Frederick Cook

Frederick Albert Cook was an American explorer, physician and ethnographer, who is most known for allegedly being the first to reach the North Pole on April 21, 1908. A competing claim was made a year later by Robert Peary, though both men's accounts have since been fiercely disputed; in December 1909, after reviewing Cook's limited records, a commission of the University of Copenhagen ruled his claim unproven. Nonetheless, in 1911, Cook published a memoir of the expedition in which he maintained the veracity of his assertions. In addition, he also claimed to have been the first person to reach the summit of Denali, the highest mountain in North America, a claim which has since been similarly discredited. Though he may not have achieved either Denali or the North Pole, his was the first and only expedition where a United States national discovered an Arctic island, Meighen Island.

10 June 1865

Born on the same birth day (10 June): Esther Ouwehand • Henrik Pedersen (footballer) • Kyle Sandilands • Leone Sextus Tollemache • Ludvig Holstein-Ledreborg • Margarito Bautista • Sarah Grand • Shirley Owens • Terence Rattigan • Ze'ev Friedman

Born in the same month (June 1865): Adelaide Casely-Hayford • Albéric Magnard • Bernard Berenson • Carl Nielsen • George Lohmann • George Redmayne Murray • George V • John Monash • Karl Blossfeldt • May Whitty • Robert Henri • Susan La Flesche Picotte • W. B. Yeats