Welcome to another edition of Time Sucks Short Sucks.

I'm Dan Cummins, and today I'll be sharing the story of the Great Race of Mercy,

aka the 1925 serum run to Nome.

Remember when a bunch of dogs saved hundreds of human lives in Alaska a century ago?

No. Well, let me refresh your memory.

Or let me introduce you to one of the coolest dog stories I've ever heard.

In January of 1925, diphtheria, a deadly disease back before the advent of life-saving vaccines, swept to the village of Nome, Alaska, killing multiple children.

During the outbreak, new cases were popping up every day. And Nome, a small, very remote town

of only about 1,400 people at the time, a town not and still not connected to the rest of Alaska

by road, a town closer to the international border with Russia than to any other Alaskan town

of notable size, had literally one physician to fight this outbreak, Dr. Curtis Welch.

And Dr. Welch did not have the diphtheria antitoxins he needed to treat and save his patients.

He worried that based on fatality rates associated with his disease at the time, a few hundred

people would die. Enough death to virtually destroy the small remote frozen town.

That doctor had placed an order for the antitoxin months earlier, but it didn't make it in time.

And now the town's port was closed for the winter, due to all the ship-sinking icebergs floating around in the Bering Sea.

Noam is located just two degrees south of the Arctic Circle,

and in January, the temperature can drop as low as negative 54 degrees Fahrenheit. That is not

counting any wind chill, and it gets colder in the areas surrounding Nome. In the winter months

before the advent of modern jet planes, Nome and the frozen tundra surrounding it would become

completely isolated from the rest of the world outside of a long and rugged path that was falling

into disuse back in 1925, a path known as the Iditarod Trail, which connected Noam to the railroad

...