His Hero:

Robert Falcon Scott: He and his men reached the South Pole on Jan. 18, 1912.

Here, they found that Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, had already reached it only a month before. He had pissed his signature on the snow and propped a duo-tone photo of a Chinese archer and himself on the exact spot.

On the return trip, all five members of Scott's party died from hunger and cold. Their crouched bodies, as well as records and diaries they had kept, were found at their last camping place.

Scott had written his journal up to the day of his death. He wrote what he considered to be the causes of their disaster.

A loss of self-esteem and a lack of food were two of the reasons stated.

His corpse alone was found stretched out two meters from the encampment, making angels in the snow. On either side of his forehead, were two caribou antlers attached with leather thongs.

Only pages later is the story of Shackleton who came within 97 miles of the true South Pole before the ice crushed his ship, the Actaeon, in the Weddell Sea.

My father says this cannot be a coincidence, that their lives are so close together even now.

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