Mountain climbing came into its own 98 years ago, thanks largely to a London physician named Albert Smith who could not keep his enthusiasm to himself. Among the first ever to scale white-domed Mont Blanc, the highest (15,781 ft.) of Alpine peaks, Smith produced a play based on his trek. It was no great shakes as drama, but it caught on like the Wild West shows in the U.S., ran six years in London, and gave people who had never seen a mountain the urge to climb one.
Although the Alps were far from the...
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