane flown by Mikhail Vodopyanov. For 234 days, Papanin's team carried out a wide range of scientific observations in the near-polar zone, until taken back by the two icebreakers "Murman" and "Taimyr". It was the first expedition of its kind in the world. All members of the expedition received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, which was extremely rare before World War II.
  
  wn.com/Ivan_Papanin
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  James Booth Lockwood
  James Booth Lockwood (October 9, 1852 − April 9, 1884), was an American arctic explorer. He died on the ill-fated Lady Franklin Bay Expedition.
  Lockwood was born in Annapolis, Maryland to General Henry Hayes Lockwood and his wife Anna. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the US Army in 1873. In 1881, Lockwood signed up for the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition under Adolphus W. Greely, and was accepted as second-in-command.
  During this three-year expedition, Lockwood led a sledging party, with David Legge Brainard, to Mary Murray Island, off northern Greenland, at a latitude of 83°24'30", thus breaking the record of the time for the most northerly point reached. In 1883, he crossed Grant Land, reaching the western shore of Ellesmere Island. He died at Cape Sabine, Canada, in April 1884, along with several other members of the party, before rescue arrived on June 22 that year.
  
  
  
  wn.com/James_Booth_Lockwood
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  James Clark Ross
  Sir James Clark Ross (15 April 1800 – 3 April 1862), was a British naval officer and explorer. He explored the Arctic with his uncle Sir John Ross and Sir William Parry, and later led his own expedition to Antarctica.
  Ross was born in London, the nephew of Sir John Ross, under whom he entered the navy in 1812, accompanying him on Sir John's first Arctic voyage in search of a Northwest Passage in 1818. Between 1819 and 1827, Ross took part in four Arctic expeditions under Sir William Parry, and in 1829 to 1833, again served under his uncle on Sir John's second Arctic voyage. It was during this trip that they located the position of the North Magnetic Pole on 1 June 1831 on the Boothia Peninsula in the far north of Canada. It was on this trip, too, that Ross charted the Beaufort Islands, later renamed Clarence Islands by his uncle.
  In 1834, Ross was promoted to Captain. In December 1835 he offered his services to the Admiralty to resupply 11 whaling ships which had become trapped in Baffin Bay. They accepted his offer and he set sail in the HMS Cove in January 1836. The crossing was difficult, and by the time he had reached the last known position of the whalers in June, all but one had managed to return home. Ross found no trace of this last vessel, the William Torr, which was probably crushed in the ice in December 1835. He returned to Hull in September 1836 with all his crew in good health.
  
  wn.com/James_Clark_Ross
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  James Cook
  Captain James Cook, FRS, RN (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy. Cook made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
  Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This helped bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This notice came at a crucial moment in both Cook's career and the direction of British overseas exploration, and led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages.
  In three voyages Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously achieved. As he progressed on his voyages of discovery he surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions.
  
  wn.com/James_Cook
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  James Weddell
  James Weddell (Ostend, August 24, 1787 – September 9, 1834) was a British sailor, navigator and seal hunter who in the early Spring of 1823 sailed to latitude of 74°15' S (a record 7.69 degrees or 532 statute miles south of the Antarctic Circle) and into a region of the Southern Ocean that later became known as the Weddell Sea.
  He entered the merchant service very early in his life and was apparently bound to the master of a Newcastle collier (a coal transport vessel) for some years. About 1805 he shipped on board a merchantman trading to the West Indies, making several voyages there. James Weddell's father married Sarah Pease.
  He was aboard the Hope when in 1813 in the English Channel she captured the True Blooded Yankee, an American privateer. With the end of the Napoleonic War he was laid off on half pay in February 1816, and for a while resumed merchant voyages to the West Indies. In 1820 he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy and subsequently served on several ships.
  In 1819 Weddell was introduced to James Strachan, a shipbuilder of Leith, who together with James Mitchell, a London insurance broker, owned the 160-ton brig Jane, an American-built ship taken during the war of 1812 and re-fitted for sealing. News of the discovery of the South Shetland Islands had just broken, and Weddell suggested that fortunes might be made in the new sealing grounds. His first voyage as the captain of the Jane took him to the Falkland Islands and further south. He returned with the holds full, and the voyage was so profitable, that Strachan and Mitchell had a second ship, the Beaufoy, built.
  
  wn.com/James_Weddell
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  Jameson Adams
  Sir Jameson Adams (1880–1962) was an Antarctic explorer with the Nimrod Expedition, the first expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the South Pole. Nevertheless, he was one of the party of four who reached the Polar Plateau for the first time ever, thus showing the way to the Pole. On 9 January 1909 they attained a Furthest South of 88°23′S 162°00′E / 88.383°S 162°E / -88.383; 162, just 97 miles (156 km) from the South Pole, when they were forced by impending starvation to turn back.
  Born in Rippingdale, Lincolnshire, the son of a doctor and the grandson of a captain in the Indian Navy, he ran away from school to enter the merchant navy at the age of 13. In 1902 he became a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve, and on reaching the rank of Lieutenant he was one of the last to gain a Master Mariner's certificate under sail. But he gave up a promising career to join Ernest Shackleton as the second-in-command of the Nimrod Expedition.
  On his return from the Antarctic in 1909, he entered the Civil Service, where a year later he was appointed head of the North-Eastern Division of the Employment Exchanges. Recalled to the Navy on the outbreak of the First World War, he became Flag Lieutenant to Admiral Hood commanding the Dover Patrol. Then, after a period of special work at the Ministry of Munitions, he was posted to Flanders to command a battery of naval siege guns. A bad wound in the head necessitated his return in 1917, and he was awarded the DSO and the Croix de Guerre for his services.
  
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  Jan Nagórski
  Jan Nagórski (1888–1976), also known by his Russified name of Ivan Nagurski (Иван Нагурский) was a Polish engineer and pioneer of aviation, the first person to fly an airplane in the Arctic and the first aviator to perform a loop with a flying boat.
  Jan Nagórski was born on January 27, 1888 in Włocławek, then part of the Imperial Russia. He completed a local trade school and in 1909 graduated from an infantry junker school in Odessa and the All-Russian Aeroclub in 1912. The following year he accomplished his training at the Naval Engineering School in Gatchina near St. Petersburg where he earned his wings. He was among the first pilots of the Imperial Russian Navy. In 1914 Nagórski was tasked with the difficult mission of locating the expedition of Georgy Sedov, Georgy Brusilov, and Vladimir Rusanov in the Russian Arctic. In a Maurice Farman MF11 plane, specially purchased for that purpose in France, Nagórski embarked on a ship in Arkhangelsk and arrived to Novaya Zemlya, whence he initiated a series of reconnaissance flights in difficult Arctic conditions. Between August 21 and September 13, 1914, he flew five missions, spending more than ten hours in the air and travelling more than a thousand kilometres over land and the Barents Sea. During the last flight he reached the 76th parallel north. Nagórski failed to find Sedov's expedition, but he gained valuable experience as the first polar aviator in history. His report to the Admiralty prepared after his return, as well as a report of Nagórski's achievements by Admiral Mikhail Zhdanko, included a number of suggestions that would prove invaluable to every polar aviator. Among them was the idea of painting red all the planes operating in the Arctic, to make them more visible. His achievements proved that the North Pole could be reached by airplane.
  
  wn.com/Jan_Nagórski
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  Jens Munk
  Jens Munk (3 June or July 1579 – 28 June 1628) was a Dano-Norwegian navigator and explorer who was born in Norway where his father, Erik Munk, had received several fiefs for his achievements in the Northern Seven Years' War. He returned to Denmark at the age of eight. He entered into the service of King Christian IV and is most noted for his attempts to find the Northwest Passage to India.
  Jens Munk was born on his father's estate Barbu at Arendal in the county of Aust-Agder. The father had an infamous reputation for his brutal rule over his estates which led to several trials, and in 1585 he was deposed and imprisoned at Dragsholm Castle. After that, at the age of eight, Jens Munk travelled to Aalborg in Denmark with his mother who became a housekeeper in the home of her husband's sister who was married to the city's mayor.
  In 1591, at the age of twelve, Munk went to Oporto in Portugal where he worked for the shipping magnat Duart Duez. The following year he sailed with a Dutch convoy to Bahia in Brazil. Off the Brazilian coast the convoy was attacked by French pirates. Munk was among the seven survivors. Munk lived in Bahia (today's Salvador) for six years, where he was in the service of Duart Duez' brother, Miguel. Under dramatic circumstances Munk returned to Europe and Copenhagen in 1599, where the Danish magnat and Lord Chancellor Henrik Ramel hired him as ship clerk.
  
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  John Cabot
  John Cabot (known in Italian as Giovanni Caboto; c. 1450 – c. 1499) was an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of parts of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is commonly held to have been the first European encounter with the continent of North America since the Norse Vikings visits to Vinland in the eleventh century. The official position of the Canadian and United Kingdom governments is that he landed on the island of Newfoundland.
  Cabot's birthplace is in Italy. In Italy he is known today as Giovanni Caboto, in England as John Cabot, in France as Jean Cabot, and in Spain as Juan Caboto. The non-Italian forms reflect references to him in the related 15th-century documents. Only one set of documents has been found bearing his signature. These are Venetian testamentary documents of 1484, on which he signed as "Zuan Chabotto", Zuan being a form of John typical to Venice. That he continued to use this form in England, at least among Italians, is supported by two letters referring to him that were written by others in London in 1497. One, from a London-based Venetian, gives Cabot's first name as Zuam. Another, from the Milanese Ambassador, spells his name Zoane. In a document identified in October 2010, he is described by his Italian banker in London as 'Giovanni Chabbote', this being the only known contemporary document to use this version of his first name.
  
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  John Franklin
  Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. In his last expedition, he disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. The entire crew perished from starvation, hypothermia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning and scurvy, and the expedition's icebound ships were abandoned in desperation.^{[citation needed]}
  Franklin was born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, in 1786 and educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth. John Franklin was the ninth of twelve children. One of his sisters was the mother of Emily Tennyson. Franklin's father initially opposed his son's interest in a career at sea. However, Franklin was determined and his father reluctantly allowed him to go on a trial voyage with a merchant ship. This hardened young Franklin's resolve, so at the age of 14 his father secured him a Royal Navy appointment on HMS Polyphemus. Franklin was later present at a number of historic voyages and naval battles. These included the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, an expedition to explore the coast of Australia on HMS Investigator with his uncle, Captain Matthew Flinders, a return to the Napoleonic Wars, serving aboard HMS Bellerophon at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and he was at the Battle of New Orleans.
  
  wn.com/John_Franklin
• Jonas Poole
  Jonas Poole (bap. 1566 – 1612) was an early 17th century English explorer, sealer, and whaler. Although Henry Hudson has often been dubbed the "father of English whaling," Poole, who's 1610 voyage led to the establishment of the English whaling trade, deserves the title.
  He served aboard vessels sent by the Muscovy Company on sealing voyages to Bear Island in 1604, 1605, 1606, 1608, and 1609. In 1607 he was among the sailors sent to the New World to establish Jamestown, in particular being one of the two dozen colonists led by Captain Christopher Newport that explored the upper James River in a pinnace as far as the falls near present day Richmond, Virginia in late May of that year. In 1606 he was given command of a 20-ton pinnace. In 1608 he piloted the ship Paul, and in 1609 he was master of the ship Lioness.
  In 1610 Poole was again sent to Bear Island to hunt walrus, as well as search for a passage towards the North Pole. He was given command of the 70-ton Amity, with a crew of fourteen men and a boy. He bypassed Bear Island altogether, sailing straight for Spitsbergen. While Barentsz had only spent a few weeks exploring Spitsbergen and Hudson less than a month, Poole spent nearly three months (May-August) exploring the west coast and hunting walrus, polar bear, and reindeer there. On 6 May he came within sight of a mountain on the south coast of Spitsbergen, which he named Muscovy Company’s Mount (modern Hornsundtind). He sailed north and sent a skiff into a small fjord. They returned with a piece of reindeer horn, resulting in Poole giving the fjord the name Horn Sound (Hornsund).
  
  wn.com/Jonas_Poole
• Joris Carolus
  Joris Carolus (ca. 1566, Enkhuizen - ca. 1636, Amsterdam? ) was a Dutch cartographer and explorer. He served for both the Noordsche Compagnie and the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company).
  Carolus apparently was a native of Enkhuizen. After he lost a leg at the Siege of Ostend (1601-04) he turned to the art of navigation and became a pilot (Stierman). In 1614 he was pilot of the Enkhuizen ship den Orangienboom (“Orange Tree”), under Jacob de Gouwenaer, one of the two ships sent by the whaling company Noordsche Compagnie on a voyage of discovery. Carolus claimed to have reached 83° N, but this would have been impossible given the ice conditions described by Robert Fotherby, who was also on a voyage of discovery in the ship Thomasine, sent by the rival Muscovy Company of England. According to Fotherby—who saw the Dutch ships riding off Amsterdam Island on July 6/16, "ready for the first opportunity to discover", and on August 9/19 "two ships of the Hollanders, that were appointed for northern discovery, were seene thwart of Faire Haven, sayling to the southwards"— the ice was packed along the northern coast of Spitsbergen. Even in shallops the English were only able to go as far north as Castlins Point (modern Gråhuken, at 79° 48’N).
  
  wn.com/Joris_Carolus
• Joscelyn Godwin
  Joscelyn Godwin (born 16 January 1945 at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, England) is a composer, musicologist and translator, known for his work on ancient music, paganism and music in the occult.
  He was educated as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, then at Radley College (Music Scholar), and Magdalene College, Cambridge (Music Scholar; B.A., 1965, Mus. B., 1966, M.A. 1969).
  He moved to the U.S. in 1966 to undertake post-graduate work in musicology at Cornell University, where he gained his Ph.D. in 1969 with a dissertation on "The Music of Henry Cowell". He then taught at Cleveland State University for two years before moving to Colgate University Music Department in 1971.
  Amongst his work is the first complete English language translation (1999) of one of the first illustrated printed texts, the incunabulum Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499).
  He continues to teach in the music department at Colgate University, where he often teaches semester-long courses delving into the life and work of a single composer. In the past, Godwin has also taught "The Atlantis Debate," a class which focuses on the feasibility of flood myth, as well as "Western Esoteric Tradition."
  
  wn.com/Joscelyn_Godwin
• Joseph Billings
  Joseph Billings (c. 1758 - 1806) was an English navigator and explorer who spent the most significant part of his life in Russian service.
  In 1785, the Russian government of Catherine II commissioned a new expedition in search for the Northeast Passage, led by English officer Joseph Billings, who had previously sailed with Captain Cook, and the Russian officer Gavril Sarychev as his deputy. This enterprise operated till 1795.
  Though considered a failure by some scholars because the expenditures outweighed the results, it nevertheless had a substantial record of achievement. Accurate maps were made of the Chukchi Peninsula in Eastern Siberia, the west coast of Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands. Members of the expedition landed on Kodiak Island and made an examination of the islands and mainlands of Prince William Sound. Additionally, the expedition compiled a census of the native population of the Aleutian Islands and reported to the crown stories of abuse by the Russian fur traders (promyshlenniki).
  
  wn.com/Joseph_Billings
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  Joseph René Bellot
  Joseph René Bellot (March 18, 1826 – August 18, 1853) was a French Arctic explorer.
  Bellot was born at Paris, the son of a farrier, but moved to Rochefort with his family in 1831. With the aid of the authorities of Rochefort he was enabled at the age of 15 to enter the Ecole Navale at Brest, in which he studied two years and earned a high reputation. He then took part in the Anglo-French expedition of 1845 to Madagascar, and received the cross of the Legion of Honour for distinguished conduct. He afterwards took part in another Anglo-French expedition, that of Parana to South America, which opened the Río de la Plata to commerce.
  In 1851 he joined the Arctic expedition under the command of Captain William Kennedy in search of Sir John Franklin. (To harden himself for the Arctic winters, Bellot is said to have allowed himself only a thin mattress and one blanket on bare boards. When he met his first Eskimos he endeared himself to them by constructing an artificial leg for a man who was disabled).
  
  wn.com/Joseph_René_Bellot
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  Julius von Payer
  Julius Johannes Ludovicus Ritter von Payer (2 September 1841 – 19 August 1915) was an Austro-Hungarian arctic explorer and an Arctic landscape artist.
  Born Julius Payer, his father Franz Anton Rudolf Payer was a retired officer who died when Julius was only fourteen. Payer attended k.k. cadet school in Łobzów near Kraków (now Poland). Between 1857 and 1859 he studied at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt (near Vienna). In 1859 he served as a sub-lieutenant with the 36th infantry regiment in Verona, Northern Italy. He participated in the 1859 Battle of Solferino. Between 1860 and 1863 he served at the garrison in Verona, Italy. In 1863 Payer was assigned as a history teacher to the cadet school in Eisenstadt, Austria. After promotion to the rank of lieutenant first class he was posted to the garrison of Venetia.
  In 1862 he started exploratory tours of the Italian Alps and Hohe Tauern in his free time. From 1864-1868 he explored the Adamello-Presanella Group and the Ortler Alps. He was the first to climb Adamello (3554m). His tours resulted in creating a detailed topographical map at a scale 1:56,000. Due to his achievements, Payer was transferred to the Austrian Military Cartographical Institute in Vienna.
  
  wn.com/Julius_von_Payer
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  Karl Weyprecht
  Karl Weyprecht, also spelt Carl Weyprecht, (8 September 1838 – 2 March 1881) was an Austro-Hungarian explorer. He was an officer (k.u.k. Linienschiffsleutnant) in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. He is most famous as an Arctic explorer, and an advocate of international cooperation for scientific polar exploration. Although he did not live to see it occur, he is associated with the organisation of the first International Polar Year.
  In 1856, he joined the Austro-Hungarian Navy (Kriegsmarine) as a provisional sea cadet. He served in the Austro-Sardinian War. From 1860 to 1862, he served on the frigate Radetzky under the command of Admiral Tegetthoff. From 1863 to 1865, he was instructional officer on the training ship Hussar.
  On 23 July 1865, he became known to the German geographer August Petermann at a meeting of the "Geographic Society" in Frankfurt.
  He served in the 20 July 1866 sea battle at Lissa aboard the battleship Drache.
  He met Julius von Payer in 1870 and made a preliminary expedition with Payer to Novaya Zemlya in 1871.
  
  wn.com/Karl_Weyprecht
• Khariton Laptev
  Khariton Prokofievich Laptev (Russian: Харитон Прокофьевич Лаптев) (1700–1763) was a Russian naval officer and Arctic explorer.
  Khariton Laptev was born in a gentry family in the village of Pokarevo near Velikiye Luki (in the southern part of today's Pskov Oblast), just a year before his cousin Dmitry Laptev was born in the nearby village of Bolotovo.
  Khariton Laptev started his career in the Russian Navy as a cadet in 1718. By 1730, he was already in charge of a military ship, and in 1734 participated in the siege of Gdańsk.
  In 1739–1742, Khariton Laptev led one of the parties of the Second Kamchatka expedition. Together with Semion Chelyuskin, N. Chekin, and G. Medvedev, Laptev described the Taimyr Peninsula from the mouth of the Khatanga River to the mouth of the Pyasina river and discovered a few of the islands in the area. After the expedition, he participated in the creation of the "General Map of the Siberian and Kamchatka Coast", and continued his military service in the Baltic Fleet. The sea coastline of the Taimyr Peninsula, a cape on the Chelyuskin Peninsula and other landmarks bear his name. The Laptev Sea was also named after him (and his cousin Dmitry Laptev).
  
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  Knud Rasmussen
  Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (June 7, 1879 – December 21, 1933) was a Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" and was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit.
  Rasmussen was born in Ilulissat, Greenland, the son of a Danish missionary, the vicar Christian Rasmussen, and an Inuit- Danish mother, Lovise Rasmussen (née Fleischer). He had two siblings, including a brother, Peter Lim. Rasmussen spent his early years in Greenland among the Kalaallit (Inuit) where he learned from an early age to speak the language (Kalaallisut), hunt, drive dog sleds and live in harsh Arctic conditions. "My playmates were native Greenlanders; from the earliest boyhood I played and worked with the hunters, so even the hardships of the most strenuous sledge-trips became pleasant routine for me." He was later educated in Lynge, North Zealand, Denmark. Between 1898 and 1900 he pursued an unsuccessful career as an actor and opera singer.
  
  wn.com/Knud_Rasmussen
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  Konstantin Badygin
  Captain Konstantin Sergeyevich Badygin (Russian: Константин Сергеевич Бадигин; 30 November 1910, Penza – 15 March 1984, Moscow), sometimes also transliterated "Badigin", was a Soviet naval officer, explorer, author, and scientist.
  Konstantin Sergeyevich Badygin began his naval career in 1928 as a sailor on Soviet ships in the Pacific Ocean. Later he studied in the Marine Technical School at Vladivostok and became a navigator and an officer in the Soviet Navy.
  Between 1935 and 1936 he became the third officer aboard Icebreaker Krasin and in 1937 he became the second in command aboard Icebreaker Sedov.
  Badygin became renowned in 1938 as captain of icebreaker Sedov when it was transformed into a Soviet Drifting Polar Station. In 1940 Badigin was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for his work aboard the Sedov as both a naval officer and a scientist.
  Between 1941 and 1943 he became the Chief of the Soviet ice-breaker fleet in the White Sea as well as the director of the Ice Survey Service.
  
  wn.com/Konstantin_Badygin
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  Kurbat Ivanov
  Kurbat Afanasyevich Ivanov (Russian: Курбат Афанасьевич Иванов, (? – 1666) was among the greatest Cossack explorers of Siberia. He was the first Russian to discover Lake Baikal, and to create the first map of the Russian Far East. He also is credited with creation of the early map of Chukotka and Bering Strait, which was the first to show (very schematically) the yet undiscovered Wrangel Island, both Diomede Islands and Alaska.
  Initially Kurbat Ivanov was a Yeniseyan Cossack. In 1642 he made the first map of the Russian Far East, based on the explorations of Ivan Moskvitin.
  Ivanov came to the Verkholensky ostrog on Lena River, and taking 74 men with himself he sailed south up the river on 21 June 1643, having decided to find if the rumors of large body of water south of Lena were true. He took with himself a Tungus prince Mozheul to assist in finding the way. Through the upper Lena and its tributary Ilikta they reached Primorsky Ridge, crossed it by foot, and by river Sarma descended to Baikal near Olkhon Island. Having built new boats, Ivanov sailed to Olkhon.
  
  wn.com/Kurbat_Ivanov
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  Lawrence Oates
  Captain Lawrence Edward Grace ("Titus") Oates (17 March 1880 – 16 March 1912) was an English Antarctic explorer, known for the manner of his death, when he walked from a tent into a blizzard, with the words "I am just going outside and may be some time".
  His death is seen as an act of self-sacrifice when, aware his ill health was compromising his three companions' chances of survival, he chose certain death.
  Oates was born in Putney, London, England in 1880, the son of William and Caroline Oates. His family was wealthy and ancient, having had land at Gestingthorpe, Essex, for centuries. His father moved there when his children were small.. He had one sister, a year older than himself, named Lilian. His uncle was the naturalist and African explorer Frank Oates. Oates lived in Putney from 1885–91, from the ages of 5 to 11 at 263 Upper Richmond Road. He was one of the first pupils to attend the Willington Prep School around the corner in Colinette Road. He was further educated at Eton College which he left after less than two years owing to ill health.. He then attended an army "crammer" school, South Lynn School, Eastbourne. In 1898, Oates was commissioned into the 3rd (Militia) Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. He saw military service during the Second Boer War as a junior officer in the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons, having been transferred to that regiment in 1900. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1902, then to Captain in 1906. In March 1901, during the Boer War, he suffered a gunshot wound to his thigh which left it shattered and his left leg an inch shorter than his right leg when it eventually healed. In that skirmish he was twice called on to surrender, and replied "We came to fight, not to surrender.". He later served in Ireland, Egypt, and India. He was often referred to by the nickname "Titus Oates", after the historical figure.
  
  wn.com/Lawrence_Oates
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  Leonhard Euler
  Leonhard Euler (German pronunciation: [ˈɔʏlɐ], ( Swiss German pronunciation (help·info)) ( Standard German pronunciation (help·info)) English approximation, "Oiler"; 15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function. He is also renowned for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, and astronomy.
  Euler spent most of his adult life in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, Prussia. He is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century, and one of the greatest of all time. He is also one of the most prolific mathematicians ever; his collected works fill 60–80 quarto volumes. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all."
  
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  Lewis Gordon Pugh
  Lewis Gordon Pugh, OIG (born 5 December 1969) is a British environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer.
  Pugh was the first person to complete a long-distance swim in every ocean. He frequently swims in vulnerable ecosystems to draw attention to their plight and is best known for undertaking the first swim across the North Pole in 2007 to highlight the melting of the Arctic sea ice and for swimming across a glacial lake under the summit of Mount Everest in 2010 to draw attention to the melting glaciers in the Himalayas, and the impact the reduced water supply will have on world peace.
  In 2010 he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum for his "potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world through inspiring leadership."
  Pugh was born in Plymouth, England. His father, Surgeon Rear Admiral P.D. Gordon Pugh, OBE, FRCS was a surgeon in the Royal Navy and a prolific collector of ceramics of the Victorian era. His mother, Margery Pugh was a Senior Nursing Sister in Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service. Pugh is a descendant of William Carey the famous missionary. His father's cousin, Carey Heydenrych, participated in the "Great Escape" from the German POW camp Stalag Luft III during the Second World War. In 2009 Pugh married Antoinette Malherbe, whom he met at school.
  
  wn.com/Lewis_Gordon_Pugh
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  Lincoln Ellsworth
  Lincoln Ellsworth (May 12, 1880 – May 26, 1951) was an polar explorer from the United States.
  He was born on May 12, 1880 to James Ellsworth and Eva Frances Butler in Chicago, Illinois. He also lived in Hudson, Ohio as a child.
  Lincoln Ellsworth's father, James, a wealthy coal man from the United States, spent US$100,000 to fund Roald Amundsen's 1925 attempt to fly from Svalbard to the North Pole. The craft were forced down onto the ice short of their goal, and the explorers spent 30 days trapped on the surface.
  In 1926, Ellsworth accompanied Amundsen on his second effort to fly over the Pole in the airship Norge, designed and piloted by the Italian engineer Umberto Nobile, in a flight from Svalbard to Alaska. On May 12, the Geographic North Pole was sighted. This was the first undisputed sighting of the area.
  Ellsworth made four expeditions to Antarctica between 1933 and 1939, using as his aircraft transporter and base a former Norwegian herring boat that he named Wyatt Earp after his hero.
  
  wn.com/Lincoln_Ellsworth
• Louis Palander
  Adolf Arnold Louis Palander af Vega (October 2, 1842 – August 7, 1920) was a Swedish naval officer, mostly remembered as the captain on Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld's Vega expedition, the first successful attempt to navigate the Northeast Passage.
  Louis Palander was born in Karlskrona in October 1842. His father Axel Fredrik Palander was a rear admiral (lower half) in the Swedish Royal Navy, and the director of the Royal Navy shipyard in Karlskrona. His mother was Emelie Jacquette Constance du Rées. Louis Palander became a naval cadet already at the early age of 14. In 1864 he graduated from the Navy Academy in Karlberg as a second lieutenant and participated in expeditions to the Mediterranean, Sierra Leone and Liberia on the corvette Gefle, as well as in a trip to the United States. After several other appointments at sea, Louis Palander participated in Nordenskiölds expedition to Spitsbergen in 1868, on board the steamer Sofia (the ship's captain was baron Fredrik von Otter). He married Anna Katarina Grischotti the same year.
  
  wn.com/Louis_Palander
• Maria Klenova
  Maria Vasilyevna Klenova (Russian: Мари́я Васи́льевна Клёнова) (1898 – 1976) was a Russian and Soviet marine geologist and one of the founders of Russian marine science.
  Klenova studied to become a professor and later on worked as a member of the Council for Antarctic Research of the USSR Academy of Sciences. During that time she spent nearly thirty years researching in the Polar Regions and become the first woman scientist to do research in Antarctica, specifically at the ANARE (Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions) station at Macquarie Island.
  Klenova began her marine geology career in 1925 as a researcher aboard the Soviet research vessel Persey, attached to the Floating Marine Research Institute in the Barents Sea and the archipelagos of Novaya Zemlya, Spitsbergen, and Franz Josef Land. In 1933 Klenova produced the first complete seabed map of the Barents Sea.
  In 1949 Klenova became a senior research associate at the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Her work included analyses of seabed geology in the Atlantic Ocean and the Antarctic, and in the Caspian, Barents and White Seas. In the austral summer of 1956 she traveled with a Soviet oceanographic team to map uncharted areas of the Antarctic coast.
  
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  Maria Pronchishcheva
  Maria Pronchishcheva (Мария Прончищева, 1710 - 23 September 1736) - a Russian explorer.
  In 1735 with her husband, Vasili Pronchishchev, went down the Lena River (from Yakutsk) on Vasili's sloop Yakutsk, doubled its delta, and stopped for wintering at the mouth of the Olenek River. Unfortunately many members of the crew fell ill and died, mainly owing to scurvy. Despite the difficulties, in 1736, they reached the eastern shore of the Taymyr Peninsula and went north along its coastline. Finally Pronchishcheva and her husband succumbed to scurvy and died on the way back.
  Maria is considered the first female polar explorer. Maria Pronchishcheva Bay in the Laptev Sea is named after her.
  
  
  
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  Mark Shevelev
  Mark Shevelev (Russian: Шевелёв, Марк Иванович) (1904–1991) was a Soviet pilot during World War II and was one of founders and Chief of Staff of Soviet Long Range Aviation. Shevelev held the rank of Lieutenant-General. He was a head of aviation department Aviaarktika of the Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route, Hero of the Soviet Union.
  Mark Shevelev was born 11 (24) October 1904 in Saint Petersburg to Jewish parents. Shevelev joined Red Army in 1920 and participated in the Civil War. Joined Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) in 1921. Graduated air transportation department of Leningrad Institute of transport in 1925.
  Mark Shevelev joined nascent Soviet polar avaiation in 1929. Since 1933 he headed aviation department of the Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route, Participated in 6 polar expeditions in 1929-1937. In 1937 he led the expedition to airlift North Pole-1 personnel and equipment to the North Pole. He had been awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title (36th awarded since the award had been created) for this expedition.
  
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  Martin Frobisher
  Sir Martin Frobisher (c. 1535 or 1539 – 15 November 1594) was an English seaman who made three voyages to the New World to look for the Northwest Passage. All landed in northeastern Canada, around today's Resolution Island and Frobisher Bay. On his second voyage, Frobisher found what he thought was gold ore and carried 200 tons of it home on three ships, where initial assaying determined it to be worth a profit of £5.1 per ton. Encouraged, Frobisher returned to Canada with an even larger fleet and dug several mines around Frobisher Bay. He carted 1,350 tons of the ore back where, after years of smelting, it was realized that both that batch of ore and the earlier one he had taken were worthless iron pyrite. As an English privateer/pirate, he collected riches from French ships. He was later knighted for his service in repelling the Spanish Armada in 1588.
  As early as 1560 or 1561, Frobisher had formed a resolution to undertake a voyage in search of a Northwest Passage as a trade route to India and China (referred to at that time as Cathay).
  
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  Matthew Henson
  Matthew Alexander Henson (August 8, 1866 – March 9, 1955) was an African American explorer and associate of Robert Peary on various expeditions, the most famous being a 1909 expedition during which he may have been the first person to reach the Geographic North Pole.
  Henson was born on a farm in Nanjemoy, Maryland on August 8, 1866. He was still a child when his parents Lemuel and Caroline^{[citation needed]} died. He was sent to live with his uncle, who paid for his education until he died. After his uncle's death, Henson got a job as a dishwasher at "Janey's Home-Cooked Meals Cafe". At the age of twelve he went to sea as a cabin boy on a merchant ship called Katie Hines. The captain, Captain Childs, took him under his wing and thought of him as his son. Childs and Henson were close for a long time. Henson sailed around the world for the next several years. He visited places such as China, Japan, the Phillipines, France, Africa, and southern Russia, educating himself and becoming a skilled navigator.
  
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  Matvei Gedenschtrom
  Matvei Matveyevich Gedenschtrom (Russian: Матвей Матвеевич Геденштром) (circa 1780 – 20 September 1845) was a Russian explorer of Northern Siberia, writer, and public servant.
  Matvei Gedenschtrom attended University of Tartu. He did not finish his studies and left his alma mater in favor of work at Tallinn customs. Soon, however, he was arrested in connection with a smuggling affair, tried, and then banished to Siberia. In 1808, Gedenschtrom arrived in Irkutsk and received his first duty assignment, namely, the exploration of the coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Lacking necessary scientific background, Matvei Gedenschtrom had to study a lot in order to be able to reckon a latitude and longitude of a given location and use scientific equipment in general. Gedenschtrom led the cartographic expedition to explore the New Siberian Islands (together with Yakov Sannikov and land surveyors Pyotr Pshenitsyn and I.Kozhevin). The theory about the existence of the so called Sannikov Land somewhere northwest of the Kotelny Island originated during this very expedition. Gedenschtrom established the presence of the so called "Siberian polynya" – patches of open water in sea ice at the edge of the drifting ice and continental fast ice. In 1809, Gedenschtrom visited the eastern shores of an island, discovered by merchants Semyon and Lev Syrovatsky three years earlier, and named it New Siberia (this name would be officially endorsed in 1810). Gedenschtrom charted the coastline between the mouths of the rivers Yana and Kolyma. He also made many trips across Yakutia and areas east of the Lake Baikal.
  
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  Mercator Cooper
  Mercator Cooper (September 29, 1803 – spring 1872) was a ship's captain who is credited with the first formal American visit to Tokyo, Japan and the first formal landing on the mainland East Antarctica.
  Both events occurred while sailing ships out of Sag Harbor, New York, where he was born.
  On November 9, 1843, Cooper left Sag Harbor as captain of the 440-ton ship Manhattan on a whaling voyage. On March 14–15, 1845 the Manhattan picked up 11 Japanese sailors in the southern Japanese islands.
  Outside of Tokyo Bay four of the survivors took a Japanese boat with a message that Cooper wanted to deliver the remainder to the harbor. The Japanese normally wanted to avoid contact with outsiders because of the Tokugawa Shogunate policy of Sakoku.
  However, on April 18, 1845, an emissary from the shogun gave the ship permission to proceed – accompanied by "about three hundred Japanese boats with about 15 men in each took the ship in tow" according to Cooper's log. "They took all our arms out to keep till we left. There were several of the nobility came on board to see the ship. They appeared very friendly."
  
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  Merkury Vagin
  Merkury Vagin (Russian: Меркурий Вагин) (died 1712) was a Russian Arctic explorer.
  In 1712, together with Yakov Permyakov, Merkury Vagin explored the region of the eastern Laptev Sea coast, including Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, the southermost of the New Siberian Archipelago. With a group of Cossacks they crossed the Yana Bay over the ice from the mouth of the Yana; after reaching Bolshoy Lyakhovsky, they explored the then unknown island that had been reported by Permyakov two years earlier.
  Vagin and Permyakov were murdered on the way back from their exploration by mutineering expedition members. The cossacks took the dead bodies down to the ice and set them on fire. No one knows what the rebellious cossacks did with the ashes, but Merkury Vagin's remains were never found.
  Merkuriya Island was named after this pioneering Russian explorer.
  
  
  
  
  
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• Michael Barne
  Michael Barne (15 October 1877 – 31 May 1961) was an officer of the 1901-04 Discovery Expedition and was the last survivor of the expedition.
  Barne was born at Sotterley Park, Suffolk the son of Frederick Barne and his wife Lady Constance Adelaide Seymour, daughter of Francis Seymour, 5th Marquess of Hertford. His father was Member of Parliament for East Suffolk. He was educated at Stubbington School in preparation for the Navy, which he entered the service as a Midshipman in 1893. In 1898 he was commissioned to serve aboard HMS Porcupine.
  In 1901 he was appointed by Scott as Second Lieutenant to the Polar Expedition. Despite suffering frostbite Barne made copious notes throughout his three years with the expedition, both about general conditions and his specialist fields( magnetronemy and Soundings). Scott rated his ability to calm possible tensions highly.Barne Inlet, a 17-mile-wide (27 km) feature on the Western side of the Ross Ice Shelf he discovered is named after him. He was awarded the Polar Medal for his contribution to the expedition.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Barne
• Mikhail Gvozdev
  Mikhail Spiridonovich Gvozdev (Russian: Михаил Спиридонович Гвоздев) (1700-04 — after 1759) was a Russian military geodesist and a commander of the expedition to northern Alaska in 1732, when Alaskan shore was for the first time sighted by Russians.
  In 1732, together with the participants of the first Kamchatka expedition navigators Ivan Fedorov and K. Moshkov, Gvozdev in Sviatoi Gavriil (St. Gabriel) sailed to Dezhnev Cape, the easternmost point of Asia. From there, after having replenished the water supply on 5 August, 'Sviatoi Gavriil' sailed east and soon came near mainland at the Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. They charted the north-western coast of Alaska and mapped their route. By doing this, Fyodorov and Gvozdev completed the discovery of the Bering Strait, once started by Dezhnyov and Fedot Popov and continued by Bering.
  Subsequently in 1741-42 Gvozdev participated in expedition led by Alexey Shelting and mapped most of the western and southern shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as the eastern shore of Sakhalin island.
  
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  Mikhail Lavrov
  Mikhail Andrianovich Lavrov (Russian: Лавров, Михаил Андрианович) (1799–1882) was a Russian rear-admiral and Arctic explorer.
  Mikhail Lavrov was born on September 13, 1799 in the city of Arkhangelsk. He graduated from Cadets Corps in Saint Petersburg and served at the Baltic Fleet. He participated in the voyage of the cargo ship Mezen from Kronstadt to Arkhangelsk and back in 1819–1820. In 1821–1824, in the rank of senior officer, he participated in the expedition of Fyodor Litke on board of the brig Novaya Zemlya, making description of coast line of Murmansk and Novaya Zemlya archipelago. In 1825–1827, he made a round-the-world voyage on board sloop Krotkiy with Admiral Ferdinand Wrangel, visiting Kamchatka and Russian America. In 1831–1834, Lavrov served in the rank of lieutenant commander in the Mediterranean and Adriatic, participated in a battle against pirate ships, sinking four of them, and was therefore promoted to the rank of commander. In 1833, he was awarded with an Order of St. George of the 4th degree for immaculate service in the officer rank in 18 six-month campaigns.
  
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  Mikhail Lazarev
  Admiral Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev (Russian: Михаил Петрович Лазарев, November 3, 1788 – April 11, 1851) was a Russian fleet commander and explorer who discovered Antarctica.
  Lazarev was born in Vladimir, a scion of the old Russian nobility from the Vladimir province. In 1800, he enrolled in Russia's Naval College. Three years later he was sent to the British fleet, where he would stay for a continuous five-year navigation. From 1808 to 1813, Lazarev served in the Baltic Fleet. He took part in the Russo-Swedish War of 1808-1809 and Patriotic War of 1812.
  Lazarev first circumnavigated the globe in 1813-1816, aboard the vessel Suvorov; the expedition began at Kronstadt and reached Alaska. During this voyage, Lazarev discovered the Suvorov Atoll.
  As a commander of the ship Mirny and Fabian von Bellingshausen's deputy on his world cruise in 1819-1821 (Bellingshausen commanded Vostok), Lazarev took part in the discovery of Antarctica and numerous islands. On January 28, 1820 the expedition discovered the Antarctic mainland, approaching the Antarctic coast at the coordinates 69°21′28″S 2°14′50″W / 69.35778°S 2.24722°W / -69.35778; -2.24722 and seeing ice-fields there.
  
  wn.com/Mikhail_Lazarev
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  Mikhail Somov
  Mikhail Mikhailovich Somov (Russian: Михаил Михайлович Сомов) (7 April 1908, Moscow - 30 December 1973, Leningrad) was a Soviet oceanologist, polar explorer, Doctor of Geographical Sciences (1954).
  Mikhail Somov graduated from the Moscow Hydrometeorological Institute in 1937. In 1939, he was appointed senior researcher at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. In 1950-1951, Mikhail Somov headed a drift-ice station North Pole-2. In 1955-1957, he became a leader of the first Soviet Antarctic Expedition. Mikhail Somov was also the first Soviet delegate to the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research.
  The Somov Sea north of Victoria Land and a glacier in Queen Maud Land (both East Antarctica) bear Mikhail Somov's name, as well as a scientific icebreaker. A minor planet 3334 Somov discovered by Czech astronomer Antonín Mrkos in 1981 is named after him.
  
  
  
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  Mikhail Stadukhin
  Mikhail Vasilyevich Stadukhin (Russian: Михаил Васильевич Стадухин) (died 1666) was a Russian explorer of far northeast Siberia, one of the first to reach the Kolyma, Anadyr, Penzhina and Gizhiga Rivers and the northern Sea of Okhotsk. He was a Pomor, probably born in the village of Pinega, and the nephew of a Moscow merchant. By 1633 he was on the Lena River.
  
  wn.com/Mikhail_Stadukhin
• Naddodd
  Naddod (Old Norse: Naddoðr or Naddaðr, literally "studded") was a Faroese Viking who is credited with the discovery of Iceland. Naddod was also one of the first settlers on the Faroe Islands after Grímur Kamban became the first to settle there around 825. Naddod was born in Agder, which comprises the two Norwegian counties of Aust-Agder and Vest-Agder.
  Landnámabók, a medieval Icelandic manuscript, describes in considerable detail the settlement (Icelandic: landnám) of Iceland by the Norse in the 9th and 10th century. According to Landnámabók, Iceland was discovered by Naddod, who was sailing from Norway to the Faroe Islands, but got lost and drifted to the east coast of Iceland. Naddod came upon the shore of a land with a bay and mountains near what is today the Icelandic town of Reyðarfjörður. Although he climbed a mountain to look for smoke rising from fire-places he saw no sign of humans. Naddod decided to continue his journey to the Faroe Islands, but as he returned to his boat it started to snow and so he named the land Snæland (Snowland). The island later became known as Ísland (Iceland). (See names of Iceland).
  
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  Nathaniel Palmer
  Nathaniel Brown Palmer (8 August 1799 – 21 June 1877) was an American seal hunter, explorer, sailing captain, and ship designer. He was born in Stonington, Connecticut.
  During the 1810s the skins of Antarctic Ocean seals were highly valued as items for trade with China. As a skilled and fearless seal hunter, Palmer achieved his first command at the early age of 21. His vessel, a diminutive sloop named the Hero, was only 47 feet (14 m) in length. Palmer steered southward in the Hero at the beginning of the Antarctic summer of 1820–1821. Aggressively searching for new seal rookeries south of Cape Horn, on 17 November 1820, Palmer and his men became the first Americans and the third group of people to discover the Antarctic Peninsula. Larger ships skippered by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Edward Bransfield had reported sighting land earlier in 1820. Along with English sealer George Powell, Palmer also co-discovered the nearby South Orkney Islands archipelago.
  After concluding a successful sealing career, Palmer, still in the prime of life, switched his attention to the captaining of fast sailing ships for the transportation of express freight. In 1843, Captain Palmer took command of the Paul Jones on her maiden voyage from Boston to Hong Kong, arriving in in 111 days. In this new role, the Connecticut captain traveled many of the world's principal sailing routes. Observing the strengths and weaknesses of the ocean-going sailing ships of his time, Palmer suggested and designed improvements to their hulls and rigging. The improvements made Palmer a co-developer of the mid-19th century clipper ship.
  
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  Neil Armstrong
  Neil Alden Armstrong (born August 5, 1930) is an American former astronaut, test pilot, aerospace engineer, university professor, United States Naval Aviator, and the first person to set foot upon the Moon.
  Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was in the United States Navy and served in the Korean War. After the war, he served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he flew over 900 flights in a variety of aircraft. As a research pilot, Armstrong served as project pilot on the F-100 Super Sabre A and C variants, F-101 Voodoo, and the Lockheed F-104A Starfighter. He also flew the Bell X-1B, Bell X-5, North American X-15, F-105 Thunderchief, F-106 Delta Dart, B-47 Stratojet, KC-135 Stratotanker, and was one of eight elite pilots involved in the paraglider research vehicle program (Paresev). He graduated from Purdue University and the University of Southern California.
  A participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man In Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs, Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962. His first spaceflight was the NASA Gemini 8 mission in 1966, for which he was the command pilot, becoming one of the first U.S. civilians to fly in space.^{[citation needed]} On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft with pilot David Scott. Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2½ hours exploring while Michael Collins remained in orbit in the Command Module. Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Richard Nixon along with Collins and Aldrin, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
  
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  Nikifor Begichev
  Nikifor Alekseevich Begichev (Bigichev) (Russian: Никифор Алексеевич Бегичев (Бигичев) (February 7 (N.S. February 19), 1874 – May 18, 1927) was a Russian seaman and polar explorer. Twice awarded by the Big Golden Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences
  Born in Tsariov town, Astrakhan guberniya (region) in the family of Volga River fishers. In 1895 called up to the service in the Russian Navy. Three times travelled as a sailor and a boatswain to the The Antilles islands.
  He was a participant in Baron Eduard Toll's 1900–1903 Russian Polar Expedition as the bosun of ship Zarya. After the death of Baron Toll, Begichev took part in the research. During this exploring, he has saved the life of his commander- lieutenant Aleksandr Kolchak, the future famous admiral. Walking by the sea ice, Kolchak fell in the split. When Begichev pulled him from the water, lieutenant did not give any signs of live. Begichev took off his dry clothes, and dressed Kolchak. Then to re-animate him, Begichev fired his pipe and put in Kolchak's mouth. Kolchak opened his eyes.
  
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  Nikolai Kolomeitsev
  Nikolai Nikolaevich Kolomeitsev, also spelt Kolomeytsev (Russian: Николай Николаевич Коломейцев) (16 July 1867 (near Kherson, Ukraine) - 1944 in Paris) was a Russian naval officer and explorer of the Arctic.
  Nikolai Kolomeitsev was born in the village of Pokrovka near Kherson in Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1867. He entered military service in 1884 and graduated as an officer of the Imperial Russian Navy in 1887. He was promoted to lieutenant in December 1893. In 1894-1895, he was assigned to the Russian Pacific Fleet, and after graduating from mine warfare school, served on several vessels operating in Siberia.
  Kolomeitsev became a member of the Chief Hydrographic Administration’s Survey Expedition to the White Sea. He also took part in an expedition to the Yenisei Gulf led by L. Dobrotvorskiy, which gave him expertise on sailing in arctic waters.
  In 1900, Baron Eduard Toll led an expedition on behalf of the Russian Academy of Sciences on ship Zarya. Kolomeitsev was named commander of the ship during the expedition. His second-in-command was Fyodor Andreyevich Matisen, who had taken part in an expedition to Svalbard. Alexander Kolchak also accompanied the expedition as third naval officer and hydrographer. All these officers were from military backgrounds. The expedition was known as The Russian Polar Expedition. Its aim was to explore well the area north of the New Siberian Islands and eventually sail towards the North Pole in order to find the elusive Sannikov Land.
  
  wn.com/Nikolai_Kolomeitsev
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  Nikolay Urvantsev
  Nikolay Nikolayevich Urvantsev (Russian: Николай Николаевич Урванцев; 29 January [O.S. 17 January] 1893 – 20 February 1985) was a Soviet geologist and explorer. He was born in the town of Lukoyanov of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire to the family of a merchant. He graduated from the Tomsk Engineering Institute in 1918.
  Urvantsev was among the discoverers of the Norilsk coal basin and Norilsk copper-nickel ore region in 1919-1922 and was among the founders of Norilsk town.
  In 1922, while leading a geological expedition, Urvantsev found evidence of the mysteriously disappeared Amundsen's 1918 Arctic expedition crew members Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen. Urvantsev recovered the mail and scientific data that the two ill-fated Norwegians had been carrying. The valuable documents were lying abandoned on the Kara Sea shore near the mouth of the Zeledeyeva River.
  In 1930-1932 Urvantsev, together with Georgy Ushakov, explored the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago where they discovered a number of islands. He published a book about the expedition, At the Severnaya Zemlya. He also explored other remote areas of Russia, Taimyr and Central Siberian Plateau.
  
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  Olav Bjaaland
  Olav Bjaaland (5 March 1873 – 8 June 1961) was a Norwegian ski champion from Telemark. In 1911, he was one of the first five men to reach the South Pole as part of an expedition led by Roald Amundsen.
  Olav Bjaaland was born in Morgedal, Telemark, Norway. At the turn of the century, Bjaaland, together with the Hemmestveit brothers were among the best skiers in Norway. In 1902, he won the nordic combined at the Holmenkollen Ski Festival, to this day the classic event in nordic skiing. In 1909 Bjaaland, together with five others were invited to France to compete with the best skiers of Europe.
  On this trip, Bjaaland by chance met Roald Amundsen; the already-successful explorer invited Bjaaland, as a skier, to join his forthcoming expedition to the North Pole. Bjaaland was thrilled, and still believing that they were heading to the North Pole, they left Oslo, Norway on 7 June 1910. Upon learning that they instead were heading south to race for the Antarctic pole against Robert Falcon Scott, Bjaaland had shouted: "Hurrah, that means we’ll get there first!" For his participation in the expedition, he was awarded the Medal of the South Pole (Sydpolsmedaljen), a Royal Norwegian award instituted by King Haakon VII in 1912 to reward participants in Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition.
  
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  Oscar Wisting
  Oscar Adolf Wisting (6 June 1871 – 5 December 1936) was a Norwegian polar explorer. Together with Roald Amundsen he was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles.
  Oscar Wisting was born in Larvik, in Vestfold county, Norway. At the age of sixteen, he went to sea and in 1892 joined the Royal Norwegian Navy. He was working as a naval gunner at Karljohansvern, the naval base in Horten during 1909 when Roald Amundsen asked him to go north with him on his forthcoming North Pole expedition. Amundsen later secretly changed his plans. Wisting went to sea believing they were heading for the North Pole. Instead he learned that they were going south to pick up the race with Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole.
  On 14 December 1911 along with Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Olav Bjaaland and Sverre Hassel, Wisting planted the Norwegian flag on the Geographic South Pole, the first explorers to have reached that point.
  From 1918 to 1925 Wisting was chief officer onboard the Maud in Roald Amundsen's attempt to traverse the Northeast passage. From 1923 to 1925 Wisting more or less acted as leader of the expedition after Amundsen left to try to fly to the pole instead.
  
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  Otto Nordenskiöld
  Nils Otto Gustaf Nordenskjöld (December 6, 1869 – June 2, 1928) was a Finnish and Swedish geologist, geographer, and polar explorer.
  Nordenskjöld was born in Hässelby in Småland in eastern Sweden, in a Finland Swedish family that included his maternal uncle Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (a noted polar explorer) and cousin Gustaf Nordenskiöld. His father and mother were cousins, but his father's family name was "Nordenskjöld", while his mother's family name was spelled "Nordenskiöld".
  He studied at Uppsala University, obtaining a doctorate in geology in 1894, and later became a lecturer and then associate professor in the university's geology department.
  Otto Nordenskjöld led mineralogical expeditions to Patagonia in the 1890s, and to Alaska and the Klondike area in 1898.
  
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  Otto Schmidt
  Otto Yulyevich Schmidt (Russian: О́тто Ю́льевич Шмидт) (September 30 [O.S. September 18] 1891 — September 7, 1956) was a Soviet scientist, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, statesman, academician, Hero of the USSR (27 June 1937), and member of the Communist Party.
  He was born in Mogilev, Russian Empire (now Belarus). His father was a descendant of German settlers in Courland, while his mother was a Latvian.
  In 1913, Schmidt married Vera Yanitskaia and graduated from the University of Kiev, where he worked as a privat-docent starting from 1916. After the October Revolution of 1917, he was a board member at several People's Commissariats (narkomats) – such as Narkomprod from 1918 to 1920 (Narodnyi Komissariat Prodovolstviya, or People's Commissariat for Supplies), People's Commissariat for Finance from 1921 to 1922 (Narodnyi Komissariat Finansov, or People's Commissariat for Finances). Schmidt was one of the chief proponents of developing the higher education system, publishing, and science in Soviet Russia.
  
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  Otto Sverdrup
  Otto Neumann Knoph Sverdrup (31 October 1854, Bindal, Helgeland – 26 November 1930) was a Norwegian sailor and Arctic explorer.
  He was born in Bindal as a son of farmer Ulrik Frederik Suhm Sverdrup (1833–1914) and his wife Petra Neumann Knoph (1831–1885). He was a great-grandnephew of Georg Sverdrup and Jacob Liv Borch Sverdrup, first cousin twice removed of Harald Ulrik and Johan Sverdrup, second cousin once removed of Jakob, Georg and Edvard Sverdrup, third cousin of Georg Johan, Jakob, Mimi, Leif and Harald Ulrik Sverdrup. He was a brother-in-law of Johan Vaaler, and Otto himself married his own first cousin, Gretha Andrea Engelschiøn (1866–1937), in October 1891 in Kristiania. Their daughter Audhild Sverdrup (1893–1932) married Carl Johan Sverdrup Marstrander.
  His father was born on Buøy in Kolvereid municipality. As oldest son Otto was heir to the Sverdrup properties at Buøy. However, he left it all to his younger brothers and went to Åbygda in Bindal, to the farm named Hårstad, where Otto Sverdrup was born. In 1872, at the age of 17, Otto Sverdrup returned to Nærøy, to Ottersøy where his uncle Søren worked in transportation with his own vessels. Here Sverdrup started his career as a seaman and after a while he was sailing abroad. In 1875 he passed his mate's examination, and some years later the shipmaster's examination.
  
  wn.com/Otto_Sverdrup
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  Otto von Kotzebue
  Otto von Kotzebue (Russian Отто Евстафьевич Коцебу, Otto Evstaf'evič Kocebu) (December 30, 1787 – February 15, 1846) was a Baltic German navigator in Russian service.
  The second son of August von Kotzebue, he was born in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), then part of the Russian Empire. After attending the St Petersburg school of cadets, he accompanied Adam Johann von Krusenstern on his voyage of 1803–1806. On promotion to lieutenant, Kotzebue was placed in command of an expedition, fitted out at the expense of the imperial chancellor, Count Nikolay Rumyantsev, in the brig Rurik. In this vessel, with only twenty-seven men, including the naturalists Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz and Adelbert von Chamisso, and the artist Louis Choris, Kotzebue set out on July 30, 1815 to find a passage across the Arctic Ocean and explore the less-known parts of Oceania.
  Proceeding via Cape Horn, he discovered the Romanzov Islands, Rurik Islands and Krusenstern Islands (today Tikehau), then made for Kamchatka, and in the middle of July proceeded northward, coasting along the north-west coast of North America, and discovering and naming Kotzebue Sound or Gulf and Cape Krusenstern in the remote Chukchi Sea. Returning by the coast of Asia, he again sailed to the south, sojourned for three weeks at the Sandwich Islands, and on January 1, 1817 discovered New Year Island. After further cruising in the Pacific Ocean, he again proceeded north, but severe illness compelled him to return to Europe, and he reached the Neva on August 3, 1818, bringing home a large collection of previously unknown plants and much new ethnological information.
  
  wn.com/Otto_von_Kotzebue
• Peter Warren Dease
  Peter Warren Dease (January 1, 1788 – January 17, 1863) was a Canadian fur trader and arctic explorer.
  Peter Warren Dease was born at Michilimackinac (now Mackinac Island) on January 1, 1788, the fourth son of Dr. John Dease, captain and deputy agent of Indian Affairs, and Jane French, Catholic Mohawk from Caughnawaga. His father was a nephew of Sir William Johnson, and first cousin of Sir John Johnson. He was named after Admiral Sir Peter Warren, an uncle of Sir William Johnson. He was raised by his family in Mackinac Island and then Montreal, until he left home at the age of 13 to work in the fur trade.
  Dease first worked for the New North West (XY) Company at Great Slave Lake. After that company's amalgamation with the North West Company in 1804, he was appointed to the position of clerk at Athabasca. In 1817 he was moved to the Mackenzie District, first at Fort Good Hope, then later at Fort Chipewyan and other Mackenzie posts. In 1821, the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies were united, and he became a chief trader for the Hudson's Bay Company, working in the Athabaska district.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Warren_Dease
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  Pyotr Anjou
  Pyotr Fyodorovich Anjou (Russian: Пётр Фёдорович Анжу) (15 February 1796 – 12 October 1869), was an Arctic explorer and an admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy
  Anjou's grandfather was a Frenchman who entered the service of Russia in the middle of the 18th Century. His father became a Russian citizen and worked as a doctor. Anjou was born in Vyshny Volochyok, near Tver. He graduated from the Marine Cadet Corps
  As a lieutenant, Anjou was given a task to describe the northern coast of Siberia in 1820. He and his assistants (P.Ilyin, Ilya Berezhnikh, and A.Figurin) described the coastline and the islands between the rivers Olenek and Indigirka and made a map of the New Siberian Islands.
  In 1825-1826, Anjou participated in describing the northeastern coast of the Caspian Sea and the western coast of the Aral Sea. He distinguished himself in the Battle of Navarino as a lieutenant of the line of battle ship "Gangut".
  Later on, he held a few commanding posts and also served in administrative and scientific establishments of the Russian Admiralty. One of the groups of the New Siberian Islands bears Anjou's name (the Anjou Islands).
  
  wn.com/Pyotr_Anjou
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  Pyotr Shirshov
  Pyotr Petrovich Shirshov (Russian: Пётр Петрович Ширшов) (December 25 (O.S. December 12), 1905, Ekaterinoslav (today Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) - February 17, 1953, Moscow) was a Ukrainian Soviet oceanographer, hydrobiologist, polar explorer, statesman, academician (1939), and Hero of the Soviet Union (1938).
  Pyotr Shirshov graduated from the Odessa Public Education Institute in 1929. In 1929-1932, he was a researcher at the Botanical Garden of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1932-1936, Pyotr Shirshov was employed as a researcher at the All-Union Arctic Institute. He participated in numerous Arctic expeditions, including the ones on icebreakers Sibiryakov (1932) and Chelyuskin and a drifting ice station North Pole-1 (1937-1938). In 1942-1948, Pyotr Shirshov was People's Commissar (later Minister) of the Soviet Maritime Fleet. In 1946-1953, he headed the Institute of Oceanology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which he had established himself. In 1946-1950, Pyotr Shirshov chaired the Pacific Ocean Science Committee.
  
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  Pytheas
  Pytheas of Massalia or (using the Latin form) Massilia (Ancient Greek Πυθέας ὁ Μασσαλιώτης) (4th century BC), was a Greek geographer and explorer from the Greek colony, Massalia (modern day Marseilles). He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe at about 325 BC. He travelled around and visited a considerable part of Great Britain. Pytheas is the first person on record to describe the Midnight Sun,polar ice, Germanic and possibly Finnic tribes. He is the one who introduced the idea of distant Thule to the geographic imagination. His account of the tides is the earliest to state they are caused by the moon.
  Pliny says that Timaeus (born about 350 BC) believed Pytheas' story of the discovery of amber. Strabo says that Dicaearchus (died about 285 BC) did not trust the stories of Pytheas. That is all the information that survives concerning the date of Pytheas' voyage. Presuming that Timaeus would not have written until after he was 20 years old at about 330 BC and Dicaearchus would have needed time to write his most mature work, after 300 BC, there is no reason not to accept Tozer's window of 330 BC – 300 BC for the voyage. Some would give Timaeus an extra 5 years, bringing the voyage down to 325 BC at earliest. There is no further evidence.
  
  wn.com/Pytheas
• Ralph Plaisted
  Ralph Plaisted (30 September 1927 – 8 September 2008) and his three companions, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean-Luc Bombardier, are regarded by most polar authorities to be the first to succeed in a surface traverse across the ice to the North Pole on 19 April 1968, making the first confirmed surface conquest of the Pole.
  Plaisted was a high-school dropout from Bruno, Minnesota, who found success as an insurance salesman. An avid outdoorsman, in the early 1960's he was one of the first Minnesotans to buy a Ski-Doo snowmobile, a then-novel invention of Canada's Bombardier Company, and became a convert and booster of the machine. In 1965, Plaisted drove his snowmobile 250 miles from Ely to St. Paul, Minnesota in one day, which is regarded as the first long-distance snowmobile trek.
  Plaisted and his friend Art Aufderheide conceived the idea of reaching the North Pole by snowmobile in the spring of 1966, aiming to make the trip the following year. In April and May 1967 Plaisted's first attempt was thwarted at 83° 20' latitude by storms and open water. The attempt did result in a CBS-TV documentary To the Top of the World, reported by Charles Kuralt, who accompanied the Plaisted team.
  
  wn.com/Ralph_Plaisted
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  Ranulph Fiennes
  Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet, OBE (born 7 March 1944), better known as Ranulph (Ran) Fiennes, is a British adventurer and holder of several endurance records. He is also a prolific writer. Fiennes served in the British Army for eight years including a period on counter-insurgency service while attached to the army of the Sultanate of Oman. He later undertook numerous expeditions and was the first person to visit both the North and South Poles by surface means and the first to completely cross Antarctica on foot. In May 2009, at the age of 65, he climbed to the summit of Mount Everest. According to the Guinness Book of World Records he is the world's greatest living explorer. Fiennes has written numerous books about his army service and his expeditions as well as a book defending Robert Falcon Scott from modern revisionists.
  Fiennes was born on 7 March 1944 in Windsor, Berkshire shortly after the death of his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, commanding the Royal Scots Greys, who died of wounds on 24 November 1943. His mother was Audrey Joan, younger daughter of Sir Percy Newson, Bt. Fiennes inherited his father's baronetcy, becoming the 3rd Baronet of Banbury, at his birth. Fiennes is the third cousin of actors Joseph and Ralph Fiennes and is a distant cousin to the British Royal Family.
  
  wn.com/Ranulph_Fiennes
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  Reinhold Messner
  Reinhold Messner (born 17 September 1944) is an Italian mountaineer, adventurer and explorer from the German-speaking autonomous province Alto Adige/Südtirol "whose astonishing feats on Everest and on peaks throughout the world have earned him the status of the greatest climber in history." He is renowned for making the first solo ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and for being the first climber to ascend all fourteen "eight-thousanders" (peaks over 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) above sea level). He is the author of at least 63 books (in German, 1970–2006), many of which have been translated into other languages.
  Born in Brixen (Bressanone), Italy, Messner is a native speaker of German and also fluent in Italian. He grew up in Villnöß and spent his early years climbing in the Alps and fell in love with the Dolomites. His father, Josef Messner, was a teacher. He was also very strict and sometimes severe with Reinhold. Josef led Reinhold to his first summit at the age of five. Reinhold had eight brothers and one sister: he later climbed with his brother Günther and made Arctic crossings with his brother Hubert.
  
  wn.com/Reinhold_Messner
• Richard Chancellor
  Richard Chancellor (died 1556) was an English explorer and navigator; the first to penetrate to the White Sea and establish relations with Russia.
  Chancellor, a native of Bristol, acquired geographical and maritime proficiency from the explorer Sebastian Cabot and the geographer John Dee. Cabot had always been interested in making a voyage to Asia through the Arctic, and for this purpose King Edward VI chartered an association of English merchants, the Company of Merchant Adventurers in 1552-1553, with the Duke of Northumberland as principal patron. They hoped not only to discover a North-East Passage but also to find a market for English woollen cloth.
  Sir Hugh Willoughby was given three ships for the search, and Chancellor went as second-in-command. A Norwegian coastal storm separated them; Willoughby, with two ships, sailed east and discovered Novaya Zemlya but died with all his men on the Lapland coast. Chancellor, with the ship Edward Bonaventure, found the entrance to the White Sea and anchored at the port of Archangel.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Chancellor
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  Richard Collinson
  Sir Richard Collinson KCB (7 November 1811 – 13 September 1883) was an English naval officer and explorer of the Arctic.
  He was born in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England, then part of County Durham. He joined the Royal Navy in 1823 at age twelve and rose in the ranks, becoming a lieutenant in 1835, commander in 1841, and captain in 1842.
  Collinson commanded HMS Enterprise in the search for Sir John Franklin, entering the Northwest Passage through the Bering Strait. He sailed from Plymouth in January 1850, accompanied by the HMS Investigator, which was under the command of Robert McClure, his subordinate; however, the two ships became separated. As a result, the Enterprise arrived at Point Barrow, Alaska a fortnight after the Investigator and was forced to turn back due to ice and winter at Hong Kong, while McClure and the Investigator made it through and achieved recognition as the first ship to transit the Northwest Passage.
  He was awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society, knighted in 1875, and made an admiral on the retired list in the same year.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Collinson
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  Roald Amundsen
  Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈɾuːɑl ˈɑmʉnsən]; 16 July 1872 – c. 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the Antarctic expedition (1910-12) to discover the South Pole in December 1911 and he was the first expedition leader to (undisputedly) reach the North Pole in 1926. He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage (1903-06). He disappeared in June 1928 while taking part in a rescue mission. Amundsen, along with Douglas Mawson, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
  Amundsen was born to a family of Norwegian shipowners and captains in Borge, between the towns Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg. His father was Jens Amundsen. He was the fourth son in the family. His mother chose to keep him out of the maritime industry of the family and pressured him to become a doctor, a promise that Amundsen kept until his mother died when he was aged 21, whereupon he quit university for a life at sea. Amundsen had hidden a lifelong desire inspired by Fridtjof Nansen's crossing of Greenland in 1888 and the doomed Franklin expedition. As a result, he decided on a life of intense exploration.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Robert Falcon Scott
  Robert Falcon Scott CVO (6 June 1868 – c. 29 March 1912) was a Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–13. During this second venture, Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition. On their return journey, Scott and his four comrades all perished from a combination of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold.
  Before his appointment to lead the Discovery Expedition, Scott had followed the conventional career of a naval officer in peacetime Victorian Britain, where opportunities for career advancement were both limited and keenly sought after by ambitious officers. It was the chance for personal distinction that led Scott to apply for the Discovery command, rather than any predilection for polar exploration. However, having taken this step, his name became inseparably associated with the Antarctic, the field of work to which he remained committed during the final twelve years of his life.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Falcon_Scott
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  Robert McClure
  Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure (or M'Clure) (28 January 1807 – 17 October 1873) was an Irish explorer of the Arctic. In 1854, he was the first to transit the Northwest Passage (by boat and sledge), as well as the first to circumnavigate the Americas.
  He was born at Wexford, in Ireland, the posthumous son of one of Abercrombie's captains, and spent his childhood under the care of his godfather, General Le Mesurier, governor of Alderney, by whom he was educated for the army. He entered the navy, however, in 1824, and twelve years later gained his first experience of Arctic exploration as mate of HMS Terror in the expedition (1836–1837) commanded by Captain (afterwards Sir) George Back.
  On his return he obtained his commission as lieutenant, and from 1838 to 1839 served on the Canadian lakes, being subsequently attached to the North American and West Indian naval stations, where he remained till 1846. Two years later he joined the Franklin search expedition (1848–1849) under James Clark Ross as first lieutenant of Enterprise.
  
  wn.com/Robert_McClure
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  Robert Peary
  Robert Edwin Peary, Sr. (May 6, 1856 – February 20, 1920) was an American explorer who claimed to have led the first expedition, on April 6, 1909, to reach the geographic North Pole. Peary's claim was widely credited for most of the 20th century, though it was criticized even in its own day.
  Robert Edwin Peary was born in Cresson, Pennsylvania, in 1856. Peary graduated from Bowdoin College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1877. He was also a member of the Theta chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon while at Bowdoin, and the flag of DKE was one of the five flags that he took with him to the North Pole. His home in Fryeburg, Maine, still remains in pristine condition as an inn known as the Admiral Peary House.
  Peary made several expeditions to the Arctic, exploring Greenland by dog sled in 1886 and 1891 and returning to the island three times in the 1890s, including the Peary Relief Expedition to Greenland of 1892. He twice attempted to cross northwest Greenland over the ice cap, discovering Navy Cliff. American artist F. W. Stokes joined some of these expeditions.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Peary
• Roy Koerner
  Roy Koerner MBE was a Polar explorer who participated in what the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson described as "a feat of endurance and courage which ranks with any in polar history", and Prince Philip feels "ranks among the greatest triumphs of human skill and endurance".
  Koerner was born on 3 July 1932 in Copnor, Portsmouth. From an early age, he was nicknamed "Fritz" on account of his Germanic surname, and the moniker stuck. He was educated at Sheffield University, after which he taught at Bridgemary Community School before joining the British Antarctic Survey in 1957.
  From 1968 to 1969 he was a member of the British Trans-Arctic Expedition led by Wally Herbert, a 3,800-mile surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean, from Alaska to Spitsbergen. In the 1970s Koerner emigrated to Canada where he spent more than forty years studying the history embedded in glacial ice. He was head of the Ice Core Laboratory at Ottawa. Koerner died after being sent home from his final mission on 26 May 2008.
  
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  Rudolf Samoylovich
  Rudolf (Ruvim) Lazarevich Samoylovich (Russian: Рудольф Лазаревич Самойлович) (September 13 (O.S. September 1), 1881, Azov - 1940?) was a Soviet polar explorer, professor (1928), and doctor of geographic sciences (1934).
  In 1904, Rudolf Samoylovich graduated from the Mining Academy in Freiberg, Germany. In 1912, he participated in Vladimir Rusanov's geological expedition to Spitsbergen. Rudolf Samoylovich was one of the initiators and the first director of the Northern Research and Trade Expedition (Северная научно-промысловая экспедиция) (1920-1925). In 1925, this research center was reorganized into the Institute of Northern Studies (Институт по изучению Севера), headed by Rudolf Samoylovich in 1925-1930. In 1932-1938, he was deputy director of the All-Union Arctic Institute (Всесоюзный арктический институт). Rudolf Samoylovich was also the founder and first chairman of the Polar Countries' Department at Leningrad State University (1934-1937). Rudolf Samoylovich was the head of the rescue party on the Krasin icebreaker (1928). Also, he participated in the Graf Zeppelin expedition (1931) and headed expeditions on icebreakers Vladimir Rusanov (1932), Georgy Sedov (1934), and Sadko (1936 and 1937-1938). In 1938, Rudolf Samoylovich was arrested and then most likely executed some time in 1940. In 1957, he was rehabilitated.
  
  wn.com/Rudolf_Samoylovich
• Semion Chelyuskin
  Semyon Ivanovich Chelyuskin (Russian: Семён Иванович Челюскин) (c. 1700 – 1764) was a Russian polar explorer and naval officer.
  Chelyuskin graduated from the Navigation School in Moscow. He first became a deputy navigator while serving in the Baltic Fleet (1726) and later promoted to navigator (1733). Chelyuskin was chosen for the Second (Great Northern) Kamchatka Expedition, in which he took part until 1743. He participated in expeditions, led by Vasily Pronchischev and Khariton Laptev. In spring of 1741, Chelyuskin made a voyage from the Khatanga River to the Pyasina River by land. He described the western coastline from the Taimyr Peninsula to the Middendorff Bay and then from the mouth of Pyasina to the mouth of the Yenisei River. In winter of 1741–1742, he traveled from Turukhansk to the mouth of the Khatanga River, describing the northern coastline of the Taimyr Peninsula from the Cape Faddey on the East to the mouth of the Taimyra River on the West. Chelyuskin found the northern extremity of Asia, which Aleksandr Fyodorovich Middendorf would later name after him in 1843 (Cape Chelyuskin).
  
  wn.com/Semion_Chelyuskin
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  Semyon Dezhnyov
  Semyon Ivanovich Dezhnyov (Russian: Семён Ива́нович Дежнёв; IPA: [sʲɪˈmʲɵn ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ dʲɪˈʐnʲɵf]; commonly spelled Dezhnev in English-language sources; c. 1605 – 1673) was a Russian explorer of Siberia and the first European to sail through the Bering Strait, 80 years before Bering did. In 1648 he sailed from the Kolyma River on the Arctic Ocean to the Anadyr River on the Pacific. His exploit was forgotten for almost a hundred years and Vitus Bering is usually given credit for discovering the strait that bears his name.
  He was Pomor, born about 1605, possibly at Veliky Ustyug or the village of Pinega. According to Lydia Black (2004: 17), Dezhnyov was recruited for Siberian service, possibly as a service-man or government agent, in 1630. He served for eight years in Tobolsk and Yeniseisk, and then went to Yakutia in 1639, or possibly earlier. He ”is said to have been a member of the Cossack detachment under Beketov, who is credited with founding Yakutsk (on the Lena River) in 1632. In any case, no later than 1639 he was sent to Yakutia, where he married a Yakut captive and spent the next three years collecting tribute from the natives.
  
  wn.com/Semyon_Dezhnyov
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  Shirase Nobu
  Shirase Nobu (白瀬 矗^?, July 20, 1861 – September 4, 1946) was a Japanese army officer who led the Japanese Antarctic Expedition, 1910–12. This expedition explored the coastal area of King Edward VII Land and the eastern part of the Ross Ice Shelf, reaching a latitude of 80°05'S. At one point, Shirase's men achieved an unexpected rendezvous with a party from the South Pole expedition led by Roald Amundsen.
  Shirase and his men were the first humans to make a landfall on the Edward VII Peninsula. The Shirase party were feted as heroes on their return to Japan.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Shirase_Nobu
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  Stepan Makarov
  Stepan Osipovich Makarov (Russian: Степа́н О́сипович Мака́ров; 8 January 1849 [O.S. 27 December] – 13 April [O.S. 31 March] 1904) was a Russian vice-admiral, a highly accomplished and decorated commander of the Imperial Russian Navy, an oceanographer, awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences, and author of several books. Makarov also designed a small number of ships. The town of Shiritoru on Sakhalin island, was renamed Makarov in 1946 in his honor.
  Stepan Makarov was born in Nikolaev (now Mykolayiv, Ukraine) in a family of a fleet praporshchik (прапорщик по Адмиралтейству, an auxiliary officer). His family moved to Nikolayevsk na Amure in 1858 and Makarov attended school there. In 1863, he joined the Imperial Russian Navy where he served as a cadet aboard a clipper of the Pacific Fleet. In 1866 he took part in the voyage of the corvette Askold from Vladivostok to Kronstadt via the Cape of Good Hope. Makarov served with the Baltic Fleet between 1867 and 1876 serving as flag captain to Admiral Andrei Popov. He transferred to the Black Sea Fleet in 1876.
  
  wn.com/Stepan_Makarov
• Stepan Malygin
  Stepan Gavrilovich Malygin (Russian: Степан Гаврилович Малыгин) (died August 1, 1764) was a Russian Arctic explorer.
  In 1711–1717, Stepan Malygin was a student at the Moscow School of Mathematical and Navigational Sciences. After his graduation, Malygin began his career as a naval cadet and was then promoted to the rank of lieutenant four years later. He served in the Baltic Fleet until 1735.
  Stepan Malygin was the first one to write a Russian manual on navigation called Сокращённая навигация по карте де-Редукцион (1733). In the early 1736, Malygin was appointed leader of the western unit of the Second Kamchatka Expedition. In 1736–1737, two boats Perviy (First) and Vtoroy (Second) under the command of Stepan Malygin and A.Skuratov undertook a voyage from the Dolgiy Island in the Barents Sea to the mouth of the Ob River. During this trip, Malygin described this part of the Russian Arctic coastline and made a map of the area between the Pechora and Ob Rivers.
  In 1741–1748, Stepan Malygin was in charge of preparing navigators for the Russian Navy. In 1762, he was appointed head of the Admiralty office in Kazan.
  
  wn.com/Stepan_Malygin
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  Sverre Hassel
  Sverre Helge Hassel (30 July 1876 – 6 June 1928) was a Norwegian polar explorer and one of the first five people to reach the South Pole.
  Sverre Hassel was born in Christiania, and as soon as he was old enough, he went to sea, earning his mate's certificate. Between 1898 and 1902, Hassel participated in Otto Sverdrup's attempt to circumnavigate Greenland.
  Along with Helmer Hanssen, Hassel was picked as an expert dog driver to take part in Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition 1910 – 1912. On 14 December 1911, Hassel together with Amundsen, Hanssen, Olav Bjaaland and Oscar Wisting were the first to reach the South Pole. For his participation in the expedition, he was awarded the Medal of the South Pole (Sydpolsmedaljen), the Royal Norwegian award instituted by King Haakon VII in 1912 to reward participants in Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition.
  Hassel was constable of the Naval Corps in 1904 before he was hired as an assistant at the customs authorities in Kristiansand. In 1922, Hassel became customs inspector and office manager in Grimstad.
  
  wn.com/Sverre_Hassel
• Thomas Marmaduke
  Thomas Marmaduke was an English explorer, sealer, and whaler in the early 17th century.
  In a list dated from September 1600 Marmaduke is mentioned as being a younger brother of the Hull Trinity House. He was master of one of the two Hull interlopers sent to Bjørnøya in 1609. It was claimed that in this year, sailing in the Heartsease, he "discovered" Spitsbergen; although there is no evidence for this claim, and the island had already been discovered by the Dutch in 1596. On this claim the merchants of Hull based their rights to fish for whales in Spitsbergen in subsequent decades.
  In 1611, Marmaduke was again sent up, this time in the interloper Hopewell of Hull. He hunted walrus, or "sea morses" (as they were called). In July, Marmaduke met with two shallops of the Mary Margaret, a ship sent by the Muscovy Company to hunt whales, in Horn Sound. Their ship had been crushed by ice in or near Cove Comfortless (Engelskbukta), north of Horn Sound. They led him north to the bay in order to salvage their goods. Later, the Elizabeth, Jonas Poole, master and pilot, sailed into the bay and attempted to shift his cargo to enable him to accommodate the goods of the Mary Margaret, but in doing so his ship capsized, forcing the crew of both the Mary Margaret and the Elizabeth to sail home in the Hopewell. In this year or the next he was claimed to have discovered Jan Mayen and named it Trinity Island. There is no cartographical or written evidence for this alleged discovery.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Marmaduke
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  Tobias Furneaux
  Captain Tobias Furneaux (21 August 1735 – 18 September 1781) was an English navigator and Royal Navy officer, who accompanied James Cook on his second voyage of exploration. He was the first man to circumnavigate the world in both directions.
  Furneaux was born at Swilly House near Plymouth, son of William Furneaux (1696-1748) of Swilly, and Susanna Wilcocks (1698-1775). He entered the Royal Navy, and was employed on the French and African coasts and in the West Indies during the latter part of the Seven Years' War (1760–1763). He served as second lieutenant of HMS Dolphin under Captain Samuel Wallis on the latter's voyage round the globe (August 1766 – May 1768).
  In November 1771, Furneaux was given command of Adventure, which accompanied James Cook (in Resolution) on his second voyage. On this expedition Furneaux was twice separated from his leader (8 February 1773 to 19 May 1773; and 22 October 1773 to 14 October 1774, the date of his return to England). On the former occasion he explored a great part of the south and east coasts of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), and made the earliest British chart of the same. Most of his names here survive; Cook, visiting the shore-line on his third voyage, confirmed Furneaux's account and delineation of it, with certain minor criticisms and emendations, and named after him the Furneaux Group at the eastern entrance to Bass Strait, and the group now known as the Low Archipelago.
  
  wn.com/Tobias_Furneaux
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  Tom Avery
  Thomas Avery (born December 17, 1975) is a British explorer and author. He made a record-breaking journey to the South Pole in 2002. He has travelled by foot to both the North and South Poles.
  Avery was born to Julian and Quenelda in London, England. Due to his father’s occupation he grew up travelling between Sussex, Brazil and France. When he was seven years old his mother gave him a book about the adventures of Captain Robert Falcon Scott. As he admits in his book “To The End Of The Earth” Tom was captivated by Scott's heroic story and knew he wanted to go to the Antarctica, and ultimately the South Pole.
  Tom Avery’s outdoor career began when he was 16 with a series of rock and ice climbs in Wales and Scotland. At university, he organized and led mountaineering expeditions to the Andes, New Zealand, the Alps, Tanzania, Patagonia and Morocco. After graduating in 1998 with a B.Sc. in Geography and Geology, he began a temporary 15-month career as an accountant with Arthur Andersen.
  In 2000 he led a British mountaineering expedition to the remote Eastern Zalaay Mountains in Kyrgyzstan. The team scaled a total of nine previously unclimbed and unnamed summits up to 20,000 feet (6,100 m) in height.
  
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  Umberto Cagni
  Umberto Cagni (Asti, 24 February 1863 - Genoa, 22 April 1932) was a polar explorer and an admiral in the Royal Italian Navy. He is best known for his leadership in a probe, by dogsled, northward over the surface of the Arctic Ocean in 1900. While his party failed in their goal of reaching the North Pole, on 25 April 1900 Cagni and his men achieved the northernmost point achieved by exploration up to that time, 86° 34′ N.
  Cagni was born in 1863 in the fast-growing Kingdom of Italy, which had been proclaimed only two years earlier during the Risorgimento. He well-placed father, a Piedmontese general, bestowed kinship ties that led to young Cagni being accepted for training by the Italian navy as a future officer. He was commissioned as an ensign in 1881.
  Cagni advanced in the service in terms of both rank and connections. By 1899 he was a captain in the Regia Marina and a close associate of Prince Luigi Amedeo, an Italian duke, nephew of the king of Italy, and experienced mountaineer. Organizing a group of 20 Italian and Norwegian men led by himself, the royal duke sailed on 12 June 1899 from Christiania for the recently-discovered Franz Josef Land, via Archangel'sk. In far northern Russia, Cagni and Luigi Amedeo obtained the sled dogs that would be a key element of the expedition. On 12 July they sailed north from Archangel'sk aboard their exploration vessel, the Stella Polare, their goal the establishment of a winter base in Franz Josef Land that would give them a jumping-off place to attain the North Pole.
  
  wn.com/Umberto_Cagni
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  Umberto Nobile
  Umberto Nobile (Italian pronunciation: [umˈbɛrto ˈnɔbile]; January 21, 1885 – July 30, 1978) was an Italian aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships during the Golden Age of Aviation between the two World Wars. He is primarily remembered for designing and piloting the airship Norge, which may have been the first aircraft to reach the North Pole, and which was indisputably the first to fly across the polar ice cap from Europe to America. Nobile also designed and flew the Italia, a second polar airship; this second expedition ended in a deadly crash and provoked an international rescue effort.
  Born in Lauro, in the southern Italian province of Avellino, Nobile graduated from the University of Naples with degrees in both electrical and industrial engineering. In 1906 he began working for the Italian state railways, where he worked on electrification of the rail system. In 1911 his interests turned to the field of aeronautical engineering, and he enrolled in a one-year course offered by the Italian Army. Nobile had always been fascinated by the work of airship pioneers such as Ferdinand von Zeppelin. When Italy entered World War I in 1915, the then 29-year-old attempted three times to enlist, but was rejected as physically unfit for service.
  
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  Valerian Albanov
  Valerian Ivanovich Albanov (Russian: Валериан Иванович Альбанов) (1881 - 1919) was a Russian navigator, best known for being one of only two survivors of the ill-fated Brusilov Expedition of 1912.
  Albanov was born in 1881 in Voronezh and was raised by his uncle in the city of Ufa. At the age of seventeen he entered the Naval College at Saint Petersburg, from which he graduated in 1904. He served on board a number of ships before signing on as navigator aboard the Saint Anna under Georgy Brusilov for an expedition intended to traverse the Northeast Passage (a feat which had only been successfully performed once before, by the Finnish explorer Nordenskiöld). The expedition was ill-planned and ill-executed by Captain Brusilov, and the Saint Anna became locked in the polar ice of the Kara Sea in October 1912. Supplies were abundant, so officers and crew prepared themselves for wintering, hoping to be freed in the following year's thaw.
  However, during 1913 the sea remained completely frozen. By early 1914 the ship had drifted with the ice NW of Franz Josef Land and did not seem likely to be freed that year either. Albanov, believing that their position was hopeless, requested permission from Captain Brusilov to be relieved from his duties as second-in-command in order to leave the ship and attempt to return to civilization on foot. Albanov's aim was to reach Hvidtenland, the northeastermost island group of Franz Josef Land. He used Fridtjof Nansen's inaccurate map, full of dotted lines where the archipelago was still unexplored.
  
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  Valery Chkalov
  Valery Pavlovich Chkalov (Russian: Валерий Павлович Чкалов; IPA: [vɐˈlʲerʲɪj ˈpavləvʲɪt͡ʃ ˈt͡ʃkaləf]) (February 2, 1904 – December 15, 1938) was a Russian aircraft test pilot and a Hero of the Soviet Union (1936).
  Chkalov was born in the town of Vasilyevo, near Nizhni Novgorod, the son of a boiler maker. His mother died when he was six years old. Chkalov studied in the technical school in Cherepovets but later returned to work as an apprentice with his father and as a stoker on river boats. He saw his first plane in 1919 and decided to join the Red Army's air force. He trained as a pilot and graduated in 1924 joining a fighter squadron. Chkalov married Olga Orekova in 1927. In the early 1930s he became a test pilot.
  Chkalov developed several new figures of aerobatics. In 1936 and 1937, he participated in several ultra long flights, including a 63-hour flight from Moscow, Soviet Union to Vancouver, Washington, United States via the North Pole on an Tupolev ANT-25 plane (June 18–20, 1937), a non-stop distance of 8,811 kilometres (5,475 mi). The flight pioneered the polar air route from Europe to the American Pacific Coast.
  
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  Vasili Pronchishchev
  Vasili Vasilyevich Pronchishchev (Russian: Василий Васильевич Прончищев) (1702–9 September [O.S. 29 August] 1736) was a Russian explorer.
  In 1718, Vasili Pronchishchev graduated from Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation and was promoted to naval cadet. In 1733, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and appointed head of one of the units of the Second Kamchatka Expedition, the purpose of which was to map the shores of the Arctic Ocean from the mouth of the Lena to the mouth of the Yenisey.
  In 1735, Vasili Pronchishchev went down the Lena River (from Yakutsk) on his sloop Yakutsk, doubled its delta, and stopped for wintering at the mouth of the Olenek River. Unfortunately many members of the crew fell ill and died, mainly owing to scurvy. Despite the difficulties, in 1736, he reached the eastern shore of the Taymyr Peninsula and went north along its coastline. Finally Pronchishchev and his wife Maria (also referred to as Tatyana Feodorovna) succumbed to scurvy and died on the way back.
  
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  Vasily Chichagov
  Vasili Yakovlevich Chichagov (Russian: Василий Яковлевич Чичагов) (February 28, 1726 – April 4, 1809) was an admiral in the Russian Navy and an explorer. He was the father of Pavel Chichagov, a Russian admiral during the Napoleonic Wars.
  Joining the Navy at the age of 16, Chichagov was educated in Great Britain. Throughout his life, he would be enthusiastic for all thing British, would marry an English woman, and spend his declining years in the United Kingdom (after he had settled into retirement in 1797).
  In 1764 the scientist Lomonosov organized an expedition to find the Northeast Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by sailing along the northern coast of Siberia. Chichagov, then serving as the deputy commandant of Arkhangelsk Port, was put in charge of the expedition with three ships, the Chichagov, the Panov and the Babayev. Although he sailed past Svalbard and reached 80°26'N in 1765 and 80°30'N in 1766, both expeditions failed to find the route.
  Islands of Novaya Zemlya Archipelago, the Chichagof Island in the Alexander Archipelago in southeastern Alaska, the bay and cape of Nuka Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, and a mountain at Spitzbergen are named after Chichagov.
  
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  Vitus Bering
  Vitus Jonassen Bering (baptised 5 August 1681 in Horsens, Denmark – 8 December 1741 on Bering Island, Russia) was a Danish-born navigator in the service of the Russian Navy as (eventually Captain-Komandor) Витус Ионассен Беринг, known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich Bering. He is known for his two explorations of the north-eastern coast of the Asian continent and from there the western coast on the North American continent. The Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island, Bering Glacier and the Bering Land Bridge have since all been (posthumously) named in honour of the explorer.
  
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• Vivian Fuchs
  Sir Vivian Ernest Fuchs FRS (11 February 1908 – 11 November 1999) was an English explorer whose expeditionary team completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica in 1958.
  Fuchs was the son of the German immigrant Ernst Fuchs from Jena and of his British wife Violet Watson. Fuchs was born in 1908 in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, and attended Brighton College and St John's College, Cambridge. Fuchs was educated as a geologist, and considered the profession a means to pursue his interest in the outdoors. His first expedition was to Greenland in 1929 with his tutor James Wordie. After graduation in 1930, he travelled with a Cambridge University expedition to study the geology of east African lakes with respect to climate fluctuation. Next, he joined anthropologist Louis Leakey on an expedition to Olduvai Gorge. In 1933, Fuchs married his cousin, Joyce Connell. A world traveller in her own right, Joyce accompanied Vivian on his expedition to Lake Rudolf (now Lake Turkana) in 1934. The findings from this expedition, in which two of their companions were lost, brought Fuchs his PhD from Cambridge in 1937.
  
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  Vladimir Rusanov
  Vladimir Alexandrovich Rusanov (Russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович Руса́нов; 3 November [O.S. 15 November] 1875, Oryol – ca. 1913) was an experienced Russian geologist who specialized in the Arctic.
  In 1909–1911 V. A. Rusanov carried out explorations in Novaya Zemlya. He was helped by Tyko Vylka, his guide, who later became the Chairman of the Novaya Zemlya Soviet.
  In 1912 Rusanov had been appointed to command a government expedition to Svalbard to investigate the coal potential. He sailed from Aleksandrovsk-na-Murmane (now Polyarnyy, near Murmansk) on 26 June on ship Gerkules under Captain Alexander Kuchin, Roald Amundsen's South Pole navigator. The personnel consisted of thirteen men and one woman, Rusanov's French fiancée Julie Jean. Apart from Rusanov there was another geologist and a zoologist.
  At the end of a very successful summer’s field work, three members of the expedition (the geologist, the zoologist and the ship's bosun) returned to Russia via Grønfjorden in Norway. The remaining ten, however, without consultation with the authorities in St. Petersburg, set off with Rusanov in an incredibly rash attempt at reaching the Pacific Ocean via the Northern Sea Route. Their ship Gerkules was too small for the kind of expedition Rusanov had in mind.
  
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  Vladimir Wiese
  Professor Vladimir Yulyevich Vize (Russian: Владимир Юльевич Визе; 21 February 1886, Tsarskoe Selo - 19 February 1954, Leningrad), was a Russian scientist of German descent who devoted his life to the study of the Arctic ice pack. His name (spelt "Wiese" in German) is associated with the Scientific Prediction of Ice Conditions theory.
  Vize was a member of the Soviet Arctic Institute and an authority on polar oceanography. He was also the founder of the Geographico-hydrological School of Oceanography.
  In 1912-14 Professor V. Yu. Vize went with G. L. Sedov’s expedition on St. Foka to Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land. After the Russian Revolution Professor Vize went on a number of Soviet Arctic expeditions.
  In 1924 oceanographer Vize, studied the drift of Georgy Brusilov's ill-fated Russian ship St. Anna when she was trapped on the pack ice of the Kara Sea. Professor Vize detected an odd deviation of the path of the ship's drift caused by certain variations of the patterns of sea and ice currents. He deemed that the deviation was caused by the presence of an undiscovered island whose coordinates he was able to calculate with precision thanks to the availability of the successive positions of the St. Anna during its drift. The data of the drift had been supplied by navigator Valerian Albanov, one of the only two survivors of the St. Anna.
  
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• Wally Herbert
  Sir Walter William "Wally" Herbert (24 October 1934 – 12 June 2007) was a British polar explorer, writer and artist. In 1969 he became the first man to walk undisputed to the North Pole, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's famous, but disputed, expedition. He was described by Sir Ranulph Fiennes as "the greatest polar explorer of our time".
  During the course of his polar career, which spanned more than 50 years, he spent 15 years in the wilderness regions of the polar world, and travelled with dog teams and open boats well over 23,000 miles - more than half of that distance through unexplored areas.
  Walter Herbert was born into an army family in England but emigrated to Egypt at the age of three, then to South Africa for nine years. He studied at the Royal School of Military Survey then spent 18 months surveying in Egypt and Cyprus. He traveled back to England through Turkey and Greece, drawing portraits for his board and lodging.
  In 1955 he carried out surveying in the Antarctic with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, during which he became an expert in dog sleighing. On a journey along the Antarctic Peninsula from Hope Bay to Portal Point he sledged some 5,000 km. This experience with dogs led him to a job with the New Zealand Antarctic programme which commissioned him to purchase dogs in Greenland for the Antarctic. There he learnt Inuit methods of dog driving.
  
  wn.com/Wally_Herbert
• Welland Phipps
  Welland Wilford "Weldy" "Angayuroluk" Phipps (born: July 23, 1922 - died: October 22, 1996) was a military pilot and prisoner of war during World War II, a pioneer bush pilot, inventor and a territorial level politician.
  Phipps joined the Canadian Forces and became a fighter pilot in World War II. He was shot down and became a Prisoner of War for 2 years. He succeeded in making an escape from his POW Camp.
  Phipps moved to the Northwest Territories after returning home from the war. In 1953 and founded a business called Atlas Aviation. He invented a new type of balloon tundra tire that allow an aircraft to land safely on Tundra. The type of tire is known as the Weldy Special. Atlas Aviation introduced the first regular scheduled airline service to Canada's most northern communities. He retired from his aviation career in 1972.
  Phipps delivered supplies to a number of notable arctic expeditions, including Ralph Plaisted in 1967 and 1968.
  The Canadian aviation community recognized Phipps many achievements in aviation. He has earned him numerous recognitions, including the Canadian Order of Flight, Order of Polaris and being inducted to the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame. He was also awarded the Trans Canada McKee Trophy twice for excellence in aviation.
  
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  Wilhelm Filchner
  Wilhelm Filchner (September 13, 1877 – May 7, 1957) was a German explorer.
  At the age of 21, he participated in his first expedition, which led him to Russia. Two years later, he travelled alone and on horseback through the Pamir Mountains, from Osh to Murgabh to the upper Wakhan to Tashkurgan and back. From 1903 to 1905 he led an expedition through Tibet.
  Following his return from Tibet, he was tasked with organizing a German expedition to map Antarctica. After a training expedition to Spitsbergen, they set off with their ship Deutschland on May 4, 1911. The expedition entered the Weddell Sea and discovered Luitpold Coast and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, which Filchner had originally named after the German emperor Wilhelm II. They were the first expedition to enter further into Weddell Sea than James Weddell some 80 years before.
  The ship overwintered in the pack ice after attempts to set up a base on the ice shelf had failed because of an iceberg calving. It was not until September 1912 that the Deutschland was free again and could return. During its drift in the Weddell Sea ice Filchner investigated the existence of New South Greenland, an alleged coastline seen by Captain Bejamin Morrell in 1823, during a sealing voyage. He found no trace, and concluded that Morrell had seen a mirage.
  
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• Will Steger
  Will Steger (born August 27, 1944 in Richfield, Minnesota) is a prominent spokesperson for the understanding and preservation of the Arctic and has led some of the most significant feats in the field of dogsled expeditions; such as the first confirmed dogsled journey to the North Pole (without re-supply) in 1986, the 1,600-mile south-north traverse of Greenland - the longest unsupported dogsled expedition in history during 1988, the historic 3,471-mile International Trans-Antarctic Expedition - the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica (1989–90), and the International Arctic Project - the first and only dogsled traverse of the Arctic Ocean from Russia to Ellesmere Island in Canada during 1995.
  Having been invited to testify before Congress on polar and environmental issues, Steger co-founded the Center for Global Environmental Education (CGEE) at Hamline University in 1991. During 1993 he founded the World School at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota). In 2006, Will Steger established the Will Steger Foundation which is dedicated to creating programs that foster international leadership and cooperation through environmental education and policy.
  
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  Willem Barentsz
  Willem Barentsz (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈʋɪləm ˈbaːrənts], anglicized as William Barents or Barentz) (c. 1550 – 20 June 1597) was a Dutch navigator, cartographer, explorer, and a leader of early expeditions to the far north.
  The Barents Sea,Barentsburg and Barents Region were all named after him.
  Willem Barentsz was born around the year 1550 on the island Terschelling in the Seventeen Provinces.
  A cartographer by trade, Barentsz sailed to Spain and the Mediterranean to complete an atlas of the Mediterranean region, which he co-published with Petrus Plancius.
  His career as an explorer was spent searching for the Northeast passage, which he reasoned must exist as clear, open water north of Siberia since the sun shone 24 hours a day, which he believed would have melted any potential ice.
  On 5 June 1594 Barentsz left the island of Texel aboard the small ship Mercury, as part of a group of three ships sent out in separate directions to try and enter the Kara Sea, with the hopes of finding the Northeast passage above Siberia. Between 23 and 29 June, Barentsz stayed at Kildin Island.
  
  wn.com/Willem_Barentsz
• William Baffin
  William Baffin (died 23 January 1622) was an English navigator and explorer. Nothing is known of his early life, but it is conjectured that he was born in London of humble origin, and gradually raised himself by his diligence and perseverance. (Britannica 11th Edition gives a year of birth as 1584, but this is simply a guess, without any documentary basis.)
  There is no known portrait of William Baffin.
  William Baffin explored the Arctic circle, the earliest mention of his name occurs in 1612, in connection with Denmark's King Christian IV's Expeditions to Greenland under the command of Captain James Hall, whom he accompanied as chief pilot. Captain Hall was killed in a fight with the local inhabitants on the west coast of Greenland, and during the following two years Baffin served in the Spitsbergen whale-fishery, at that time controlled by England's Muscovy Company. In the first year he served as pilot aboard the flagship of the whaling fleet, the Tiger, while in the second year he served as pilot aboard one of the fleet's two discovery ships, the Thomasine.
  
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  William Lashly
  William Lashly (1867–1940) was a Royal Navy seaman who was a member of both of Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic expeditions.
  The son of a farm worker, Lashly was born in Hambledon, Hampshire, a village near Portsmouth, England. At the time he joined Scott's Discovery expedition in 1901, he was a 33-year-old leading stoker in the Royal Navy, serving on HMS Duke of Wellington. On this expedition, Lashly proved a success and was a member of Scott's "Farthest West" party exploring Victoria Land in 1903. A teetotaller and non-smoker, he was quiet and strong, good-natured, dependable and acknowledged by Chief Engineer Reginald Skelton as 'the best man far and away in the ship'. Before joining the Terra Nova expedition in 1910, he served as an instructor at the Royal Naval College, Osborne on the Isle of Wight.
  On Scott's second expedition in Terra Nova in 1911–1913, Lashly was initially in charge of one of the expedition's two motor sledges which were to haul supplies southward in support of the polar party. However, the sledges quickly broke down, and the motor party had to switch to man-hauling the supplies.
  
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  William Scoresby
  William Scoresby (5 October 1789 – 21 March 1857), was an English Arctic explorer, scientist and clergyman.
  Scoresby was born in the village of Cropton near Pickering 26 miles south of Whitby in Yorkshire. His father, William Scoresby (1760–1829), made a fortune in the Arctic whale fishery. The son made his first voyage with his father at the age of eleven, but then returned to school, where he remained until 1803. After this he became his father's constant companion, and accompanied him as chief officer of the whaler Resolution when on 25 May 1806, he succeeded in reaching 81°30’ N. lat. (19° E. long), for twenty-one years the highest northern latitude attained in the eastern hemisphere. During the following winter, Scoresby attended the natural philosophy and chemistry classes at Edinburgh University, and again in 1809.
  In his voyage of 1807, Scoresby began the study of the meteorology and natural history of the polar regions. Earlier results included his original observations on snow and crystals; and in 1809 Robert Jameson brought certain Arctic papers of his before the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh, which at once elected him to its membership.
  
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  William Speirs Bruce
  William Speirs Bruce FRSE (1 August 1867 – 28 October 1921) was a Scottish naturalist, polar scientist and oceanographer who organised and led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902–04) to the South Orkney Islands and the Weddell Sea. Among other achievements, the expedition established the first permanent weather station in Antarctica. Bruce later founded the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory, but his plans for a transcontinental Antarctic march via the South Pole were abandoned because of lack of public and financial support.
  In 1892 Bruce abandoned his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh and joined the Dundee Whaling Expedition to Antarctica as a scientific assistant. This was followed by Arctic voyages to Novaya Zemlya, Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land. In 1899 Bruce, by then Britain's most experienced polar scientist, applied for a post on Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition, but delays over this appointment and clashes with Royal Geographical Society (RGS) president Sir Clements Markham led him instead to organise his own expedition, and earned him the permanent enmity of the British geographical establishment. Although Bruce received various awards for his polar work, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Aberdeen, neither he nor any of his SNAE colleagues were recommended by the RGS for the prestigious Polar Medal.
  
  wn.com/William_Speirs_Bruce
• Yakov Gakkel
  Yakov Yakovlevich Gakkel (Russian: Яков Яковлевич Гаккель) (July 18, 1901, Saint Petersburg — December 30, 1965, Leningrad) was a Soviet oceanographer, doctor of geographical sciences (1950), professor, director of the geography department of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, son of a scientist Yakov Modestovich Gakkel.
  Yakov Gakkel participated in numerous Arctic expeditions, including the ones on icebreakers Sibiryakov (1932) and Chelyuskin (1934). He was the first one to create a bathymetric map of the Arctic basin.
  Yakov Gakkel was awarded two orders and several medals during his scientific career. In 1966, one of the mid-oceanic ridges was named after him.
  This article includes content derived from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969–1978, which is partially in the public domain.
  
  
  
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  Yakov Permyakov
  Yakov Permyakov (Russian: Пермяков, Яков) (died 1712) was a Russian seafarer, explorer, merchant, and Cossack.
  In 1710, while sailing from the Lena River to the Kolyma River, Permyakov observed the silhouette of two unknown island groups in the sea. Those islands would later be called Bolshoy Lyakhovsky and the Medvyezhi Islands.
  In 1712, Permyakov and his companion Merkury Vagin crossed the Yana Bay from the mouth of the Yana to Bolshoy Lyakhovsky over the ice and explored the then unknown island. Permyakov and Vagin were murdered on the way back from their exploration by mutineering expedition members. The cossacks took Permyakov's dead body down to the ice and set it on fire. No one knows what the rebellious cossacks did with the ashes, but Yakov Permyakov's remains were never found.
  
  
  
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• Yakov Sannikov
  Yakov Sannikov (Russian: Яков Санников) (1780, Ust-Yansk - no earlier than 1812) was a Russian merchant and explorer of the New Siberian Islands.
  In 1800, Sannikov discovered and charted Stolbovoy Island, and in 1805 Faddeyevsky Island. In 1809-1810, he took part in the expedition led by Matvei Gedenschtrom. In 1810, Sannikov crossed the island of New Siberia and a year later explored Faddeyevsky Island. He also discovered Bunge Land.
  He suggested that there was a vast land north of the Kotelny Island. This hypothetical island has become known as Sannikov Land.
  A strait between Maly Lyakhovsky and Kotelny islands bears Sannikov's name.
  
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  Yevgeny Fyodorov
  Yevgeny Konstantinovich Fyodorov (Russian: Евгений Константинович Фёдоров; 10 April (O.S. 28 March), 1910, Bendery - 30 December 1981) was a Soviet geophysicist, statesman, public figure, academician (1960), and Hero of the Soviet Union (1938).
  Yevgeny Fyodorov graduated from Leningrad State University in 1932. In 1932-1938, he was a research associate on several polar stations, including the first drifting ice station North Pole-1 (1937-1938). In 1938-1939, Yevgeny Fyodorov headed the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. In 1939-1947 and 1962–1974, he was in charge of the Soviet Weather Service (Гидрометеослужба СССР). In 1947-1955, Yevgeny Fyodorov was employed at the Geophysics Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He was the one to establish and then head the Applied Geophysics Institute of the Soviet Weather Service.
  Yevgeny Fyodorov authored numerous works dedicated to his research on the Arctic geophysical fields, water balance of clouds, artificial influence on meteorological processes, study of highest atmospheric layers with the use of satellites, pollution etc. Yevgeny Fyodorov was awarded the USSR State Prize (1946, 1969), five Orders of Lenin, Order of the October Revolution, six other orders, and several medals.
  
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  Yevgeny Tolstikov
  Yevgeny Ivanovich Tolstikov (Russian: Евгений Иванович Толстиков) (1913 - December, 1987) was a Soviet polar explorer, awarded by the Hero of the Soviet Union title. He led the Third Soviet Antarctic Expedition and one of the first manned drifting ice station in the Arctic.
  In 1979, he was made deputy chairman of the State Committee for Hydrometeorolgy and Environmental Control.
  A minor planet 3357 Tolstikov discovered by Czech astronomer Antonín Mrkos in 1984 is named after him.
  
  
  
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