Evening star., 1925-06-14
NORTH POLE LONG
| HAS EXERTED LURE
haccessibiIity Has Acted as
Magnet to Explorers.
{ Is One of Six.


erous supply are monopolizing atten.
uon just now-the North Pole, in
search Of which Amundsen dropped
from sight, and the North Magnetic
Pole, whose Vaccinations in throwing
explorers off their route cartographers
and instrument makers for the Mac
MILAN Arctic expedition are seeking
to circumvent
But these are not the only poles
that the earth has. bulletin from the
National Geographic Society points
out. The earth's polar possessions
so by twos. says the bulletin. "Ex-
actly opposite the North Pole is the
south Pole, and in the hemisphere op-
posite the North Magnetic Pole is the
South Magnetic Pole. In addition
there is pole of cold both for the
northern and the southern hemi-
spheres. The earth may be credited,
therefore. with six fairly we'll recog.
nized poles.
North Pole Greatest Lure
More has been written and thought
about the North Pole, undoubtedly,
than all the other poles together The
northern hemisphere, with it's concen-
tration of land, became the field for
the worlds greatest civilizations and
heaviest populations. The North Pole
captured and held the popular inter
est because 1t is the most inaccessible
place in the region in which most of
us live-attempting to reach it was
the great adventure nearest home.
In spite of the early lure which 1t
exerted, the North Pole has been WIS.,
tied only once in all recorded time.
Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary reached
it on April 6, 1909, and spent 80 hours
making observations in its vicinity.
He found il to be not on land, but in
the sea. though a sea covered, of
course, by thick ice. Through a hole
in this ice five miles south of the Pole
Peary took a sounding, paying out
5000 feet of wire without finding
bottom.
Every Direction South.
"It requires imagination to appre
ciate the North Pole. 1t is the i'm
aginary point where the imaginary
axis of the earth energies. AS one
stands at the pole, every direction in
which he can face is South. In the
Summer the sun makes a complete
circle near the horizon every "a hours,
never dropping out of sight; in the
Winter, if one could stand there, he
would see the Pole star directly over
head, while all the other stars would
appear to wheel around it. Standing
still on the North Pole an observer
would merely pivot once each "a
hours. A man standing on the Equa-
tor at the same time. however, would
be carried along from west to east
at the rate of Is miles minute.
1T is believed that the temperature
at the North Pole hardly ever rises
above the freezing point in Midsum-
mer, this in spite of the fact that
during June and July and parts of
May and August the sun pours out
more heat near the pole than at any
other part of the earth's surface. If
the inclination of the earths axis and
its rotation did not bring about a cor
responding long period of darkness,
the sun would soon melt all the Arctic
ice and make the pole a heat center.
North Pole Wabbles.
THE North Pole is rigid enough,
but 1t cannot boast that it is abso-
lutely immovable. For reasons not
entirely clear, it wabbles. describing |
a rough circular path about so feet in |
diameter about every IA months-a
motion which changes the latitude of
the majority of places on the earth's
surface by amounts ranging from a
few feet to 90. Scientists are laso
ready to believe that the pole may
have had a very different position
at some time in the distant past, for
coal deposits in Spitsbergen and
Ellesmere Island show that in these
polar lands tropical conditions once
held sway.
THE South Pole, twin of the North
Pole geometrically and geographically.
has not been the objective of nearly
so many expeditions, yet it has been
visited twice by manly Amundsen
in December, 1911, and by Scott a
Lott
on the return trip. Unlike it's north
ern twin, the South Pole is situated
on land, such a large mass that it
has come to be called the Antarctic
Continent. Due to the large land
area about the South Pole, that point
has considerably colder Summers than
those at the North Pole. In fact, so
cold are the Summers and so con-
tinual the winds that the entire =
Antarctic Continent As practically de- |
void of plant life.
I'm one sense the magnetic poles |
are more truly earth features than |
the geographical poles, for they have |
no celestial aspects. They cannot be |
located by any sort Of astronomical |
observations. They lie more than a
thousand miles from the true poles |
and are believed to be slowly chang |
ing position. These poles have their |
being because the earth is huge !
magnet, probably due to it's rotation |
1t is only with a compass needle or |
with certain electrical apparatus that |
the existence of the magnetic poles |
can be determined. 1t is their effect |
on the compass needle, on the other |
hand, that has made navigation fairly |
simple.
Magnetic Poles Not Symmetrical.
The north magnetic pole lies on |
the Boothnia Peninsula in the latitude |
of Point Barrow Alaska and the |