Robert Peary

Born in Pennsylvania in 1856 and raised in Maine after his father's early death, Peary joined the Navy as a civil engineer in 1881 and made his first Arctic journey in 1886. His 1891-1892 Greenland expedition proved the landmass was an island, and he became one of the first Westerners to adopt Inuit survival methods - though in 1894 he took the Cape York meteorite from the Inuit who depended on it and deceived six indigenous people into traveling to the U.S., where four died within months. He set a "Farthest North" record at Cape Morris Jesup in 1902, then launched his final push in 1908. When he announced he'd reached the North Pole in April 1909, the claim ignited a bitter dispute with rival Frederick Cook and eventually won official recognition: Congress thanked him, the Navy promoted him to rear admiral, and he retired in 1911 as president of the Explorers Club. Eighty years later, reanalysis of his navigation data concluded he likely fell short.