Explorers Club Flag

The century-old Explorers Club flag has been to the top of Mount Everest. It’s been to the North Pole. It’s been to the South Pole. It’s been to the deepest part of the ocean and it’s been to the moon. Cool, right? Well, yeah, but Explorers Club flags accompanied the people who were first to summit Everest, first to the North Pole, first to the South Pole, first to the bottom of the ocean, and first to the moon. (Robert Peary carried the flag on his North Pole expedition in 1909, though his claim of reaching the pole has come under doubt.) Each of those flags was numbered—they all are—and, throughout the club’s history, there have been less than three hundred. Collectively, the flags have been on more than seventeen hundred expeditions, and each pennant has its own history and story to tell.

Flag number fifty, for example, began its service in 1932 on an expedition to the Caucasus