45 Fun Facts About North Pole

Unlike the South Pole, the geographic North Pole sits on what?

The Pole sits on shifting sea ice a few metres thick over the deep Arctic Ocean; the nearest land, Kaffeklubben Island, lies about 700 km away.

How deep is the ocean directly beneath the North Pole, as measured by a Russian submersible in 2007?

The Mir submersibles that took the sounding also planted a one-metre titanium Russian flag on the seabed on 2 August 2007.

How many times a year does the sun rise at the North Pole?

The sun rises just once a year, around the March equinox, circles the sky all summer, and sets around the September equinox for six months of polar night.

Kaffeklubben Island, the nearest land to the North Pole, lies off which territory?

Kaffeklubben Island lies off Greenland's north coast at 83°40′N, 37 km east of Cape Morris Jesup and about 700 km from the Pole; beyond it lie only shifting gravel banks.

Which American sponsored the 1926 airship flight that first verifiably reached the North Pole?

Ellsworth flew aboard the Norge with Amundsen and Umberto Nobile on 12 May 1926; the same trio's Italian designer would crash the airship Italia two years later.

Which American explorer's claim to have reached the North Pole on 6 April 1909 remains disputed?

Robert Peary's 6 April 1909 claim rests on his own unverified records; rival Frederick Cook claimed to have reached the Pole a year earlier, and neither man produced convincing proof.

Which African-American explorer on seven Peary voyages said his footprints were first at the 1909 'Pole'?

Matthew Henson, Peary's companion on seven Arctic voyages, received a duplicate of Peary's medal from Congress in 1944 and was reburied beside Peary at Arlington National Cemetery in 1988.

The first surface expedition confirmed to reach the North Pole, in April 1968, travelled by what?

Ralph Plaisted's four-man party, three Minnesotans and Canadian Jean-Luc Bombardier, reached the Pole by snowmobile on 19 April 1968, the first surface arrival ever confirmed by independent observers.

Which vessel first reached the North Pole, passing beneath it on 3 August 1958?

USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine, crossed beneath the Pole on 3 August 1958 during Operation Sunshine; USS Skate became the first to surface there in March 1959.

In 1990 Børge Ousland and Erling Kagge became the first explorers to reach the North Pole how?

Unsupported means no resupply, dogs or outside help; Ousland and Kagge man-hauled their sledges about 800 km from Ellesmere Island to the Pole in 58 days in 1990.

Ann Bancroft became the first woman to reach the North Pole on foot and by sled in which year?

Ann Bancroft reached the Pole on 1 May 1986 with Will Steger's dog-sled expedition; in January 1993 she led the first all-female team to ski to the South Pole.

Fridtjof Nansen's plan for reaching the North Pole in the 1890s was to do what with his ship Fram?

Nansen let Fram freeze into the pack ice north of Siberia in 1893 so the drift would carry it toward the Pole; when it fell short, he and one companion skied to a record 86°13.6′N in 1895.

Which polar pioneer vanished in 1928 while flying to search for the airship Italia's crew?

Roald Amundsen took off from Tromsø on 18 June 1928 in a Latham 47 flying boat to search for Nobile's crew; the plane disappeared over the Barents Sea, and only a float and a fuel tank were ever recovered.

Who headed the four-man crew of North Pole-1, the Soviet drifting ice station of 1937?

Ivan Papanin and three companions lived on the North Pole-1 floe for 274 days, from May 1937 until icebreakers picked them up off Greenland in February 1938.

What time zone is used at the North Pole?

All lines of longitude meet there, so every time zone is equally valid; teams usually keep Greenwich Mean Time or the time of their home base.

Which explorer first located the north magnetic pole in 1831?

James Clark Ross reached the north magnetic pole at Cape Adelaide on the Boothia Peninsula on 1 June 1831; the pole has since wandered more than 1,000 km across the Arctic.

In the 2000s and 2010s, the north magnetic pole drifted toward Russia at about what speed?

The north magnetic pole sped up from about 15 km a year in the 1990s to roughly 55-60 km a year, forcing an early 2019 update to the World Magnetic Model that phones and ships use.

The Arctic Ocean, which surrounds the North Pole, ranks how among the world's five oceans by size?

The Arctic is the smallest and shallowest of the five oceans at about 14 million square kilometres, hemmed in by Russia, Norway, Greenland, Canada and the United States.

The Arctic Circle, the line beyond which the midnight sun occurs, sits at roughly what latitude?

The Arctic Circle runs at about 66.5°N (66°33′), the latitude where the sun stays above the horizon for at least one full day each summer; it creeps north about 15 m a year as Earth's tilt changes.

How many countries have land inside the Arctic Circle?

Eight countries have land inside the circle: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark via Greenland, and Iceland, which qualifies only through the offshore island of Grímsey.

What colour is a polar bear's skin beneath its fur?

The black skin absorbs heat and the guard hairs are hollow and unpigmented; they are classed as marine mammals because they depend on the sea ice.

Which of these animals would you NOT find anywhere near the North Pole?

Penguins live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere; the only species that strays north of the equator is the Galápagos penguin.

Reindeer, Santa's supposed sleigh-pullers, are unique among deer in what way?

In North America the same species is called caribou; its range circles the whole Arctic from Scandinavia through Siberia to Canada.

The idea that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole is often credited to which 19th-century illustrator?

Thomas Nast's 1866 Harper's Weekly drawing 'Santa Claus and His Works' carried the caption 'Santa Claussville, N.P.', and George P. Webster's companion poem placed the home 'near the North Pole, in the ice and snow'.

What postal code has Canada Post assigned to Santa Claus at the North Pole?

H0H 0H0 spells out Santa's 'ho ho ho'; Canada Post volunteers answer more than a million letters a year in dozens of languages, including Braille.

The town of North Pole, Alaska, near Fairbanks, is how far from the actual geographic North Pole?

North Pole, Alaska, lies at about 64.75°N near Fairbanks, roughly 1,700 miles (2,800 km) from the geographic pole; its streets include Santa Claus Lane and St. Nicholas Drive.

A gift shop in North Pole, Alaska, boasts the world's largest fibreglass statue of which figure?

Santa Claus House, opened by Con and Nellie Miller as a trading post in 1952, fronts a towering fibreglass St. Nick billed as the world's largest; the town's streetlights are striped like candy canes.

Finland's Santa Claus Village sits on the Arctic Circle near which city?

Santa Claus Village stands on the Arctic Circle about 8 km north of Rovaniemi, Lapland's capital; the site began with a cabin built for Eleanor Roosevelt's visit in 1950.

Which retailer's misprinted 1955 phone-number ad led to NORAD's annual Santa tracking?

A 1955 Sears ad in Colorado Springs printed a number that rang the Continental Air Defense Command; Colonel Harry Shoup reportedly played along, and NORAD kept the tradition after its creation in 1958.

Who plays Santa in the 2003 film Elf?

Ed Asner played Santa; Bob Newhart is Papa Elf and narrator, James Caan is Buddy's father Walter Hobbs, and Jon Favreau directed.

Which actor played multiple roles, including the conductor, in The Polar Express (2004)?

Tom Hanks played the conductor, the hero boy, his father, the hobo and Santa through motion capture; Robert Zemeckis directed, adapting Chris Van Allsburg's 1985 picture book.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 as a promotional booklet for which department store chain?

Montgomery Ward copywriter Robert L. May wrote the booklet and the chain gave away 2.4 million copies in 1939; his brother-in-law Johnny Marks turned it into the song Gene Autry took to number one in 1949.

Who accompanied Frederick Cook on his disputed April 1908 journey to the North Pole?

Cook travelled with two Inuit men, Ahwelah and Etukishook, who later said they had never lost sight of land; his claim to have climbed Denali in 1906 was also debunked.

Which landmark did Norway's Roald Amundsen reach on 14 December 1911?

Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole, 'the bottom of the world', on 14 December 1911, five weeks ahead of Robert Falcon Scott; he had earlier made the first transit of the Northwest Passage in 1903-06.

Where did the airship Norge land after crossing the Arctic over the Pole in 1926?

Bad weather kept the Norge from its planned destination of Nome; after about 70 hours aloft from Spitsbergen, Nobile brought it down at the village of Teller, Alaska, on 14 May 1926.

Which polar bear range country is home to Svalbard, where the bears famously outnumber people?

Their range also covers Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia; the bears follow the sea ice, which is why they are classed as marine mammals.

The 1958 submarine that first crossed the North Pole underwater was under the command of whom?

Anderson later served four terms in Congress; James Calvert commanded USS Skate, which surfaced at the Pole the following year.

Which undersea ridge runs from Ellesmere Island past the Pole to the New Siberian Islands?

The Lomonosov Ridge, about 1,800 km long and rising some 3 km above the surrounding seabed, passes close to the Pole; Russia, Denmark and Canada each claim it as an extension of their continental shelf.

Which British naval officer reached 82°45′ North on an 1827 Pole attempt?

William Edward Parry's 1827 attempt from Spitsbergen, hauling boats over the ice, reached 82°45′N, a farthest-north record that stood for nearly fifty years.

Who skied north with Nansen in April 1895, reaching 86°14′ before turning back?

Hjalmar Johansen turned back with Nansen at 86°14′N on 8 April 1895; the pair wintered in a stone-and-walrus-hide hut on Franz Josef Land and met the British explorer Frederick Jackson in June 1896.

What polar first did Ranulph Fiennes and Charles Burton complete on 10 April 1982?

Reaching the North Pole on 10 April 1982 made Fiennes and Burton the first people to reach both poles by surface travel; their Transglobe Expedition had reached the South Pole on 15 December 1980.

How thick is the sea ice at the North Pole typically?

Sea ice at the Pole is typically 2 to 3 metres thick, mostly multi-year ice; thickness, extent and open water all swing with weather and climate, and thinner ice reflects less sunlight.

How many coastal states signed the 2008 Ilulissat Declaration on Arctic Ocean governance?

Five states with Arctic Ocean coasts, Russia, Canada, the United States, Denmark (via Greenland) and Norway, signed the Ilulissat Declaration in Greenland in May 2008; nobody owns the Pole itself under international law.

In 1907 Canada claimed a wedge stretching from its coast to the Pole by invoking what?

The claim was never relinquished but was not consistently pressed until 2013.

How high above the horizon does the Sun climb at the North Pole at most?

At the June solstice the Sun reaches only about 23.5° above the horizon at the Pole, matching Earth's axial tilt; it circles the sky at nearly constant height each day.