When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain Read Free Page B

canisters – more than enough to get to the top of the mountain.
    More tantalizing was an item that the searchers had expected to find on Mallory’s body. He was known to have been carrying a photograph of his wife, Ruth, which he had vowed to leave on the summit. The photo was nowhere to be found, even though his wallet and other papers were intact.
    The men who found Mallory were able to piece together a plausible scenario as to what happened on the fateful evening of his death. It is a story of adventure and tragic error – one that ultimately led to his doom.
    It is late in the evening on 8 June, long after twilight, and the two climbers are still high on the mountain. Exhausted and with failing oxygen supplies, they are desperate to reach safety. As they cross a notoriously treacherous layer of marble and phyllite known as the ‘Yellow Band’, one of the two climbers slips.
    It may well have been Mallory. If so, his fall is halted by the rope, which dashes him into a rocky outcrop. His ribs are instantly broken and his elbow is dislocated. But he is held there by the rope, dangling in a void.
    And then, unexpectedly, the rope snaps and he plunges through the darkness. He lands on a steep shelf of snow, snapping his tibia and fibula. But still he doesn’t stop. Gravity drags him down the North Face at tremendous speed.
    He’s terrified and in appalling pain, but still conscious and trying to save himself. In desperation, he clutches at frozen scree, digging his fingers into the ice. Faster and faster he slides until his forehead smashes into a jagged outcrop of rock. It punctures a hole in his head.
    He comes to a standstill at the same time as he loses consciousness. Pain and hypothermia rapidly take over. Within minutes, George Mallory is dead.
    Irvine, meanwhile, has almost certainly met with a similar fate. He’s fallen, seriously injured, and is also suffering from hypothermia. Within a few minutes of Mallory’s death he, too, has succumbed to the cold.
    But did they make it to the summit? Were they the first to climb Everest? It’s a question that Eric Simonson’s team was unable to answer with absolute certainty. The discovery of Mallory’s body was a remarkable find, but the riddle is likely to remain unsolved unless or until the camera is found.
    One person alone has felt able to say whether or not Mallory and Irvine deserve the title of ‘conquerors of Everest’. Mallory’s son, John, was just three years old when he lost his father. To him, George Mallory’s failure to return home provided all the answers he needed. ‘To me,’ he said, ‘the only way you achieve a summit is to come back alive. The job is only half done if you don’t get down again.’

 
    5
    Drunk on the Titanic
    It was 14 April 1912. Charles Joughin had finally fallen asleep after a hard day’s work in the ship’s kitchens. Suddenly, he was woken by a tremendous jolt. He felt the vessel shudder violently beneath him. Then, after a momentary pause, it continued moving forward.
    Joughin was puzzled but not unduly alarmed. He knew that icebergs had been sighted in the water; he also knew that Captain Edward Smith had ordered a change of course, steering the Titanic onto a more southerly route in order to avoid potential disaster. Assuming that the danger had passed, Joughin tried to return to sleep. But at about 11.35 p.m., just a few minutes after the jolt, he was summoned to the bridge. Here, he was given some most unwelcome information.
    Captain Smith had sent an inspection team below decks to see if anything was wrong. The men had returned with the terrible news that the ship had struck an iceberg and that the force of the blow had seriously buckled the hull. Rivets had been forced out over a length of some ninety metres and seawater was now gushing into the ship at a tremendous rate.
    This news might have been expected to cause panic. Yet it