The Ice King: The Forgotten History of the Global Ice Trade

Sleepless History: Sleep Documentaries · Sep 2, 2026 · 1h 9m · transcript

Before refrigerators, before ice makers, before the idea of a cold drink on a hot day was something you could take for granted, a young Bostonian named Frederic Tudor nearly bankrupted himself trying to sell frozen pond water to the tropics. Nearly everyone who heard the idea called it madness. He proved them wrong in the most unlikely way possible: by shipping a slice of a New England winter sixteen thousand miles by sailing ship, around the tip of Africa, to the sweltering colonial city of Calcutta.

This is the true, almost entirely forgotten story of the global ice trade. From the ancient…