Few expeditions can ever have launched with a more appropriately-monikered ship than Endurance, the name of the vessel that took Ernest Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic Expedition members south to the frozen continent in 1914. The expedition has become the definiton of survival against all odds, as Shackleton's men somehow made it through an ordeal that began with the ship being trapped in and then crushed by the ice, leaving them adrift on a floe thousands of miles from help. My most recent retelling of the story appeared last week on the History Channel website; check it out here.