1897 - Exploration, Colonization

Exploration, Colonization

Explorer-archaeologist James T. Bent dies at London May 5 at age 45, having made investigations in Ethiopia, Nilotic Sudan, the southern Arabian peninsula, the Aegean, and southern Anatolia as well as of Great Zimbabwe in eastern Rhodesia.

Swedish scientist Salomon August Andree, 43, takes off from Spitsbergen July 11 with three crew members in a balloon supplied and equipped by Oskar II with a view to reaching the North Pole. The balloon disappears into the sky, it crashes some 325 miles from takeoff, the men set out to trek back, and their frozen corpses will be discovered in 1930 on White Island along with photographic film and Andree's journal bearing the notation, "Shall we be thought mad or will our example be followed?" (see Cook, Peary, 1909).