We tend to think of Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried as the poster kids for big-time con artists, but long before they offered dreams of easy riches, Fort Worth’s Dr. Frederick Cook was hoodwinking ...

The early 1900s there were many explorers who braved the elements and forbidding topography for the claim to be the “first” to succeed, usually by planting a flag at the designated place. One of these ...

Frederick Cook and Robert Peary both claimed they discovered the North Pole. AGIP / Rue des Archives / The Granger Collection, New York On September 7, 1909, readers of the New York Times awakened to ...

A week earlier, the New York Herald had printed its own front-page headline: "The North Pole is Discovered by Dr. Frederick A. Cook." Cook, an American explorer who had seemingly returned from the ...