I have seen a commercial on the History Channel that shows a news clip of a man walking in what appears to be (by what they are saying) the south pole. The news clip is saying that this is the first man to reach both poles (I am assuming by foot), but no one knows who he is or his nationality.
I have done some searches and have found information on Roald Amundsen, Richard E. Byrd and Robert Falcon Scott. It doesn’t appear that they ever tried to hide who they were, nor am I sure that they ever reached the north pole on foot. I found that Robert Swan is believed to be the first person to walk to both poles. He didn’t hide who he was.
So, does any one know what’s up with that History Channel commercial. I have done some searches on their site, but don’t see anything about this. I also don’t see anything in the Straight Dope Archive.
Perhaps it’s one of the team members of two of those expeditions.
For years, Tenzing Norgay Sherpa was regularly omitted from the credit for being the first to summit Mt. Everest, making it appear that Edmund Hillary did it all by himself.
Are you certain it was the South pole? Recently they’ve called into question as to whether Robert Peary was really the first explorer to reach it. It seems he may have fallen short.
I just finished writing a book on polar explorers, so this stuff is on my mind.
Amundsen, mentioned above, discovered the South Pole with a team of several other men. He also flew over the North Pole in 1926. He did not land. In all probability he was the first person to “reach” both poles.
Peary, assuming he made it to the N. P. (and mjollnir is right, it’s open to a lot of question), never reached the S. P., or tried for it. Byrd said he flew to the N. P., but in recent years there has been a lot of evidence against that as well. (Evidently a lot of polar explorers were cheats and frauds when it counted.)
I have never heard of Robert Swan, but then my research only went up to Amundsen and Robert Scott, not much beyond. Taken on its face, the idea that “someone” made it both poles and was the “first” to be there, but that no one knows who he was or where he came from, seems very peculiar and not very believable. But maybe that’s just me.