NORTH POLE

northern end of the Earth's axis, lying in the Arctic Ocean, about 450 miles (725 km) north of Greenland. This geographic North Pole does not coincide with the magnetic North Poleto which magnetic compasses point and which in 1993 lay west of Ellef Ringnes Island, in the Queen Elizabeth Islands of extreme northern Canada (at about 7827 N, 10424 W)or with the geomagnetic North Pole, the northern end of the Earth's geomagnetic field (about 7913 N, 7116 W). The geographic pole, located at a point where the ocean is 13,410 feet (4,087 m) deep and covered with drifting pack ice, experiences six months of complete sunlight and six months of total darkness each year. The American explorer Robert E. Peary claimed to have reached the pole by dog sledge in 1909; it was definitely reached by the American explorer Richard E. Byrd by airplane in 1926 and by the international team of Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth, and Umberto Nobile by dirigible in the same year. Since then, the North Pole has been reached several times, including visits by the U.S. nuclear submarines Nautilus (1958) and Skate (1959).