Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history. In the last week of March 1912, Captain Robert

Falcon Scott died in his tent in Antarctica. He had failed in his efforts to become the

first person to get to the South Pole. He arrived with his UK expedition one month after

rolled Ammonson, the Norwegian explorer who claimed the title as the first man to get

to the South Pole. In this episode of the podcast, I'm going to be talking about Scott, I'm

going to be talking about Ammonson, but I'll be looking at some new research as well from

Tim Molten, who's been on the podcast before. He is fascinated by the meteorology, the

weather that led to Scott's death. And he's particularly interested in it because just

two weeks after Captain Scott died in Antarctica, Captain Smith died on the Titanic in the North

Atlantic. The two tragedies were only a fortnight apart. And they were both caused by clear skies

and temperatures that plummeted way below zero, as you will hear in this podcast. Tim is one of

the world's greatest experts on the Titanic and his study of the meteorology has led him to the story

of Scott and Ammonson as well. He's rapidly becoming the great authority on the race to the South

Pole. In the early 20th century, as you may have heard me talking about in this podcast before,

the South Pole exercised a great fascination over people's imaginations. Scott had led an

expedition to the South Pole right at the beginning of the 20th century. On the discovery, a ship

that you can still go and see in Dundee, on that expedition was one Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton

would then return on the ship Nimrod for the Nimrod expedition, desperately trying to become the

first man to get to South Pole. He failed, got to within 90 miles a record at the time. And that left

the Norwegians under Ammonson to claim the title in 1911, 1912. This is the story of what happened next.

Enjoy.

And the little head cleared the tower.

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