One man’s trash: the recovery of Frederick A. Cook’s original telegram drafts announcing his attainment of the North Pole

On 1 September 1909, Dr Frederick A. Cook landed at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands and cabled the unexpected news that he had reached the North Pole on 21 April of the previous year. This article recounts the equally unexpected recovery of the original telegram drafts Cook wrote for the cables sent from Lerwick. It discusses new details they add to the historical record and confirms others that previously had no confirmation. It also verifies the authenticity of the drafts, and, based on the physical condition of the recovered documents and documentary clues, it traces what can be known of the history of these documents between the time Cook wrote them and their publication a century later, proposing how they might have been originally saved from destruction in 1909.