Andree Expedition Became Balloon Disaster

In 1897, a Swedish engineer named Salomon August Andree led a North Pole expedition with a photographer named Nils Strindberg and an engineer named Knut Fraenkel, hoping to make them the first people to reach the pole. They travelled by their hydrogen balloon, which remained airborne for 65 hours before crashing onto the Arctic pack ice. The three men survived for weeks by trekking across the ice and killing polar bears for food, but they eventually died at their final camp. In 1930, the crew of a Norwegian ship discovered the camp and recovered their bodies, journals, camera, and photographs of the doomed journey.

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