An Early North Pole Discovery
A record found in the Navy Department library states that Brother Nicholas, of Lynn, an Englishman, discovered the North Pole 550 years ago in the same manner as Dr. Cook and Captain Peary. The statement is from John Entinck’s “New Naval History, or Complete View of the British Marine,” published in 1757, and reads: “In the year 1360 it is recorded that a friar of Oxford called Nicholas De Linna of Lynn, being a good astronomer, went in company with others to the most northern island of the world, and there leaving his company together, he traveled alone and made drafts of all those northern parts with the indrawing seas, which at his return he presented to the king of England. It is added that he went to the North Pole by means of his skill in magic or the black art; but this magic or black art may possibly have been nothing more than a knowledge of the magnetical needle of a compass, found out sixty years before, tho not in common use until many years after.”