• What do scientists do to study something? They isolate it. That is why scientists use petri dishes. Shackleton's crew was isolated for almost two years. So, like scientists, we can study exactly what happened to this group under prolonged and harrowing conditions.

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• Every crew member survived. They lived through months of polar darkness,  stranded on melting ice-floes, surrounded by killer whales, and endured worrying shortages of food and water.

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• Crew-members kept diaries. First-person accounts document Shackleton's leadership strategies while their ordeal was happening and the outcome was unclear.

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• This group had a remarkably good time. Hundreds of miles from land, with no hope of rescue, a crew-member wrote about Shackleton, “No matter what turns up, he is always ready to alter his plans and make fresh ones, and in the mean-time laughs, jokes, and … keeps everyone’s spirits up.” 

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• Shackleton's team considered him “the greatest leader on God’s earth, bar none.”

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• Sixty years after the expedition, a crew-member was asked how they survived. He answered in one word, “Shackleton.”

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• An abundance of photographs and film survived the expedition.