A hundred years ago this month, the cover of Popular Mechanics for January 1923 showed a self-explanatory transportation idea that, for some reason, never caught on. For the really big loads that sled dogs couldn’t handle, simply replace the dogs with polar bears! They’re fast and they’re strong, and they could haul sleds of unimaginable size.
“While the Eskimo is, by necessity, too busy with hunting and fishing to attempt training the bear in a serious way,” the manager of a fur company saw real potential in the idea. Of course, “in selecting the team, care would have to be exercised in eliminating animals showing predisposition to temper.”
So even though the Inuit who had lived there since time immemorial didn’t seize the idea–simply because they were too busy–the fur company can send a man in to tackle the job.
The idea never caught on, and we’re guessing because the man sent in to tackle the job wound up as a tasty snack for one of the bears.
My friend Volodymyr “Wlad” Gurtovy, 
about his experiences living in Kyiv, Ukraine, in the middle of a war. Wlad, like me, is an attorney, and lived a middle-class existence similar to mine, until Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014. He and his family then relocated to Kyiv, but with Russia’s 2022 invasion, he was once again in the middle of the war. His wife and teen son and daughter evacuated to Poland, where they were able to find an apartment, thanks in part to the generosity of friends in America and elsewhere.
The cost was said to be 50 pence, which didn’t include the case, which was one of the then-ubiquitous 35mm film can, which was deemed to be free. Even though they’re no longer free, like everything else, you can find them on 
