Frederick Cook's expedition, North Pole,1908. Taken by Cook himself, the photograph shows his two Inuit companions, Ah-welsh and Etukishook, at the North Pole on 21st April 1908. Frederick Albert Cook (1865-1940) is famous for this claim, that he was the first to reach the North Pole in April 1908. However, this was disputed by the US explorer Robert Peary, who claimed to have reached the true North Pole first, one year on in 1909. The competing claims remained controversial, but it is now thought that Peary's claim was most probably correct. Cook spent most of the rest of his life trying to clear his name.