Timeline Tuesday 6 April 1909

Events on Tuesday 6 April 1909 1

• 1909 Peary claims the North Pole Still disputed Robert Peary announces that he reached the pole with Matthew Henson and four Inuit companions — Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo and Ooqueah. Frederick Cook claims to have got there a year earlier, and the resulting public row damages both men. Peary's navigation records and the speeds he reported over the final march have never fully satisfied later analysts, and the first undisputed surface journey is Ralph Plaisted's in 1968. Henson, who was Black and spoke Inuktitut better than Peary, was not publicly honoured for another forty-five years.