Uploaded August 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
OTD: A Black Man Discovered The North Pole! He is best known for his participation in the 1908 expedition that reached the top of our world on April 6, 1909. Henson was the first of their party to reach the pole. A BLACK MAN
Matthew Alexander Henson was born on August 8, 1866, to a family of freeborn sharecroppers in Nanjemoy, Maryland. It was one year after emancipation and the end of the Civil War. An African-American of the first generation to roam the world after the abolition of slavery, Henson led a singular life of exploration and discovery that would usher in the modern era of adventure that continues now through the 21st century.
In 1909 a team of six men on dog sledges made their way to a single point at the center of vast Arctic wilderness. It was a block of ice 413 nautical miles off the coast of Greenland believed to be the North Pole. There were many who refuted the events that led up to the day, April 6th, when an American flag was planted there. But in the years that followed an irrefutable truth would be revealed. The first person to stand on top of the world was black man named Henson.
OTD: A Black Man Discovered The North Pole! He is best known for his participation in the 1908 expedition that reached the top of our world on April 6, 1909. Henson was the first of their party to reach the pole. A BLACK MAN
Matthew Alexander Henson was born on August 8, 1866, to a family of freeborn sharecroppers in Nanjemoy, Maryland. It was one year after emancipation and the end of the Civil War. An African-American of the first generation to roam the world after the abolition of slavery, Henson led a singular life of exploration and discovery that would usher in the modern era of adventure that continues now through the 21st century.
In 1909 a team of six men on dog sledges made their way to a single point at the center of vast Arctic wilderness. It was a block of ice 413 nautical miles off the coast of Greenland believed to be the North Pole. There were many who refuted the events that led up to the day, April 6th, when an American flag was planted there. But in the years that followed an irrefutable truth would be revealed. The first person to stand on top of the world was black man named Henson.
