Banned by the cowardly tribalist anal retentives at r/AskHistorians

Actually, that would be r/AskPseudoHistorians, since the reason for my ban is that one cannot question empirically unsubstantiable claims of genocide, i.e., Kirkpatrick Sale type claims that American Indians were genocided.

Here's the ban message:

Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in /r/AskHistorians because your comment violates this community's rules. You won't be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.

Note from the moderators: The definition of genocide does not require intent to eradicate a people completely. The correct definition is intent to harm a people whole or in part. European settlers engaged in indigenous genocide. Minimizing/denying it is unacceptable on AskHistorians.

And here's my response.

No, you don't really want to chat, because you permabanned me. Second, I know that (see Gaza) complete eradication doesn't have to be intended. Third, that said, per your comment and the sub's definition, you don't really want discussion about this issue in general. Fourth, from that, I've been banned by tribalists besides you before. Fifth, it's cowardly mixed with tribalism to downvote me for a comment related to an archived post where I can neither comment nor downvote back in the first place. SIxth and related, of course, a hidden list of mods only doubles down on the perception of cowardice.

On the second and third response points, it's not just me. Plenty of liberal academic historians, and even some leftists, reject this claim. This isn't just wingnuttery. AND, if these are actual academic historians?

THEY KNOW THAT. Tribalist pseudohistorical non-skeptical leftists. The starting point is what percentage of American Indians were killed in "zones" within a "reasonable" distance of European contact, and how and why. The percentage is certainly not Kirkpatrick Sale's 90-plus percent.

Second point is whether intent involved deadly intent. Many European actions could indeed be called "ethnic cleansing" but fall short of genocide.

Things like this would be discussed by actual historians, and per this Oxford piece, actually are. (Unfortunately, that site is nowhere near perfect, with pretendian (he IS!) Ward Churchill leading off the bibliography. Vine Deloria's son is second. Tying to this issue, sadly, even after being exposed as a pretendian, and not just by vengeance-seeking wingnuts, a place like Mother Jones continued to platform him. (Cheyenne-Muscogee Suzan Harjo has been a leader in exposing the likes of Churchill, including Churchill himself.) Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a leading pusher of the genocide thesis today, is also a pretendian, though she's tried to elide away her past claims then backpedaled from them more fully. Actually she's only rejected her Cherokee claims, which she peddled after peddling her Cheyenne claims. See Pretendians website. Also note that besides Churchill and Dunbar-Ortiz, it includes other academics like Elizabeth Hoover. In fact, I counted 13 current or former academics among 27 listed people. Remember, these are only those who have been formally identified as such.

The one other thing, off the top of my head, is are these people librulz who are wagon-circling tribalists, or non-skeptical leftists?

Back to the issue. Could individual actions be considered genocide? Absolutely!  Anglo America's treatment of Gold rush and later California Indians definitely is, in my book.

In many cases, we have ethnic cleansing. That's quite serious, too. But, it's not genocide.

The old post I was criticizing? The mod identifies as Nez Perce and Yakama, so I'm not allowed to criticize. I guess I can't criticize Bari Weiss for thinking the Holocaust justifies everything. I guess, more to the point, that I can't also point out that Indian slavery was sometimes chattel slavery, that the potlatch culture involved human sacrifice and other things. Oops, I guess I did. (Shockingly, that Reddit admitted it, but without any moderators weighing in.)

That gets back to the first point above. We have numbers for the Holocaust. We have numbers for Gaza today. We have nothing better than a broad range of guesses for pre-Columbian Contact American Indian numbers. And, many websites that say 90 percent or more of American Indians were killed go with the passive "It is estimated" and no citation of sources.

Related are stories about how so many American Indians were killed that it contributed to the Little Ice Age. Even if the 56 million in approximately 120 years is correct? That's 56 percent of a pre-Contact 100 million, if we take that number as a population guess at contact that's reasonable. It's not 90 percent. And, noting that the definition of genocide doesn't include full extermination, there's other issues. Above all, that's that there was intent behind all of this.

We have other issues. Those are issues like "likely" in the first paragraph and "may" in the second.

We also have lies on related issues.

First, in today's US, Sir Jeffrey Amherst's failed attempt to spread smallpox by blankets is about the ONLY attempt to deliberately spread disease, lies (they are) of people like Ward Churchill aside.

Second, since we don't have really good numbers of pre-Contact American Indians either in the US, or the "New World" as a whole, percentages of death are a mug's game, too. Pre-Contact Western Hemisphere population has been estimated by sound academics at 8-15M on the low end to more than 100M on the high end. In the US, it's been from less than 2M to more than 15M. See this paper, but also note it's problematic for calling this a "holocaust." The climate change paper above claims 60 million, and it has to claim that many, or almost that many, to avoid a "genocide" that results in negative population.

And, if we're seriously going to claim that disease spread is de facto genocidal, then why aren't the Mongols called out for genocide via plague? Yes, it's snarky. And, it's also serious.

As for the de rigueur threat of banning from Reddit if I try to circumvent it? This:

Otherwise, on the de rigueur "don't attempt to circumvent this ban" note? I've already called you people anal-retentives on my own feed. I wouldn't want back here, especially if tribalist pseud-historians are allowed to pontificate.

Such notes in general are some mix of condescending and snooty.

And pretentious. That second comment got a response: 

I'm not sure if you want us to respond to your list of points, or if you just want to vent your spleen at us, but either way, you can consider this matter closed.

To which I replied:

Thanks for giving me yet more material to write about is my response. Per my second paragraph above, why would I think you would reopen it, and throwing in presumptuousness on your side, why would you think I cared? Even before this, I'd realized this sub wasn't all that.

There you go.

I had already "threatened," as with r/BiblicalAcademic, to create a new sub, not "public" but not fully "private," either, but rather the third category on Reddit, and this probably did it!

Or, back to the OP at Reddit? Per the above and per my Bari Weiss and Gaza? Should we accept all Indigenous "science" (yes, scare quotes) as actual science? No, we should test it. Unfortunately, the likes of High Country News went, yes, "woke" in a wrongful way on this issue during COVID.

Back to the OP at Reddit further.

Brendan the History Nerd Toddler, the cult-followed book review idiot

This guy on Goodreads.

He calls himself, after his name, "History Nerds United."

Worse, he has a website, which he started three years before joining Goodreads. (Or rejoining, or jumping from Amazon, reading between some lines.) I had thought of deleting this post until I clicked through, but the "about" made me double down instead. 

First, plenty of history lovers, like me, don't consider ourselves "nerds." And, from that about:

Brendan Dowd is a full-time government consultant but is always a History Nerd. He lives in Vienna, Virginia with his daughter whom he regularly tortures with the double whammy of dad jokes and history jokes. He is the son of a history teacher (big surprise) and is originally from New York.

If your mom or dad think they're a nerd too, oy vey. 

Related is that this plays up to all sorts of history stereotypes. (And, if your mom or dad do that, too? Oy vey.)

I called him, in a comment on his review of "The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV" the History Toddler instead of Nerd. Why? This:

I plan on going on quite a bit of diatribes in this review. So, before you say, "Brendan can you get to the point, please?" I will summarize it with this. Helen Castor's The Eagle and the Hart is magnificent and you should read it. It is long and in-depth but never boring. It is a dual character study while also putting its time period in perspective. It is definitely going on my list of best books of 2024. Okay, now on to the diatribes! If you want to exit now, I thank you for your time.

Still with me? Great! Now that the impatient and rude people have left, let me tell you something. I believe Richard II might be the reason men named Richard are nicknamed Dick. (My apologies to all Richards who do not deserve it.) Do I have any scholarly source on this? Absolutely not. Will I look it up? Definitely no. Was this all to elicit a cheap laugh from those people who share my sophomoric sense of humor? Not entirely! Castor's narrative did make me believe he is one of the worst English kings in history.

How can anybody take him seriously as a reviewer, at least anybody who actually cares about learning about history in depth? We start with pretentious, pontificating prattle. Then, it's off to insulting anybody who won't agree that his pretentious, pontificating prattle is more than that. Then, there's the claim that, after admitting his humor is sophomoric (grow up), that it has real insight behind that. (It does not.)

And, if he actually cared about history, and about getting his cult followers to learn it, he would have told them that Dick as a synonym for Richard predates Richard II. 

Again, how can anybody take him seriously. Well, his cultish followers do. And, I guess they like being, or at least being called, nerds as well.

So I mentioned that in this bon mot:

God, what a stupid review, with the second paragraph. Perhaps you could retitle yourself "History Nerd Toddler."

Which apparently fed his ego (shock me):

But that means you liked the other paragraphs though, right? By the way, truly enjoy you being so obsessed with my reviews. Thanks for reading!

To which, one last reply:

I just like pointing out stupidities. Otherwise, don't flatter yourself. (Not that that admonition has any chance of success.)

From here on out, I call him out in my reviews, as I first did here.

And also, dood, an occasional comment elsewhere doesn't mean obsessed. I think I've commented on four or five of his reviews.

Otherwise, taking right-wing nut job Maureen Callahan's book about JFK seriously, let alone 5-starring? You're not even serious as an alleged historian. He also reads a lot of semi-clickbait fluffy history.

And, as exemplified by "The Eagle and the Hart," many of his reviews are surface-level, not noting actual historical problems, as does my review. (I'm often the first reviewer to catch such things.)

And, that gets to the real problem. He says he wants to make history "fun." Fine. But, you know, history is more than just a "story." It's about ... history. And, good historical writing is — accurate, factual, empirical, etc., not just "fun."  (I've updated my Goodreads profile with a more extensive version of this.)

In short, Brendan is giving the cult, and non-cultic readers of his reviews, a bad idea of history. 

I'm going to drop this link in occasional reviews by me of books he's also read.

Side note: The cult didn't really develop until the last 18 months or so, it seems. Older reviews of his have generally no comments. So, was the "History Nerds United" itself a marketing ploy? I would have said yes, at first, but seeing the website game before the Goodreads, I am not sure.

Also, I find the "Dear Reader" affectation an insult to Isaac Asimov, whether Soy Boy adopted it in deliberate imitation of him or not. 

That said, the website has one more bit of pretentiousness, which also means no way in hell I delete this.

Above links to his social media sites, he does NOT say "Follow Me."

Rather?

"Follow Us."

You know exactly what you can do with your "royal we," dude. (And, that's what it is; you may do interviews on your podcast, but your site is a one-man band.)

Actually, per the start of the "about," there's more reason yet not to like him.

Former Army brass hat? Now a "government consultant"? He's either a Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ member (State) or military-industrial complex (DoD). Barf me either way. 

Edit: This does not necessarily mean that he works directly for either cabinet agency. Contractors, and not just defense contractors like Lockheed, but outsourced security, intelligence, etc. all exist. DynCorp, Fluor and many others.

Now, other than the cultism? The crux of the problem.

Soy Boy's reviews are often error-laden. This is usually errors of omission, as his likely breezy and superficial reading misses errors in many of his reads. Even worse, for an ex-US Army tanker, many of these errors of omission are in his reviews of military history books. 

Finally, per Rotary's Four-Way Test, which I thought of?

1. Is it true? Yes.
2. Is it fair to all concerned? Per Walter Kaufman, "fair" in reality and abstract are two different things, and fairness can never be universal all at the same time. It's close enough for jazz.
3. Will it build goodwill? Not a concern.
4. Is it helpful to all concerned? See "fair." It's certainly helpful, IMO, to people needing to find good history books.
   

There you are.

And so, if I AM obsessed, I've excised it, and it is now a WAS.

Socialism don't mean what you think, nor rewriting history nor rewriting current events over Black Lives Matter

In what is best described as an act of Kabuki theater, the Cooke County Commissioners Court considered voting Aug. 17 for pretending to put the future of a Confederate statue and memorial on its courthouse lawn in the hands of voters.

Finding a loophole in Texas law, County Judge Jason Brinkley called a special meeting of the court to vote on a nonbinding referendum on the matter. Texas law allows counties of under 40,000 to do so.

Matthew McGee got to the point of the referendum, among speakers in public forum.

 “I would like to remind people the referendum is non-binding. It’s still 100 percent up to the commissioners to act,” he said, making a reference to a “poll on racism.”

“It’s still the only county doing such a poll. It’s going to be national news and it’s going to be embarrassing,” he said.

Turns out Cooke County won't make the teevee screens. The Commissioners Court's four commissioners ignored Brinkley and voted 4-1 to reject the referendum idea and do nothing.

Surprised? No. Disheartened? Yes. No so disheartened as to hope that protestors are serious and stay out there.

As for the speakers?

Most supporters of keeping the statue ignored that Texas seceded over slavery.

Rachel Moore talked about a historic 1913 gathering of CSA and US troops at Gettysburg as healing. She either was unaware, or chose to ignore, that black US troops were excluded.

And, of course, people like this call youth protestors "socialists" as a pejorative, ignoring the meeting of that word, while accusing the protestors of rewriting history, when history was being rewritten even before Rutherford Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction.

Ignorance was not confined to past history, nor to speakers.

“I question Black Lives Matter. Is it exclusive by definition? Has Black Lives Matter produced any results?” Precinct 1 Commissioner Gary Hollowell asked.

The truth is that, just a week ago, the city of Austin voted to cut one-third of the bloat from its police budget and that it also made police actions reviewable by moving "internal affairs division" outside the department. BLM protests led a heretofore relatively conservative Austin City Council to take this bold step forward. (More from Grits here on how George Floyd and a local shooting by cop were the fuse for long-standing ideas to cross the finish line.)

Precinct 4 Commissioner Leon Klement seemed to indicate, in lines with Hollowell, that the "problem" was only one one side.

“If that rock causes you to hate somebody, that’s on you,” he said. As with Hollowell, it seemed the comment was directed only toward anti-statue protestors.

Precinct 3 Commissioner John Klement reference slavery having a global history, and slaves in the North, but didn't mention the race-based history of slavery in the U.S. He, like cousin Leon, noted his family had come from Germany after the Civil War but the statue was part of their history.

Yes? And yours truly wrote a column noting that Bismarck's Kulturkampf against German Catholics was part of your history, too, and suggesting you analogize from that. And you did not.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Jason Snuggs added that some people told him they could see the statue being moved, but not under this pressure.

So no, Bob Smith, Vince Rippy and other members of the self-styled Cooke County Activists for Truth in Society, the commissioners court did NOT display "exceptional courage." If not craven cowardice, they were closer to that than what you claim. The "Exceptional courage" was displayed a month ago by Gainesville Mayor Jim Goldsworthy and the rest of the Gainesville City Council when it voted to move the city's statue in the face of opposition from people like you.

Also of note? Mr. Young Republicans PR Tucker Craft (see here on earlier meetings and background) was not at this meeting.

I think part of what's lying behind less reactionary members of the county court, and others, is something that I've seen on Twitter, the idea that social changes happen by magic, without protest. I of course cited Martin Luther King back to the first few people who pulled that. I think a minority of people sincerely believe that, but for the majority, it's just another "talk to the back of the hand" stance.

Otherwise, it's clear that entrenched beliefs don't change, even when presented with plenty of evidence to create cognitive dissonance. Despite protestors repeatedly saying in commissioners court meetings that they're from Gainesville, opponents continue to claim they're all agitators from Denton. If people don't have the "exceptional courage" to critically examine their own belief systems, they're going to be poor judges of who else displays "exceptional courage." But, it's also easier to pretend that issues aren't real when you pretend that people in your own back yard aren't the ones raising the issue.

This all reminds me of Max Planck cracking wise about how what was really needed for a new scientific theory to become accepted was to have enough old scientists die off.

The 1619 Project AND its opponents are all wet

I'd read bits and pieces from the New York Times' ongoing project to claim that 1619, not 1776, is the real beginnings of America.

Neocentrist mush-pulper Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic is the latest to call out the old black lady, citing "enemy of my enemy" support such as World Socialist (who are generally Trots) and Ibram X. Kendi, who bats around something like the black nationalist world. (Contra what you might think on the X, though, he's not a black Muslim.) They can't agree with one another why the 1619 Project is wrong, just that it is. I could tell the others are wrong from reading; I'd read snippets of 1619 pieces and knew it was less than fully right at the time it was breathlessly announced.

So, they're ALL wrong, at least to some degree. Wrong enough to set off a Tweetstorm on my part which I will expand into a blog post.

Let's start!

I just lost respect for Gordon Wood as a historian. (I didn't have much respect to lose for .@conor64) as a journo.
Many slaveholders were aware of 1774 Somerset ruling. It may not have been FOREMOST in their minds, but ONE cause for backing revolt? Yes. https://t.co/VV0M7cBbNM

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

Friedersdorf may not have directly chosen the header, but it accurately reflects his take. And it's wrong right from the header.

The Somerset decision? Writing from memory, I got the year wrong. It was 1772. But, fear of it was behind fear of Dunmore's Declaration about freeing Virginia slaves once the Revolutionary War started. So, ONE cause? Indeed. WSWS mentioned Dunmore but not Somerset; Friedersdorf mentions neither.

Next?

As for .@WSWS_Updates calling out the #1619Project, I understand why. Ppl like it, Adolph Reed, etc., believe that race issues inevitably reduce to class issues. (This is the same Reed who a few years ago laughingly said New Mexico was one of the whitest states in the nation 2/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

And, I blogged about that issue in much detail, plus a follow-up. It eventually led Reed flak and flunky Doug Henwood to block me on Twitter and vice versa. (Several months before that, possibly not wanting to believe that red states, on average, have less income inequality than blue ones, Henwood got the order backward on state Gini coefficients, not realizing that Utah has the least income inequality in the union.)

Next, let's kick the 1619 Project itself:

Does the #1619Project have problems? Hell yes. Its take on Abraham Lincoln is especially ridiculous. To the degree it works off Jill Lepore, I knew that, too. I wrote the top, AND top critical, review of "These Truths." 3/x https://t.co/I4ZCiwJ9Dn

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

Was Lincoln perfect? No, but he did "evolve," and evolve indeed, on race issues throughout his life and through the Civil War. Frederick Douglass knew that.

Meanwhile, would Trots be hypocritical? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Is a bear a Presbyterian? 

But, when it stops attacking the #1619Project as capitalist and uses Lincoln as a cudgel for that, .@WSWS_Updates & .@WSWSMedia will surely attack Lincoln elsewhere as a capitalist. 4/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

I once was a member of its Yahoo group. But, for years, I don't waste my time on Trots, any more than on conspiracy theorists.

I promised more on Reed:

As for Adolph Reed? Dave Garrow also had a nice vignette about his time with Obama — and with Alice Palmer. https://t.co/2vl4YbEIAS

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

Just a throwaway, but fun. (I'll have yet more below.)

Now to Kendi:

Re Ibram X. Kendi criticizing #1619Project? He's got wrongs himself. There was no pre-Colombian visit to America fr Africa. Claims there were by whites OR blacks are racist, based on a racist belief American Indians couldn't build temples or pyramids. 6/x https://t.co/WNItnKfqEw

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

I've called out James Loewen for promoting this BS before. And, if you do it willingly, after being called out? You're promoting racism. I don't care if you're black. Stop it.

Friedersdorf is bad enough to get two tweets, even at the 280-character length:

As for Friedersdorf's plaint re the #1619Project? A boatful of wrongs (Shock)
1. By focusing on July 4, 1776, he focuses on a snapshot, undermining all else he says about other non-1619 issues.
2. He ignores California's anti-Chinese racism while talking abt growing up there 7A/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

and then:

Friedersdorf re #1619Project also:
3. Doesn't discuss American Indian and other racial issues that, if he lived in NM beyond being born there, he should have seen
4. Re his ancestry, ignores that the multitude of Second Klan lynchings were north of the Mason-Dixon. 7B/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

I easily could have tweeted more about him. Friedersdorf epitomizes everything I don't like about The Atlantic and I'll be fine if Steve Jobs's widow puts him behind a paywall.

Now, back to Adolph Reed (and the Trots).

World Socialist interviewed him about the 1619 Project. He takes the typical left-Socialist and Communist tack of trying to reduce race — and culture — to class.

Bullshit.

A study of human evolutionary development shows xenophobia, which often became articulated in race or culture stances, existed long before capitalism. Capitalism may have intensified it, but it didn't start it. And, beyond Marxism being a pseudoscience (it is; crappy philosophy used as the framework for even a marginal social science like economics pushes you into pseudoscience), Reed's take epitomizes one other problem with it — dialectical materialism usually turns into not just reductionism but greedy reductionism. That's why it's funny, until we call it hypocritical, for him to call out critical race theory for being reductionistic.

It's not just Trots, though. Jacobin, whose editorial content sprawls the gamut between DSA Democrats and Sovietskis of some sort, of not necessarily Trotskysts, does the same as Reed and WSWS on capitalism and antisemitism.

I will give Reed credit for cooking the goose of both Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

I will also say that Reed is almost certainly right in thinking there's an element of capitalist career-hiking here. Certainly with the 1619 Project writers themselves and almost certainly with Kendi. Probably with Coates. I am reminded of the allegedly environmentalist SJW Instagram influencers last year who played High Country News for fools. (Actually, it was about 50-50 between that and a self-own by HCN, which was one of several reasons I quit subscribing.)

Teh stupidz, it burns!

And, when all is said and done, it burns least stupid, by a decent margin with Reed, but only for calling out the capitalist motives. Setting that said, it's a tie for the bottom between him, WSWS in general, 1619 folks, and the likes of Kendi.

No, it's a tie for second-bottom. Friedersdorf's gelatinous crap is still at the bottom.

==

Now, what do the opponents get right? Even more, opponents that Friedersdorf mentions but that get less airplay?

First is that the first blacks, arriving in 1619, like certain whites, were indentured servants, not slaves. Related to that is that a majority of Virginians at that time were indentured servants but that the majority was white. Nell Irvin Painter, author of "The History of White People" and other books, is one pointing this out. But, all Friedersdorf can do is attack her for not signing the letter against the project, then attack her for why she didn't sign, when instead, it's a reason plausible and logical.

If one wants a "turning point" year or years and bases it on Virginia, per Painter's piece, it would be 1676-77 and Bacon's Rebellion. The ruling class, after eventually putting it down, hardened slavery and made it more race focused, to break the ties between indentured servants, more and more of them white, and slaves, mainly black.

And, that maneuver worked. It eventually led to "poor whites" becoming "mudsills," like President Andrew Johnson and like many Trump voters. I discuss that issue in a full 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 part series.

==

Update, Jan. 16: At Washington Babylon, Andrew Stewart tries to spin for the project by referencing Gerald Horne. Horne is quoted as indicating 1619 Project is in trouble with "the ruling class." Hey, Stew? Hey, Horne? The Trots and Reed aren't exactly "ruling class." And Painter's criticisms, as noted above, which Stew doesn't mention, are still correct.

Update, March 3: A really not-bad-overall opponents-side piece is from John McWhorter.

Smithsonian publishing pseudohistory again – Peary & Cook at Pole

It’s to the point that when a new issue of Smithsonian magazine comes out (I have a gift subscription), I expect a major error of either fact or interpretation in a major story.

And, I also expect the magazine not to do anything about it.

April’s entry? Excerpts from Bruce Henderson’s book, “Who Discovered the North Pole,” insinuating Frederick Cook beat Commodore Robert Peary to the North Pole.

Henderson, both in the excerpts and the full book, stacks the deck in favor of Cook, without explicitly saying he beat Peary.

That said, he willfully ignores the painstaking work done by people BESIDES Peary backers showing that, four years before his claimed trek to the Pole, he faked the alleged first ascent of Mout McKinley, and faked it by more than 10,000 feet of altitude.

That said, do I think Peary got to the Pole 100 years ago this month?

Not likely. Probably neither one did. Neither did Admiral Byrd in his plane from Spitzbergen in 1926, per his own mechanic. And, since the Peary and Byrd had eliminated further claimants to going North 90 those two ways, at least until further handicapping like solo voyages, voyages without dogs, etc., probably the first person or people to visit the North Pole, if not from 20,000 leagues deep, in all likelihood popped up from below …

The USS Nautilus in 1958.

However, if it’s the battle of the two by-land claimants for first there, Peary is much more likely than Cook. And, albeit with modern synthetic clothing, gear, etc., his 1909 per-day mileage claims have been met and even exceeded in recent years.

Peary’s claim is plausible. (So, too is fraud; having announced this would be his last journey, he had good motive for fraud.)

Then again, so did Cook; it seems to have been part and parcel of his personality, something that Henderson also ignored.