In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette

by Hampton Sides

Once, after a musical show in Amsterdam, he invited the beautiful lead actress and the entire cast to tour his yacht. Then he quietly slipped out to sea and for several days cruised the Atlantic, essentially holding the cast hostage and demanding repeat performances—all the while attempting to seduce the young starlet.

Edmond Halley, famous for calculating the orbit of the comet that bears his name, believed that the earth was hollow, suffused with luminous gases, and inhabited by animals and even a race of humans.

The gyre of the ocean and the churn of the ice had mixed everything up, old and new, animal and vegetable, into a kind of Arctic gumbo.