Talk:Frederick Cook

McKinley expedition
The statement that Henderson says that a 1910 expedition verfied Cook's claim does not seem to be right - at least, I cannot find it in Henderson's book. Henderson does refer (p.283) to Anderson and Taylor's climb in 1910, but as I read it more as an example of climbers who were branded liars but later proved to have been correct.Mhockey (talk) 17:13, 23 March 2008 (UTC)


 * If the citation does not support the claim (and, not having access to the book, I accept the point), I think the the statement "but another 1910 expedition allegedly verified much of Cook's account (Henderson, 2005)" should be completely removed. That would mean the next sentence "The validity of the latter claim may be weighed by comparing Cook's map of his alleged 1906 route versus reality, over the last 10 miles" would need considerable rewriting, or removal too. Thoughts? The second sentence could be converted into yet another claim of the route discrepancy, still citing Bryce. I wonder whether to remove both sentences giving Bryce as a second reference for "a tiny peak". Thincat (talk) 21:46, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I have now reworded to omit reference to the second 1910 expedition.--Mhockey (talk) 12:18, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I don't know where else to put this, but I have hard evidence that Cook was not the first to the North Pole. This is going to sound crazy, but my great-grandfather wrote a letter to multiple newspapers making the story up, and Cook jumped on the wagon once the stories were published. I have pictures of his letter, the article in The New York Times, and an audio recording from I think like a couple decades ago I think of my great-aunt asking my great-grandfather questions about the story. He actually starts the story by laughing and asking what the statute of limitations is on something like this. Since he has long since passed away, and no one else in my family seems to care about putting it out there, I figured I would be the one to volunteer the information. I don't know much about how this all works, but if someone wants to help include the information, I would be more than happy to send the text, image, and audio files.mac3100 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:57, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Yamana dictionary
The statement that Cook acquiesced in the attempted publication of the dictionary under his own name is supported by the statement in the cited text: "Dr. Cook had agreed with the authorities of the Observatoire on a proposed cover for the work. It was to read: 'YAMANA-ENGLISH DICTIONARY By Frederick A. Cook'"Mhockey (talk) 09:23, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

This much is true. However there are two distinct research periods for the language in question. First was Thomas Bridges', who never called the language Yamana, but Yahgan, a term he developed from the fact that the dialect he focused on was centered on the region of Yahga-ashaga, or Yahga channel. Yamana, a term the people used to describe themselves (essentially meaning, human, rational, fully alive), never had any use as a language descriptor. Later German scholars, such as Gusinde, hit on Yamana to describe the language. In fact the native term is haua ku:ta, literally 'our language'. Finally, the Wiki article 'Yaghan language' has an aberrant spelling- at some point in the 20th century people decided that hg was a misspelling of gh. In fact it was to be read phonetically as -ah-g to express the vowel quality. Bridges had utilized a then-popular phonetic spelling, slightly modified for the language (a change the alphabet's originator later rejected!). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.121.117.192 (talk) 01:59, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Yellow Kid Weil
For what it's worth Cook was in the same prison as Yellow Kid Weil (q.v.), who believed Cook had reached the North Pole. Minasbeede (talk) 00:50, 4 August 2013 (UTC)