THINGS I TRIPPED OVER ON THE INTERNET TODAY, DECEMBER 20
Thing #1 - This new music video with Shakira and Black Eyed Peas
Thing #2 - Amber Cowan’s mixed glass sculpture
Thing #3 - A mashup of Alfred Hitchcock and Star Wars
Thing #4 - The first person to reach the North Pole was a Black desk clerk
MATTHEW HENSON - PHOTO VIA WIKI COMMONS
Matthew Henson was an African American explorer who made multiple journeys to the Arctic during his lifetime, and participated in an expedition in 1908/1909 where he and his party claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole - making them the first. He was born to sharecropper parents in Nanjemoy, Maryland where he became a cabin boy and later a salesclerk at a department store before being hired as a personal valet for Robert Peary, a great adventurer of the time. He studied Inuit language and survival techniques with Peary and became his right-hand man on all his voyages. He published a memoir in 1912 called A Negro Explorer at the North Pole which is actually available on Amazon. Henson and Peary both fathered children with Inuit women on their journeys and Henson’s great-great-grandaughter is the actor Taraji Penda Henson, aka “Cookie Lyon” from the television series, Empire.
