The Geographic North Pole (also known as "true north") is located near the middle of the Arctic Ocean, about 450 miles / 725 km north of Greenland, the closest land.

The north and south poles represent the top and bottom ends of the Earth's axis - around which it rotates.

Located at 90° North latitude, it is the northernmost point on the Earth's surface. If you're standing there, all points are south of you (you can't go farther north, and east and west have no bearing).

The lines of longitude that establish our time zones all converge at the pole. In that area they are too close together to be practical as time zones, so Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is used for local time.

Most of the time, the North Pole is covered by the polar ice cap. Recent warming trends have reduced the ice thickness and water has occasionally been sighted at the exact location of the pole.

When Robert Peary, Matthew Henson and four Inuit arrived at the North Pole in 1909, they didn't know exactly what they would find. Peary searched for land in every direction (all South) with a telescope. He found none.

A metal weight on piano wire was then dropped through the ice. It went down 9,000 feet / 3,543 meters without finding bottom - no one had expected the ocean to be that deep! It was later learned that parts of the ocean trench under the Arctic Ocean are up to 3 miles / 4.8 km deep.