Images and other media from the archival collections of Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Frederick A. Cook, Sir George Hubert Wilkins and the Byrd Polar Research Center are featured in this timeline.
Sponsored by Henry VII of England, this would be the beginning of more than 400 years of attempts to navigate a Northwest Passage.
Willoughby's entire party of men died in Lapland.
Sailing though Lancaster Sound into the unexplored Canadian archipelago, the Parry expedition wintered at the Melville Islands. This was the first deliberate Arctic wintering by British naval ships.
Two expeditions, each unaware of the other's existance, made the first sightings of the Antarctic mainland in January 1820.
Franklin was the captain of this British naval expedition that explored the north coast of America east from the Coppermine River to the Hudson Bay.
Though this was the most lavishly equipped Northwest passage expedition in history, it was an epic failure.
Kane participated in two Arctic expeditions. Both were John Franklin rescue missions.
Frederick Albert Cook is born on June 10, 1865 in Hortonville, NY.
At about this time, the focus of Arctic exploration shifts from the discovery of a navigable Northwest Passage to other parts of the Arctic, and ultimately, the attainment of the North Pole.
Led by American Adolphus Greely, the expedition attained farthest north, and 83 degrees 24 minutes. However, imclement weather doomed the expedition in their third winter. Eighteen men died, mostly from famine and scurvy.
