The itch to get there first and fast is human. Being competitive is part of the human’s survival instincts.
The urge to plant one’s flag there before the other flag-bearer does is human too. It is part of the human’s political instincts.
Some 11 decades ago, in 1910-12, both itch and urge were quivering in the northern hemisphere. Robert Scott, a 43-year-old British naval officer, was preparing a daring expedition to the South Pole. Around the same time, a Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, about four years younger, was planning a bold ice-drift to the North Pole. On learning of dubious but loud claims by two Americans Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, Amundsen lost interest in that destination; it had been reached. But the South Pole beckoned. While others had fringed that continent of ice, no human foot had stood on the southern-most point of the earth.
