In 1986 Jean-Louis Etienne set out for the North Pole alone, on foot, from Ward Hunt Island in the extreme north of Canada a voyage across the frozen Artic Oce[.]
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It’s April 1968, and an insurance salesman from Minnesota named Ralph Plaisted is looking down at his feet. He’s standing on an ice floe in the Arctic, with 10,000 feet of frigid water below.
And the ice is getting softer.
Plaisted looks around. Miles of ice-covered ocean surround him in all directions. He’s only days into his attempt to reach the North Pole and things look as grim as they’ve ever been. Plaisted and his team of amateur explorers have endured fuel shortages, howling storms, and forgotten supplies. But now, just a few inches of precarious ice separates them from a watery grave.
11 Frosty Facts About the North Pole Shoshi Parks
For most of history, the North Pole was the stuff of legends and wild theories. But even after European explorers got close to it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the North Pole remained mysterious. Here are 11 facts we know about the North Pole so far.
1. The North Pole has no time zone.
Besides visiting explorers, tourists, and researchers, humans do not live at the North Pole. And because there are no permanent settlements, the North Pole has not been assigned a time zone. People at the North Pole can choose to go by any time zone that is convenient. The closest permanently inhabited place is Alert, a military installation 600 miles to the south on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, and it’s in the Eastern Time Zone.
For most of history, the North Pole was the stuff of legends and wild theories. Now people run a marathon there every April. Here are more unexpected facts about the top of the world.