Robert Edwin Peary explored the Arctic for many years and attempted to reach the North Pole several times. He finally reached it in 1909 and became famous for it. After getting to the Arctic in July of 1908, Robert Peary chose Cape Sheridan on northern Ellesmere Island to begin his expedition to get to the North Pole. His previous expedition had also started there. Then, during the winter of 1908 to 1909, he moved his party and provisions to Cape Columbia, which was even more to the north than Cape Sheridan. The trip began on February 28, 1909. The party consisted of five groups. Each group took turns breaking trail, building igloos, and depositing supplies. Peary and his party were delayed by open water on the polar ice cap, but by April 1,…show more content… Finally, on April 6, 1909 at 10 a.m., Peary and the five others reached the pole. After over twenty years of exploring the Arctic, Robert Peary became the first person to reach the North Pole. At the North Pole, he draped himself in the American flag. Peary and the five other people that he was with unfurled five flags there. They had the U.S. flag, the U.S. Navy flag, the official banner of Peary’s Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity chapter at Bowdoin College, a Red Cross flag, and the “World Ensign of Liberty and Peace.” While there, he proved that there was no continent under the North Pole and that it was just ice. The group stayed at the North Pole for thirty hours, then returned to Cape Columbia. When Peary returned to civilization, he found out that Frederick Cook had claimed to have gotten to the North Pole with two Eskimos about a year before Peary. Robert Peary’s claims of reaching the North Pole were not scientifically documented and the National Geographic Society only examined Peary’s trunk of instruments hastily in the middle of the night before agreeing that Peary did reach the North Pole. This led to some doubt about his…show more content… In the early 1900s, countries started claiming parts of the Arctic, but they didn’t have evidence for their claims. In 1909, Canada claimed part of the Arctic from its Arctic Sea shore to the North Pole. It was the first country to claim part of the extreme Arctic. In 1924, the United States claimed the North Pole and said that it was part of Alaska underwater. In 1926, the Soviet Union claimed part of the Arctic from the Kola Peninsula to the Bering Strait and extending up to the North Pole. At first, the Arctic was thought of as too barren and remote to be worth claiming, but the melting sea ice opened up a lot of new routes and made resources easier to get to, leading to more claims on the Arctic. Global warming is causing temperatures in the Arctic to rise twice as fast as the rest of the world, making the ice melt very quickly. Some of the resources discovered in the Arctic include 30% of the undiscovered natural gas and 15% of the oil in the world. The Arctic has also been found to contain tin, manganese, gold, nickel, lead, diamonds, and platinum. 22% of the undiscovered petroleum sources are also there. Because of all the claims in the Arctic, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is used to help with that. UNCLOS governs the land claims in the Arctic. It entered into force on November 16, 1994. A country has to