1. The North Pole has no time zone.
Besides visiting explorers, tourists, and researchers, humans do not live at the North Pole. And because there are no permanent settlements, the North Pole has not been assigned a time zone. People at the North Pole can choose to go by any time zone that is convenient. The closest permanently inhabited place is Alert, a military installation 600 miles to the south on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, and itās in the Eastern Time Zone.
2. There is no land at the North Pole.
The North Pole has no land mass at all. Instead, itās made up of huge ice floes, 6 to 10 feet thick, that float on the surface of the Arctic Ocean. Beneath the ice, the water is 13,400 feet deep.
3. At the North Pole, the sun rises and sets just once a year.
At the North Pole, there is only either light or darkness. The sun rises around the spring equinox on March 20 and stays in the sky for a full six months before finally setting around the fall equinox on September 22. Through the winter, the North Pole is dark 24 hours a day until the sun finally begins to reappear in March.
4. Two competing explorers claimed to be first at the North Pole.
In the early 20th century, the North Pole was one of the last places on Earth yet to be ādiscovered.ā That changed in 1909 when, in the same September week, newspapers reported that not one but two explorers had made it to the top of the world. The famous American explorer Robert E. Peary claimed to have reached his destination in April 1909, his eighth attempt. But another American explorer, Frederick E. Cook, came out of nowhere to claim he was first in April 1908, a full year before Peary.
Despite the competing reports, Peary was widely acknowledged as the first at the North Pole until 1988 when, after re-examining his records, the National Geographic Society concluded that he might not have made it to the North Pole after all. Even if he did, itās likely that his teammates, Matthew Henson and four Inughuit guides Ootah, Seeglo, Egingwah, and Ooqueah, were actually the first to set foot at the poleābecause Peary had to ride on a sled due to the loss of eight toes to frostbite.
5. The Soviets established the first research camp at the North Pole.
Unlike in Antarctica, where permanent research stations were established as early as the 1940s, there is no equivalent at the North Pole. The Soviet Union established the first temporary research station there in 1937. Planes dropped four men, including an oceanographer, a meteorologist, and a radio operator, on a 10-foot-thick ice floe in March, and over the next year they studied the Arctic environment. When the expedition concluded in February 1938, rescuers found the station not where they left it, but drifting in the Greenland Sea, 1615 miles away. After several failed rescue attempts, all four researchers were safely evacuated and returned home.
6. The North Pole could be ice-free in summer in less than 30 years.
The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the globe. As the climate crisis deepens, scientists expect that within fewer than three decades, sea ice cover will completely disappear in the summer months unless global emissions can be significantly reducedāand quickly. And because what happens at the North Pole impacts the entire Earth, the seasonal disappearance of ice will likely lead to rising sea levels, more severe weather events, and drastic changes in climate and precipitation on all seven continents.