Famed African-American explorer Matthew Henson was born in Charles County, Maryland, on August 8, 1866. Explorer Robert Edwin Peary hired Henson as his valet for expeditions. For over two decades, they explored the Arctic, and on April 6, 1909, Peary, Henson and the rest of their team made history, becoming the first people to reach the North Poleâor at least they claimed to have.
An autonomous republic is a type of administrative division similar to a province or state. A significant number of autonomous republics can be found within the successor states of the Soviet Union, but the majority are located within Russia.
The ASSR is itself one of the forms of national state organization in which the sovereignty of nations is embodied, and in this respect it resembles the Union republic. As a political form of autonomy, the ASSR possesses certain exceptional powers, those of the Union republic.