Ron Buckley, age 11, of Talladega, Ala., for his question:
WHO WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO REACH THE NORTH POLE?
By the late 1800s, men from many nations started to go to the arctic area with the hope of being first to reach the North Pole. The race was won by a United States Navy commander named Robert E. Peary and his aide, Matthew Henson.
Peary and Henson, along with four Eskimos, reached the pole on April 6, 1909.
The first arctic explorer was probably a famous Greek adventurer named Pytheas. In the late 300s B.C., he explored the waters far to the north of Scotland.
It wasn't until the late 1500s, however, that Europeans started to learn about the northern reaches of the earth. Explorers were trying to find a northeast or northwest passage from Europe to Asia.
But it wasn't until the 1920s that scientists started to learn much about the northern polar region. Danish and Norwegian expeditions studied Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. Cambridge and oxford universities in England sent student expeditions to the Arctic.
On May 9, 1926, a United States Navy lieutenant commander named Richard E. Byrd and his pilot, Floyd Bennett, became the first men to fly over the pole. Later that same year, Ronald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth of the United States, and Umberto Nobile of Italy crossed the Arctic in an airship.
History tells us that over 10,000 years ago, during the last period of the Ice Age in Europe, cave men who made tools like those of the modern Eskimo most likely hunted in the Arctic.
Today, the world's best fishing grounds can be found along the edge of the Arctic, particularly off the coasts of Greenland and Iceland.
Winter temperatures in the area average about 30 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. This is also the average temperature at the North Pole.
The coldest weather in the world can be found in northeastern Siberia, in the region around Verkhoyansk. There, January temperatures average 40 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, and have reached as low as 93 degrees below zero. This is probably colder than it has ever been at the North Pole.
Rainfall in the Arctic totals about 6 to 10 inches each year, including melted snow. This is less rain than falls on many of the world's great deserts.
The Arctic Circle is an imaginary line that runs through the northern parts of Canada, Alaska, Russia and Scandinavia. Points on the Arctic Circle lie at 66 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude, which is about 1,630 miles from the north geographic pole.
The Arctic Circle marks the edge of an area where the sun stays above the horizon one or more days each year. This longest day comes about June 21.