Adventures Gone Wrong
Andrée's 1897 Arctic Balloon Expedition
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In 1897, a Swedish engineer convinced a king, a Nobel Prize winner, and an entire nation to fund the most ambitious plan in exploration history, flying a hydrogen balloon to the North Pole. He had never tested the balloon in Arctic conditions. His steering system didn't work. He launched anyway.
What followed was 65 hours of chaos in the air, 87 days of brutal survival on the Arctic ice when…