The Matthew Henson reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Matthew Henson

Matthew Henson (1866 – 1955) was an American explorer who may have been the first to reach the Geographic North Pole with Robert Peary in 1909 (it is disputed that they reached it, they may have been off a few kilometers). Due to him being black and Peary's employee he never reached the same fame as Peary in at the time racist America.

He authored a book himself about his arctic exploration (A Negro Explorer at the North Pole) in 1912 and later in collaboration with Bradley Robinson his biography Dark Companion in 1947.

During their expeditions he and Peary fathered children with Eskimo women that were discovered by S. Allen Counter in a Greenland expedition as they were in their eighties.

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