Science: Polar Pilgrims: May 24, 1926

Wine ran in Norway. Bells pealed in Rome. Headlines screamed across the broad U. S. Bright bunting shone forth in grim Alaska, where searchlights had pierced the skies during the three-hour nights. Then, slowly, mankind settled back to review and evaluate what had seemed at the moment its most spectacular feat.

Seventeen fur-bundled men and a fox terrier had passed in an airship completely up and over the Earth's icy pate, parting that wilderness as a comb might part the unexplored thatch of a wild man from Borneo. From Spitzbergen in Barent's Sea via...