From the vault

The year was  1990...(and the year of compulsory "stack hats", aka: bike helmets...

Not our History....but I was reading about this today and found it fascinating!  Perhaps a new book for the library....🤔

Danish Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen with his first wife, Navarana Mequpaluk in 1912.  She would pass away from the Spanish Flu in 1921.⁣⁣ Freuchen went on to participate in several Arctic explorations, one including a 1,000 mile dogsled trip across Greenland. Freuchen also wrote more than a dozen books (fiction and non-fiction), participated in the Danish resistance against Germany during World War 2 and was imprisoned by the Nazis and sentenced to death, but managed to escape to Sweden. He eventually came to Hollywood and worked as a consultant and scriptwriter, but also starred in the Oscar winning movie "Eskimo" (1933). In 1956, he won $64,000 on "The $64,000 Question", an American quiz show.⁣⁣. But perhaps his most famous feat was barely escaping death when he once got trapped in a snow cave due to the warmth generated by his own breath, which created an impassable frozen crust that blocked the entrance.⁣⁣. He writes about the experience in one of his memoirs: 

“What a way to die…I gave up once more and let the hours pass without another move. But I recovered my strength while I rested and my morale improved. I was alive after all. I had not eaten for hours, but my digestion felt all right. I got a new idea! I had often seen dog’s dung in the sled track and had noticed that it would freeze as solid as a rock. Would not the cold have the same effect on human discharge? Repulsive as the thought was, I decided to try the experiment. I moved my bowels and from the excrement I managed to fashion a chisel-like instrument which I left to freeze…I was patient. I did not want to risk breaking my new tool by using it too soon…At last I decided to try my chisel and it worked!”

⁣⁣While he managed to escape, he was forced to amputate several of his toes and eventually lost his left foot entirely to frostbite.⁣⁣ In 1957, Freuchen died of a heart attack.

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