In 1881 an expedition to the Arctic led by Lieutenant Adolphus Greely and organized by the US Army set off for Lady Franklin Bay, Canada, well above the Arctic circle. The plan was to establish a temporary meteorological-observation station as part of the First International Polar Year, a worldwide effort to better understand Earth’s climate by collecting astronomical and magnetic data.

Most of the data was collected by astronomer Edward Israel, a young University of Michigan graduate from Kalamazoo.

Though their mission of data collection was successful, and they would set a record for traveling further north than anyone at the time ever had, this expedition would go down in history as one of the most tragic polar expeditions of all time.

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