26 Nessie Expedition Found Movie Prop
During an April 2016 Scottish expedition to find the Loch Ness Monster, the team instead discovered a 30-foot model of the creature at the bottom of the lake. Filmmakers had built the model in 1969 for director Billy Wilder’s 1970 film “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.” Wilder ordered its two humps removed despite warnings that this would affect its buoyancy, causing the altered prop to sink during filming.
27. In April 1852, Great Britain sent HMS Resolute into the Canadian Arctic with the Belcher Expedition to search for British explorer Sir John Franklin’s missing expedition. A cold front trapped the Royal Navy ship in ice in August 1853, forcing its crew to abandon it in May 1854, but an American whaling ship found it adrift 1,200 miles away in September 1855. The US Congress bought and restored Resolute for $40,000, then returned it to British monarch Queen Victoria in 1856. After Britain retired the ship in 1879, cabinetmakers used its timbers to make at least four desks, including the Resolute desk, which Britain gave to US President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and which later became an official Oval Office desk.
28. In 1947, Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl launched the Kon-Tiki Expedition to demonstrate that ancient South Americans could have crossed the Pacific and reached Polynesia on a primitive raft. Heyerdahl and five companions built Kon-Tiki from balsa wood and other native materials, then traveled 8,000 km (5,000 mi) from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia. After 101 days, the raft struck a reef at Raroia, completing the voyage. Heyerdahl believed the crossing proved his settlement theory, but scientists had already rejected it and still overwhelmingly reject it today.
29. In August 1804, shortly after American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began leading the Corps of Discovery through the Louisiana Purchase, Spain sent a 52-person armed force north from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to intercept and imprison the entire expedition. American General James Wilkinson had warned Spanish officials that the expedition was crossing territory claimed by Spain. Two men named Pedro Vial and Jose Jarvet led the force to a Pawnee settlement on the Platte River in central Nebraska, where they learned that Lewis and Clark had passed through many days earlier. The Spanish mission failed without ever reaching its target.
30. During British naval officer Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage, a Royal Navy stoker named John Torrington died on Beechey Island on January 1, 1846. In 1984, Canadian forensic anthropologist Owen Beattie and his team exhumed him 138 years after his death while investigating the expedition’s disappearance. Ice and permafrost had preserved Torrington almost perfectly, leaving his eyes wide open, his clothing intact, and his limbs flexible. Researchers said moving him felt more like handling an unconscious person than a corpse.
31 Jameson Expedition Allegedly Enabled Cannibalism
During the 1887-1889 Emin Pasha Relief Expedition in Central Africa, a Scottish naturalist and Jameson Irish whiskey heir named James Sligo Jameson allegedly bought a 10-year-old enslaved girl for six handkerchiefs so he could witness cannibalism. According to a sworn statement by an interpreter named Assad Farran, Jameson handed the girl to people identified as cannibals, who killed and dismembered her while he made rough sketches. Farran said Jameson later completed six watercolor sketches depicting the killing and the removal of her remains.
32. In 1960, New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary led an expedition into the Himalayas to search for evidence of the yeti. The team returned with two scraps of fur that local people identified as “yeti fur.” Scientists later identified both scraps as pieces of a Tibetan blue bear pelt, belonging to one of the world’s rarest bear subspecies.
33. During a 1541 expedition east of Quito to find El Dorado and a supposed valley of cinnamon, Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana separated from Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and led about 57 men downriver. Indigenous warriors led by women reportedly attacked Orellana’s party, reminding him of the female Amazons from Greek mythology. He reportedly named the river Rio Amazonas, and his group reached its Atlantic mouth in August 1542.
34. In 1909, Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen planned an expedition to reach the North Pole and explore the Arctic Basin. After American explorers Frederick Cook and Robert Peary separately claimed that they had already reached it, Amundsen redirected his expedition to Antarctica. He left Oslo aboard Fram in June 1910 and established Framheim at the Bay of Whales in January 1911. On December 14, 1911, Amundsen and four companions became the first party to reach the South Pole, arriving one month before the group led by British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott.
35. During an expedition to the North Magnetic Pole, British actor Brian Blessed says a polar bear tore into his tent and pushed its head inside. Refusing to let anyone shoot it, Blessed bellowed into the animal’s face and punched it on the nose. The bear fled, and Blessed’s intervention spared its life.
36 Kangchenjunga Expedition Left Summit Untouched
In 1955, a British expedition led by mountaineer Charles Evans set out to complete the first ascent of Kangchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain. On May 25, British mountaineers Joe Brown and George Band stopped about 20 feet from the true summit out of respect for the mountain’s religious significance in Sikkim. Every later climber or climbing team has reportedly followed this tradition, leaving the highest point untouched.
37. In 1578, English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew held what became known as Canada’s first Thanksgiving while searching for the Northwest Passage. After surviving the dangerous Arctic expedition, they praised God for bringing them to safety. Their ceremony occurred 43 years before the Pilgrims held their better-known Thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621.
38. After abandoning their attempt to reach the North Pole in April 1895, Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen and a Norwegian dog-driving expert named Hjalmar Johansen spent more than 14 months crossing Arctic ice and surviving in Franz Josef Land. They passed eight months inside a stone-and-walrus-skin shelter called The Hole before continuing south in May 1896. On June 17, Nansen heard a dog barking near Cape Flora and encountered British explorer Frederick George Jackson, who brought both men to his expedition base. Jackson had previously applied to join Nansen’s Fram expedition, but Nansen rejected him because he wanted only Norwegians.
39. In December 1938, Nazi Germany sent the ship Schwabenland and an 82-member expedition led by a German naval commander named Alfred Ritscher to survey and claim part of Queen Maud Land before World War II. Germany wanted an Antarctic base for its whaling fleet because it relied on imported whale oil for margarine and other fat-based products. Two Dornier flying boats photographed the territory and carried boxes of small metal swastikas that the crews planned to scatter as territorial markers. When one aircraft ran low on fuel, its crew dumped the boxes to reduce weight, and nobody ever recovered them.
40. In March 1953, Britain’s expedition led by army officer John Hunt gathered in Kathmandu before attempting the first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest. British ambassador Christopher Summerhayes arranged rooms with embassy staff for the climbers, but the Sherpas had to sleep on the British Embassy’s garage floor after officials offered only Tenzing Norgay a bed. Angered by the disrespect, the Sherpas lined up and urinated in front of the embassy the following day. The expedition later succeeded when Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary reached the summit on May 29, 1953.
41 Challenger Expedition Revealed Mariana Trench
From December 1872 to May 1876, the Royal Society of London and the Royal Navy sent HMS Challenger around the world under British scientist Sir Charles Wyville Thomson to conduct one of the first major studies of the deep ocean. The ship carried 291 kilometers of Italian hemp rope for lowering sounding leads and other scientific equipment to the seabed. Its crew completed 492 deep-sea soundings, including an 8,184-meter measurement between Guam and Palau in March 1875, that revealed the Mariana Trench. The expedition also discovered about 4,700 previously unknown marine species and helped establish oceanography as a scientific field.
42. In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte brought 160 scientists, engineers, and artists on his Egyptian campaign to study the country and assist his 50,000-man army. Naturalists catalogued wildlife, surveyors mapped the landscape, and archaeologists documented ancient monuments. The French also discovered the Rosetta Stone, which the British forces later seized. French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion later used a plaster cast of the stone to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, while the expedition’s wider research filled the 20-volume Description de l’Egypte.
43. In 1036, what may have been the last major Viking expedition left Sweden under a 20-year-old leader remembered as Ingvar the Far-Travelled, reportedly with 30 ships and hopes of finding riches and fame. The fleet sailed first to Gardarike, the Old Norse name for the Kingdom of Kyiv in modern Ukraine, before continuing toward Sarkland around the Caspian Sea. Battles and serious illness devastated the force during the journey home, and the Saga of Ingvar the Far-Travelled claims that only one ship returned to Sweden. Today, 26 recognized runestones across Sweden commemorate men who died during the expedition.
44. From 1909 to 1910, former US President Theodore Roosevelt led a Smithsonian-sponsored expedition funded by American industrialist Andrew Carnegie through British East Africa, the Belgian Congo, and Sudan. The party killed or trapped about 11,397 animals for museum collections, while Roosevelt and his 19-year-old son Kermit personally killed 512 larger specimens. After adding plants, shells, beetles, and other material, the complete natural history collection totaled 23,151 specimens. Smithsonian naturalists spent eight years cataloging everything and distributed many duplicate animals to other museums.
45. During the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition, British mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made the team’s final attempt to complete the first ever Mt. Everest ascent. On June 8, a teammate last saw them climbing about 800 vertical feet below the summit before clouds concealed them, and neither man returned. Searchers found Mallory’s body 75 years later, in 1999, but could not find the photograph of his wife, Ruth, that he had reportedly promised to leave at the summit. The missing photograph supports the theory that Mallory may have been the first man to reach the Everest top.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Saris Expedition Imported Career-Ending Erotica
From 1611 to 1614, an English merchant named John Saris led the Clove on the first English trade expedition to Japan, where he secured permission for the East India Company to establish a trading post at Hirado. After Saris returned to England in September 1614, a cargo audit accused him of private trading, and an East India Company official named Thomas Smythe discovered his collection of Japanese erotic woodblock prints. His collection was publicly burnt, he was disgraced, and it ended his career.
47. During the third Ming treasure voyage in 1410 or 1411, Chinese admiral Zheng He reached Sri Lanka with a fleet carrying more than 27,000 people to secure maritime trade routes. A Kotte ruler named Alakeshvara lured Zheng and 2,000 troops inland, cut them off from their fleet at Colombo, and planned a surprise attack. Zheng countered by capturing Kotte’s capital, Alakeshvara, his family, and his leading officials before fighting his way back to the ships over six days. After Zheng delivered the captives to Nanjing, the Yongle Emperor freed Alakeshvara but overthrew him and placed a prince named Parakramabahu VI as Kotte’s new king.
48. Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang sent a magician named Xu Fu on a naval expedition to Penglai, a legendary island whose immortals supposedly possessed an elixir of life. After an initial mission failed, Xu Fu claimed that sea beasts guarded the island, prompting the emperor to send archers to kill creatures that historians have interpreted as whales. As Qin’s health deteriorated, Xu Fu requested 3,000 boys, 3,000 girls, and large quantities of grain as sacrifices to the immortals, then sailed away and never returned to China. Later Chinese traditions claimed that Xu Fu settled in Japan, and some even identified him as Japan’s first emperor.
49. The 1939-41 United States Antarctic Service Expedition deployed the Antarctic Snow Cruiser, a 55-foot, roughly 37-ton vehicle designed to transport explorers across the continent. When it reached the Little America Antarctic base in January 1940, its smooth, treadless tires sank as much as 3 feet into the snow and barely gripped the ice. The crew tried spare tires and chains before discovering that the vehicle gained more traction in reverse. They completed its longest trek of 92 miles entirely in reverse.
50. In late December 1766, a female French botanist named Jeanne Baret joined French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s round-the-world expedition while posing as a man. Calling herself Jean Baret, she served as valet and assistant to French naturalist Philibert Commerson because French naval rules barred women from ships. She concealed her identity for much of the voyage while carrying supplies, collecting hundreds of plant specimens, and helping organize and catalogue the expedition’s collections and notes. After remaining in Mauritius, she probably returned to France in 1775 and became the first woman known to complete a circumnavigation.
RE: Fact #19 (Hannibal Expedition Reenacted Elephant Crossing) – The part about the elephant wearing custom leather boots is kind of cute, but hearing that she lost 300 pounds in four days and 500 pounds overall is just sad.
RE: Fact #38 (Nansen Expedition Met Rejected Rescuer) – Good thing Nansen rejected Jackson the first time around. Otherwise, they might have all ended up in trouble.
RE: Fact #5 (Antarctic Expedition Broke Flat-Earth Models) – I’d love to see a follow-up on what he’s doing now. Also, it’s hilarious that the view from 30, 000 feet and the obvious curvature wasn’t enough to convince them.
RE: Fact #45 (Mallory Expedition Left Summit Mystery) – Sir Edmund Hillary was asked about this theory once, and his response was simple: “I do not know whether Mallory and Irvine reached the summit. What I do know is that Tenzing Norgay and I were the first to get to the top and back down to the bottom again.”
I’ve heard that too. I like that he acknowledged the pair while still standing by his own achievement, I’m definitely not trying to discredit Hillary. It’s just fascinating that someone might have managed it so many years before. Thanks for sharing those quotes.
Hillary also refused to confirm who actually stepped onto the summit first. He always insisted that they both made it up together.
Actually, Hillary did open up about it after Norgay passed away in 1986. He said: “Finally, I just got a gutsful of it. I got tired of people saying Tenzing had got to the top first. We set off at 6.30am, first light, me in the lead, Tenzing behind on a tight rope. We never discussed who would be first up. It really did not matter to me, as the entire expedition was very much a team affair, but I suspect Tenzing was quite deferential to what he saw as the Sahib. So I got to the top first, with him just 10ft or so behind. I shook his hand in good old Anglo-Saxon style, but Tenzing was a bit more demonstrative and he gave me a huge hug, and we embraced for some minutes, just savouring the moment. We were only on the summit for 15 minutes or so, and I had my oxygen mask off and recall visually plotting a route up some nearby peaks while I was there looking down on the world.”
RE: Fact #21 (Niger Expedition Began At Destination) – How do you even search for a river when you don’t know where it is? Had they heard rumors about it, or were they just banking on a river existing there for some reason?
Maps were incomplete back then. They knew a river existed inland from one direction and they saw a river at the coast, but they didn’t realize they were looking at the same body of water. It’s pretty obvious once you look at a map of the area.
RE: Fact #22 (Clark’s Expedition Maps Proved Accurate) – Maybe if they had gotten their measurements right, they could have beaten Chris Farley and Matthew Perry to the Pacific.
RE: Fact #18 (Sacagawea Reunion Aided Expedition Crossing) – I feel like history class always portrays Lewis and Clark as two lone wanderers trekking through uncharted territory, but they were actually leading an entire Corps of Discovery that included 30 enlisted men.
RE: Fact #46 (Saris Expedition Imported Career-Ending Erotica) – I know it’s an old joke, but it’s practically a tradition by now: “It’s called hentai, and it’s art.”
RE: Fact #20 (Endeavour Expedition Observed Venus Transit) – That expedition is full of wild stories. One guy returned home only to discover he’d been declared dead and his family had given away all his belongings.
RE: Fact #13 (Smithsonian Expedition Killed Rediscovered Seals) – You only need to leave one. Elephant seals are one of the few amphibians that reproduce via mitosis.
RE: Fact #23 (Fawcett Expedition Reported Double-Nosed Dogs) – Each nose only has one nostril, though. Does that just make it a single, wide, double-turbo nose?
RE: Fact #42 (Napoleon’s Expedition Discovered Rosetta Stone) – This actually serves as a solid counter-argument to the claim that Westerners just stole global heritage for their museums. Honestly, without Western archaeologists and historians, many of these artifacts might never have been discovered or understood in the first place. These institutions were the ones that really drove the appreciation of ancient history.
RE: Fact #6 (Roosevelt’s Expedition Strengthened Yosemite Protection) – Imagine a modern president going camping without any security, instead of the hundreds of people that surround them constantly now.
RE: Fact #35 (Blessed Punched Bear During Expedition) – I’d only believe that kind of story if it came from Brian Blessed, Teddy Roosevelt, or Nick Offerman.
RE: Fact #39 (Nazi Expedition Dumped Antarctic Swastikas) – Clearly, all those stories about a secret moon base were just to keep us from looking for their secret underwater base in Antarctica.
RE: Fact #9 (Magellan Expedition Encountered Patagonian Giants) – This sounds like something straight off that aliens-built-the-pyramids channel. Definitely take this with a grain of salt.
RE: Fact #10 (Floyd Became Sole Expedition Fatality) – They also used opium for insomnia, and tobacco smoke enemas for drowning. Plus, they drank tons of alcohol to deal with minor pains and just to kill time on the longest nature hike in American history.
So, um, who exactly was literally blowing smoke up a dude’s ass to save him?
RE: Fact #39 (Nazi Expedition Dumped Antarctic Swastikas) – Sharks eat just about anything they find. License plates, cutlery, and even armor have been pulled out of shark stomachs. It’s very possible those metal swastikas didn’t stay on the ocean floor, some might be halfway around the world in a shark’s belly.
RE: Fact #12 (Shackleton Expedition Saved All Twenty-Eight) – This story is so worthy of a big Hollywood adaptation, with little needing to be changed, it’s dramatic enough as it is. I heard Tom Hardy is meant to be taking it on. Three tiny boats across the Southern Ocean, one to South Georgia across 800 fucking miles with nothing more than dead reckoning to guide them, and then a mad dash across glaciers and mountains in basically civilian clothing. Sitting on their arses and fucking sliding down the glacier in the fucking dark, because they’re in a rush to get their men saved. Knowing the could so so easily just slide off into the darkness. Tom Cream was a legend.
This movie could be made a dozen times, and I would watch every version; it really is just that incredible. It’s probably one of the most fantastical stories of human perseverance you will ever hear. I highly recommend a three-part documentary called “Shackleton: Death or Glory”. If you are having a hard time obtaining a legal copy, there is always the high seas.
RE: Fact #15 (North Pole Expedition Included Armstrong) – I imagine the flat earthers are rolling their eyes at this. They probably think, ‘They brought Armstrong? You know this whole thing is BS.’
Actually, they think Antarctica is an ice wall surrounding the world, and the Arctic is just an ocean in the middle. Not that it makes any more sense, but still.
It’s funny, I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how that would even work with actual physics before realizing it’s not meant to make sense at all. I definitely wasted my time there.
RE: Fact #27 (Resolute Expedition Vessel Furnished Presidents) – Didn’t Obama get a piece of that ship, like some pens or something, during his time in office?
RE: Fact #24 (Scott Expedition Lost Polar Race) – I was taught about this back in UK grammar school. Captain Lawrence Oates’s sacrifice was always portrayed as incredibly moving, the whole “I’m just going outside, I may be some time” thing.
Rimmer: Yes, but here’s the thing about Captain Oates: he was a total prat. If I were in his shoes, I’d have stayed in the tent, knocked Scott out with a frozen husky, and eaten him. Lister: You would, wouldn’t you? Rimmer: History is written by the victors, Lister. We only know about Oates’s “noble walk” from Scott’s own diary. It’s not like he’d write down, “February 1st: clubbed Oates and ate him for dinner.” That doesn’t look great for the rescue report. It’s much better for the survivor to claim Oates made a “supreme sacrifice” while dabbing up his gravy with the last of the bread.
RE: Fact #25 (Oates Sacrificed Himself During Expedition) – It’s basically a sacrifice fly in baseball, except it’s a South Pole expedition and the guy ended up freezing to death.
RE: Fact #8 (Magellan Expedition Finished Without Magellan) – Another fun bit of trivia: when the surviving crew finally hit familiar waters and landed in Cape Verde, they realized their ship’s logs had the wrong date. They had kept an accurate count, but they lost a day by traveling west. The date mismatch wasn’t actually sorted out until long after the voyage was over. It’s wild that they had the technology to pull off that expedition without even understanding the concept of time zones.
RE: Fact #48 (Qin’s Expedition Vanished Seeking Immortality) – Let’s be real here. If someone dropped 6, 000 children on you, the most likely result is either losing your mind or just dumping them somewhere else.
RE: Fact #35 (Blessed Punched Bear During Expedition) – I’m pretty sure Brian Blessed shouting at a bear is enough to make it rethink its entire life. The punch was probably just for flair. The bear probably just wanted an autograph.
RE: Fact #7 (Challenger Deep Expedition Found Rubbish) – I remember my biology teacher saying he thought it’d be pretty sweet if we just used the Mariana Trench as a trash dump. ‘The Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the ocean. Since it’s so deep I think we should dump our trash there, I think it’d be… uh… I think it’d be pretty sweet.’
RE: Fact #7 (Challenger Deep Expedition Found Rubbish) – They’ll also find plenty of cars down there, since that’s where the U.S. Navy dumped them for sonar tests, but it’s probably best not to bring that up!
RE: Fact #27 (Resolute Expedition Vessel Furnished Presidents) – If you want a great historical novel about the Franklin Expedition, check out The Terror by Dan Simmons.
I’ve read that. I first learned about the Franklin Expedition through Wendigoon and have been obsessed with the story ever since.
RE: Fact #44 (Roosevelt Expedition Collected 23, 151 Specimens) – This totally tracks with everything else I’ve heard about Roosevelt. That guy really did not mess around.
RE: Fact #14 (Shackleton Expedition Whisky Remained Preserved) – There’s a famous story from the end of his life: Shackleton was feeling rough and his doctor told him he needed to slow down and “lead a more regular life, ” specifically suggesting he cut out the alcohol. Shackleton apparently replied, “You are always wanting me to give up things, what is it I ought to give up?” When the doctor said “Chiefly alcohol, Boss, ” Shackleton didn’t have much time left. He suffered a fatal heart attack shortly after that conversation.
RE: Fact #28 (Kon-Tiki Expedition Crossed Pacific Waters) – The book is a great read. It’s wild to hear about things like how they built massive steering oars, only to realize the raft had a sort of “autopilot” if you set the keelboards correctly.
RE: Fact #38 (Nansen Expedition Met Rejected Rescuer) – Nansen and his team hadn’t been heard from in over three years and were assumed dead. That must have been an incredibly awkward meeting.
RE: Fact #26 (Nessie Expedition Found Movie Prop) – Can you imagine spotting that thing in the dark lake? Your adrenaline would be absolutely through the roof.
They saw it on sonar. There must have been a moment where everyone was totally hyped but also a little bit terrified.
RE: Fact #14 (Shackleton Expedition Whisky Remained Preserved) – The funny thing is that whiskey stops aging once it’s bottled. So it’s not actually 100-year-old whiskey; it’s just however old it was when they put it in the bottle.
RE: Fact #2 (Mastodon Hunt Shaped Jefferson’s Expedition) – That seems like a fair reason to me. If I were President and thought mastodons might still be out there, I’d definitely want someone to go grab one.
RE: Fact #9 (Magellan Expedition Encountered Patagonian Giants) – In extreme climates, evolution can sometimes favor larger people because they retain body heat better. However, later travelogues suggest the average Tehuelche man was closer to six feet tall. Skeletal remains in the area, plus the hand outlines found in the Cueva de los Manos, suggest that the Tehuelche were actually around average height.
RE: Fact #34 (Amundsen Expedition Won Polar Race) – There is still some debate over who actually made it first. Still, it’s an incredible achievement for everyone involved, especially considering the gear they were stuck with.
RE: Fact #8 (Magellan Expedition Finished Without Magellan) – In Spain, the expedition is never just named after Magellan; it’s always the expedition of ‘Magallanes y Elcano.’ The Spanish Navy’s training ship is called the ‘Juan Sebastián Elcano, ‘ and in his hometown of Guetaria, there’s a massive monument listing the names of the 18 sailors who actually finished the circumnavigation. So, in Spain at least, Elcano is very famous, possibly even more so than Magellan. Also, just to clarify the fact: those 18 were the ones who arrived with Elcano, but they weren’t the only ones to survive. Some were captured by the Portuguese in Cape Verde and made it back to Spain a few weeks later, finishing the journey as well.
RE: Fact #47 (Zheng He Expedition Captured Alakeshvara) – There’s a book called 1421 by Gavin Menzies about Zheng He’s travels. Menzies should have gone for an Olympic medal in mental gymnastics given how absurd his theories are. Don’t waste your time reading it.
RE: Fact #46 (Saris Expedition Imported Career-Ending Erotica) – Back in 1614, it was reported: ‘Some imputations and aspersions being cast upon Captain Saris for certain lascivious books and pictures brought home by him and divulged… Mr. Governor assured them of his dislike thereof… purposed to get them out of his hands if possible he could, to be burnt.’ And later in 1615: ‘Mr. Governor acquainted them that great speeches having been made of certain books brought home by Captain Saris… now should likewise be eyewitnesses of the consuming them in the fire.’ Basically, he was audited, caught stealing cargo, and his ‘hentai’ collection was discovered. The governor had to hold a public burning to satisfy protesters who were angry about the collection, and Saris was effectively finished. It’s pretty wild that the first Japanese art to reach Britain was basically erotica.
RE: Fact #15 (North Pole Expedition Included Armstrong) – Man, that is such an eccentric billionaire move for an expedition leader to pull. He basically put together the A-Team of explorers.
RE: Fact #49 (Snow Cruiser Expedition Drove Backward) – The vehicle was eventually abandoned and thought lost to the ice, but it was found again almost twenty years later. Since then, it’s vanished again.
RE: Fact #3 (Mercury Pills Marked Expedition Camps) – It’s pretty incredible when you look at the sites they’ve managed to identify because of those pills.
RE: Fact #31 (Jameson Expedition Allegedly Enabled Cannibalism) – You have to wonder what the dad was thinking. “I love my daughter, but six handkerchiefs? That’s a deal.”
RE: Fact #24 (Scott Expedition Lost Polar Race) – The Norwegians weren’t running a scientific mission; they were just focused on the goal and were experts with skis, dogs, and ice, which is how they beat them to the pole and actually survived the trek.
RE: Fact #18 (Sacagawea Reunion Aided Expedition Crossing) – She was likely 14 to 16, and Cameahwait would have been too young to be Chief back then, so he was actually her uncle. Her people, the Agai’Dika, call her Sacajawea, while the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes who kidnapped her and sold her to Toussaint Charbonneau used the name Sacagawea.
RE: Fact #18 (Sacagawea Reunion Aided Expedition Crossing) – ‘Undaunted Courage’ is an excellent book on the expedition. They showed impressive navigation and leadership, but they really only survived due to the consistent generosity of the local tribes. They also got lucky a few times; toward the end, they split into four groups and Lewis was almost killed by Blackfeet warriors.
RE: Fact #10 (Floyd Became Sole Expedition Fatality) – I’ve always found it wild how much they ate during that trip out west. They’d put away up to nine pounds of meat a day, plus whatever berries or nuts they could forage. An 8, 000-mile hike has to burn some serious calories.
RE: Fact #2 (Mastodon Hunt Shaped Jefferson’s Expedition) – The idea of extinction only caught on around 1796. In 1804, most educated people still assumed that if you found bones from an unknown animal, similar creatures were likely living somewhere else. The unexplored interior of the continent seemed like a prime spot for that.