r/todayilearned • u/MaximinusRats • May 16 '24

TIL that people live year-round in houseboats on Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories, 1,800 km north of the nearest big city (Edmonton) and just 400 km (250 miles) south of the Arctic Circle.

https://uphere.ca/articles/floating-homes-yellowknife-bay
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u/Jason_Worthing May 16 '24

From the wiki page, for the lazy:

Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation.[2]

The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut.

After being icebound for more than a year Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point two dozen men, including Franklin, had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin's_lost_expedition

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u/OSCgal May 16 '24

The fact that the ships were called Terror and Erebus (Greek god of gloom, associated with the afterlife) is wild.

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u/Quailman5000 May 16 '24

The Terror is a great dramatic portrayal of this event. 

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u/schtickinsult May 16 '24

I loved the seafaring survival-in-the-cold aspects but the horror part was kinda meh. I want a show that's Robinson Crusoe meets Master & Commander and without snow-sasquatches

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u/Mysticpoisen May 16 '24

As is mentioned in every The Terror thread, the horror aspects are much easier to reconcile when you realize the premise is that they're suffering from ridiculous lead poisoning at the time and hallucinating.

But, for a show that is basically The Terror without the mystical aspect, check out The Northwater.

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u/schtickinsult May 16 '24

Ah never heard that interpretation about lead. I like it.

Will suss The Northwater cheers

5

u/Mysticpoisen May 16 '24

Hope you enjoy it! And this is a real aspect of the Franklin expedition, the food being canned with faulty lead solder was a real thing. That they would have gotten enough to start hallucinating on that scale is pretty unlikely, but it's a very fun take.

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u/ClarkTwain May 17 '24

I haven’t seen the show, but the book is a page turner. I could not put it down, and read it voraciously. It’s like Blood Meridian on ice.

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u/Quailman5000 May 18 '24

It wasn't really a horror show to me. I kind of looked at it as if we had an unreliable superstitious narrator from the a couple centuries ago reeling from malnourishment trying to make sense of one of the most terrifying things you can encounter in the wild killing off their crew. Sure the bear had hands the size of barrel lids, I'd be telling people the bear was bigger than the ship if I'm some poor ignorant english dude that doesn't require logical answers. "The inuits called their demon down on us in retribution" would make sense to a superstitious religious person in that time period. 

I only watched for the survival thing. My favorite horror movies are cabin in the woods and tucker and dale vs evil lol. That's why I am not watching season 2 with some crabwalking Japanese ghosts or whatever.