Born 1872,
Borge, Norway
Died c. June 8. 1928,
The Atlantic Ocean

The son of a shipbuilder, Roald Amundsen was born in Borge, a town in Norway near Oslo. He was 14 when his father died. The following year he began reading about the Arctic explorations of John Franklin (see entry) and decided that he wanted to be an Arctic explorer himself. He prepared for exploration with hard physical exercise, including skiing, and he even kept his bedroom window open at night in cold weather. He also resolved to gain experience as a navigator. “I had been struck by one fatal weakness common to many of the preceding Arctic expeditions,” he later wrote about this decision. “This was that the commanders of these expeditions had not always been ships’ captains.”

Amundsen’s mother had wanted him to become a doctor, but after she died...