It’s been a summer of stories here on the blog. With so much going on this fall, I think I’ll shelve my non-fiction tidbits until next summer. But before I do, here’s one more tale…

In 1989, six men from six countries set off across Antarctica, determined to cross the continent using only skis and dogsleds. It took them seven months. Then, only two days from the end of their journey, a blizzard descended.

Five of the men retreated to their shelters while the team’s youngest member, Japan’s Keizo Funatsu, braved the weather to feed the dogs. As he walked away from his tent, he marked his path with skis stuck upright into the snow. A ski planted, a few steps, another ski. But the winds were so fierce, and the snow swirling so quickly, Keizo soon found he couldn’t see from one ski to the next.

He was alone, with no idea where his tent lay.

Thanks to his Antarctic experiences, Keizo knew that if he kept wandering, he might get farther and farther from safety. He dug himself a trench in the snow and waited for rescue, remembering stories and singing songs to keep himself alert.

Meanwhile, his team members linked arms and battled the winds to find him. They searched for hours before the cold forced them inside. In the morning, they resumed their hunt.

Finally, after 12 hours in the snow, Keizo was found, miraculously unharmed.

I spend many of my days researching, and I often come across strange and fascinating tales that don’t quite fit in my books. Thus, Friday story time is born. Because, really, does a great story need a reason?

In 1560, Lope de Aguirre joined an expedition down the Amazon River in search of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. A year into the journey, his group faced disease, food shortages, and hostile locals.

Lope grew paranoid. He convinced other expedition members that the leader, Pedro de Ursúa, was corrupt. After the group rebelled and killed Ursúa, Lope murdered the replacement leader. He took control of the expedition, slaughtering anyone who opposed him – including several priests.

Next, Lope rebelled against the Spanish crown and declared himself a prince. He started raiding local towns and villages. When he was about to be captured, Aguirre killed his own daughter so she wouldn’t be forced to live among enemies. He was eventually executed by Spanish soldiers.

There. How’s that for a little gruesomeness to start your summer weekend? See you next week!

I spend many of my days researching, and I often come across strange and fascinating tales that don’t quite fit in my books. Thus, Friday story time is born. Because, really, does a great story need a reason?

I’ve been immersed in survival stories all week, so this tale is more of the same.

In 1913, the Karluk was trapped in the Arctic ice off Alaska and drifted north of Siberia. Then the ship sank, and the crew struggled across the ice to the barren shores of Wrangel Island.

Among the survivors was a two-year-old Alaskan Inuit girl named Makpii. At one point, she almost fell into the ocean in her sleep, saved at the last second when her mother pushed her to the other side of a widening gap in the icepack. When her father despaired, his toddler told him, “we’re living now, and we’re going to keep on living.”

Eleven men died in the ordeal, but Makpii and her family managed to signal a rescue ship in September 1914, more than a year after the Karluk sank. By the time she passed away in 2008, at the age of 97, Makpii’s childhood voyage had become an often-told family tale.

I spend many of my days researching, and I often come across strange and fascinating tales that don’t quite fit in my books. Thus, Friday story time is born. Because, really, does a great story need a reason? Here’s this week’s tidbit:

Ignaz Semmelweis was a hungarian obstetrician working in Vienna in the 1840s. At that time, childbirth was a dangerous business. In the supposedly-advanced maternity ward of Vienna General Hospital, almost one in five women died during or after labor.

It was safer to give birth in the other ward of the hospital, where the midwives worked. It was safer to give birth at home. In fact, it was probably safer to give birth in the muddy ditch outside than inside Ward 1. And everyone knew it. They blamed it on poisonous gas that somehow seeped into the rooms and affected some patients more than others.

Soon after he began working there, Ignaz went in search of a better explanation. And he found that the maternity ward was right next door to the autopsy room. Then he noticed that the sores on women who’d died after childbirth were similar to the sores on a doctor who’d died after cutting himself during an autopsy.

Ignaz theorized that a “miasma” from the dead bodies was being transferred to the living. When he made all doctors sterilize their hands before working in the maternity ward, deaths dropped dramatically.

Only one problem… the senior doctors didn’t believe Ignaz. They publicly rejected his findings, goaded him into resigning, and went back to their unwashed criss-crossing between autopsies and births. Death rates skyrocketed again.

Ignaz got a job Budapest, where it soon became much safer to give birth.

But Ignaz was rather angry about other doctors ignoring his findings. He wrote increasingly furious letters, calling them murderers. He fell into depression, and may have shown signs of early dementia. In 1965, Ignaz was tricked into entering a psychiatric ward, where — after possibly being beaten by orderlies — he died two weeks later.

Louis Pasteur took up Ignaz’s fight in the 1860s and 70s, with more success.