In late October 1957, newspaper reporter Rolla Crick meant to be visiting the US Navy’s south pole station (Amundsen-Scott) only briefly, but the engine on the US Navy Neptune that had brought him and others there had broken down and they were all stuck to stay there for weeks. That’s when he discovered that there were Peanuts strips tacked up all over the place… one of the men (dubbed the “Officer-in-charge-of-Peanuts”) had brought a supply, and was putting up another one each day, so that everyone would have something to read. Problem is, he was running out, and there was still about another year to go for the men’s mission.
So when Crick got home, he arranged for the weekly proof sheets that get sent out to newspapers to also have a copies sent to be brought with the supply deliveries going to the pole, so they could still be posted out one per day. That’s quite something to have on the Peanuts subscriber list!
But… did the story really end there? Peanuts was generally done on about a six week lead time. What started happening in Peanuts at the very end of 1957, a little over six weeks after Crick made this discovery?
Snoopy imitated that favorite South Pole denizen, the penguin, for the first time, leading into a run of such strips.
