Jacques-Yves Cousteau – The one with the bobble hat
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the skinny man with his red bobble hat, was the hero of my childhood. I think I shared my enthusiasm for Cousteau with an entire generation.
My heroes, losers with style
History loves winners. Only they are remembered, even the second one is forgotten. Does the name of the second astronaut on the moon catch your mind?
Ivan Papanin – The first person at the North Pole?
Ivan Papanin was a Soviet polar explorer and led the expedition that first came near the North Pole in 1937 on a drifting ice station.
Alfred Wegener – The World Understander
Alfred Wegener was a meteorologist and polar and geoscientist. His most important contribution is his theory of continental shift.
Edith “Jackie” Ronne – a woman first (in Antarctica)
Edith “Jackie” Ronne was the first woman to take part in an Antarctic expedition with her husband Finn Ronne, to work there and overwinter.
Borchgrevink – First! (and third)
Carsten Borchgrevink was not the first person on the Antarctic continent. But the first one to overwinter there.
Frederick Albert Cook – Conqueror without Glory
Frederick Cook was a medical doctor. Cook accompanied Robert Peary on an expedition to Greenland. Later, they fought over the North Pole and its discovery.
William-Spiers-Bruce
William Speirs Bruce was a young Scot who had travelled to Antarctica for the first time as an expedition leader in 1892-93. Bruce was also a member of the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition to Franz Josef Land in 1896-97 and 1898 in Spitsbergen in the Arctic.
