US explorer best remembered for making false claims about his achievements. Cook was surgeon to both the Peary Arctic expedition (1891-92) and the Belgian Antarctic expedition (1897-99). From 1903 to 1906, he led an expedition to Mount McKinley (6187 meters [20,300 feet]) in Alaska, the highest mountain in North America. Despite his lack of surveying skills, he mapped and explored a very inaccessible region. Not satisfied with this achievement, Cook claimed to have reached the peak of Mount McKinley in 1906 and produced a photograph as supporting evidence. That photograph clearly did not substantiate his claim. Three years later he made another claim that he had reached the North Pole in company with two Inuit.
Cook later spent time in prison for oil-land fraud. When he died in 1940, he was still maintaining that his claims were genuine and was pursuing law cases against those whom he saw as maligning him.