Call Him Andrée Not-the-Giant

We're in the home stretch of trying to send my wife to the North Pole, and I'd like to tell you about a few guys who tried to reach the North Pole and failed quite miserably.

By "quite miserably" I mean they ended up "quite dead."

Just by the Wikipedia title, S. A. Andrée's Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897, you know things probably weren't going to turn out very well.

The details of this disaster present a situation not much different than if you and your friends were sitting on the couch on day and agreed, after several beers, to "hey let's all go to the North Pole!"

A mere year after Alfred Nobel died, leaving in his will the foundation for what would become the Nobel Prizes, fellow Swede S. A. Andrée set himself up as a finalist for a Darwin Award.

Here are a few things that worked against Andrée:

• His method of steering the balloon was unlikely to work
• The balloon had never been tested
• Final measurements proved that the balloon was leaking

Somehow, he convinced a couple of fellows to join him, and with an optimism that wouldn't be seen for another 15 years, when someone would reply, "The Titantic is the safest ship in any ocean!," the trio set off, amid chants of the Swedish version of "Huzzah!"

Then, a mere two days later, this:

Oh, jävlar.

Their whereabouts were unknown until 1930, and not because they were in hiding. The bodies of the three explorers were discovered by accident on the island of Kvitøya, part of the Svalbard archipelago owned by Norway.

It would be generous to say that Andrée's legacy is rather mixed. A further insult occurred when a monument, built in 1997 to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the trip (though I'm not sure why you'd want to remember the voyage, other than as a warning against bad planning) "was later deliberately destroyed by the Svalbard authority, on the ground of its being illegally erected."

Yeesh. I think the only balloons related to the North Pole contest that my wife is entering will be the ones in my house for the party I'll be having to celebrate her going to the North Pole for two weeks.

Please vote for her — don't let the air out of my balloon!

* * *

If this convinces you that you should send my wife to the North Pole, please click this text which is in fact a link that will take you to her essay so you can vote for her so she'll have a chance to go to the North Pole. Thank you.