Andree Sets Off for North Pole by Balloon: He'll Crash and Die
The hydrogen balloon lifted at 2:30 PM carrying three Swedes, 800 pounds of equipment, and enough provisions for four months. Salomon Andrée, Knut Frænkel, and Nils Strindberg disappeared into Arctic fog sixty-five hours before their balloon—named *Örnen*, "The Eagle"—iced over and crashed onto pack ice. They walked for three months across shifting floes. A seal hunter found their bodies and diary in 1930, thirty-three years gone. Strindberg's fiancée had waited, unmarried, checking every ship from the north. The final photograph showed them smiling beside a polar bear they'd shot for food.
July 11, 1897
129 years ago
Key Figures & Places
balloon
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North Pole
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Spitsbergen
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Salomon August Andrée
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Balloon
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Svalbard
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North Pole
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Salomon August Andrée
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Spitsbergen
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Balloon (aeronautics)
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Expédition polaire de S. A. Andrée
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Nils Strindberg
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Knut Frænkel
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What Else Happened on July 11
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Charles the Simple granted the lower Seine valley to the Viking leader Rollo, ending decades of Norse raids in exchange for a defensive buffer against future in…
Conrad III devient roi de Bourgogne transjurane.[réf. nécessaire]
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