LATITUDE

The world wasn't a perfect sphere. Either it stretched at the poles or it bulged at the equator. Answering that question would lead to accurate maps, which in turn would save lives at sea and make money on land. It was a task so difficult that most thought it impossible. In 1735, the world's first international team of scientists was despatched to a wilderness in South America. Beset by egos and disease, storms and earthquakes, mutiny and murder, they struggled for ten years to measure on the ground one degree of latitude.