All 129 of them assumed they were going to make history.

Looking back nearly two centuries later though, it's clear just how much they missed

that target.

They had hoped to find the elusive Northwest passage, but instead, they met their doom.

The Franklin expedition began in 1845 and seemed to be primed for success.

Their leader, John Franklin, was an admiral in the British Navy who had been knighted by

King George IV, awarded the gold medal by the geographical society of Paris and had already

managed other successful expeditions.

They were well supplied, expertly staffed, and full of passion and drive, everything

a professional endeavor requires to have the best shot at success.

And yet they seemed to have missed the most obvious things.

Their rations were kept in tin cans that had been hastily sealed with too much lead,

contaminating the food inside.

The conditions were much more harsh than they assumed, the ice was more troublesome

than they could have predicted.

And for the superstitious among us, they went and gave their two ships a pair of horrible

names, the Aerobus, named after the god of chaos and darkness, and the terror.

Honestly, after a long series of failures, how could anyone have expected the expedition

to do anything other than fall apart?

Many historians today believe that the Franklin expedition was doomed to failure before it

even began, and we've all heard that sort of judgment before, whether it's been leveled

against a Hollywood film, a startup business, or even a relationship, some things just

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