British explorer Robert Falcon Scott was born today in 1868. He died, along with his four companions, on the way back from the South Pole in 1912. They had successfully reached the pole, only to learn that they had been beaten by Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian expedition.
Scott’s legacy has been marked by controversy. Long hailed as a hero, in recent years, some have portrayed him as a bungler. The Scott expedition ended in tragedy while Amundsen arrived first and returned safely, without losing a man. Nevertheless, Amundsen is largely forgotten and Scott still fascinates the public. Two new exhibitions opened yesterday which feature Scott’s ill-fated expedition. Edward Rothstein writes in his review of an exhibition, Race to the End of the Earth, which opened yesterday at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York:
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