Ambrose Channel Pilot Cable

The Ambrose Channel pilot cable was an early 20th-century navigational aid installed on the seabed of New York Harbor’s Ambrose Channel, the main deep-water entrance used by large ships arriving from the Atlantic. It operated from 1919 to the late 1920s and served as a kind of underwater “electronic path” that ships could follow in fog, darkness, and storms long before radar became common.

The Ambrose Channel is long, narrow, busy, and often foggy. The old method of sounding whistles, bells, and relying on buoys was dangerous. The idea was to create a reliable, invisible pathway that ships could detect with instruments even when the channel itself could not be seen.


Credit: New York District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The system consisted of a heavy submarine cable, about 16 miles long, laid along the centerline of the Ambrose Channel. The cable was similar to telegraph cables but with heavier insulation. The cable was energized from shore with an alternating current of 500 Hz, which produced a magnetic field along the length of the cable that could be detected to approximately a thousand yards away.

Ships used a device called a pilot cable receiver, consisting of two sensitive induction coils mounted on the bow and a galvanometer. As a ship approached Ambrose Channel, the induction coils picked up the magnetic field. The coils were arranged so that when the ship was exactly over the cable, the signals in both coils were equal. When the ship was to the right, the starboard coil picked up a stronger signal. When to the left, the port coil registered more. This gave the pilot a simple left/right steering cue.

Early experiments with underwater pilot cables were conducted by radio pioneer Robert H. Marriott for the Navy in Puget Sound. The results were so promising that the Navy decided to develop and test the concept on a larger scale at the New London Naval Base. During the tests at New London, both wooden-hulled ships as well as steel-hulled submarine picked up the signal and followed the underwater test cable without problem.

Following the successful tests at New London, the Navy moved to a full-scale trial in New York’s Ambrose Channel in late 1919. Navy mine layers paid out the cable along the channel’s centerline, securing it to the seabed with concrete anchors every five hundred feet. The offshore end was grounded to a two-foot square copper plate resting on the bottom, while the shoreward end was connected to a transmitting station at Fort Lafayette.

To test the installation, the destroyer USS O’Brien was outfitted with receiving gear and instructed to follow the cable outward toward the open sea. The trial ended abruptly. Barely a thousand feet from the starting point, the ship’s receivers fell silent—the signal had vanished. Divers soon discovered a break in the cable, which was repaired, only for crews to find further faults as winter progressed. By the close of the 1919–1920 season, surveyors had tallied fifty-two separate breaks. Most were the result of tension and abrasion during the laying process, and together they rendered the cable beyond salvage. Going back to the drawing board, engineers tested 150-foot segments of three different types of cable and used the results to design a new full-size pilot cable.

The new reinforced cable at 87,000 feet length was laid down on August 1920 and by the end of the month the system was functioning as intended. The Navy tested the cable using the seagoing tug USS Algorma. The Navy then arranged a formal demonstration for the broader maritime community. Invitations went out to “representatives of various radio companies, shipping interests, pilots’ associations, governmental bureaus, naval attachés, and others,” and from October 6 to 9 the destroyer USS Semmes served as the stage for a series of public trials. To eliminate any possibility of visual navigation, the ship’s bridge windows were covered in canvas. One by one, captains and pilots stepped forward to take the helm, steering solely by the rising and falling audio tones produced by the induction coils.

Newspapers greeted the system with the enthusiasm of the age. The Washington Post called it "the greatest development in marine travel since the invention of the steam turbine" and the Los Angeles Times declared the technology to be "one of the greatest peacetime gifts that science has devised." Some writers went so far as to imagine a future in which underwater guidance cables would become standard not only for ships but even for aircraft.

Despite the media hype, the Ambrose Channel pilot cable never achieved widespread commercial adoption. Early boosters suggested extending it several miles beyond the Ambrose Lightship to give incoming vessels even more lead time, but such ambitions faded quickly. The rapid rise of radio direction finding, along with the establishment of radio beacons at strategic points along the coast, offered a simpler and more versatile solution. These beacons functioned much like lighthouses, but can be "seen" in all weather. The first trio of such “radio fog signals” was installed near New York in 1921. By 1924, eleven stations were operating in the United States, and nearly three hundred ships carried the receivers needed to use them.

By 1930, an assessment in the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts observed that “wireless aids and echo sounding have superseded [the leader cable],” signaling that the cable’s moment had passed. Today, the task once performed by that single humming line on the harbor floor is handled by an array of modern tools, such as radar, GPS, and lighted buoys, all of which guide ships through Ambrose Channel with a precision unimaginable a century ago.

References:
# Ambrose Channel pilot cable, Wikipedia
# A. Crossley, “Piloting Vessels By Electrically Energized Cables”. Journal of the American Society for Naval Engineers

 

 

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Alain Bombard: The Biologist Who Shipwrecked Himself to Prove a Point

In the autumn of 1952, a small black rubber dinghy drifted out of the Canaries and into the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean. Its lone occupant was a doctor, Alain Bombard, a young French biologist determined to answer a deadly question. Every year, thousands of seafarers perished after shipwrecks, often within sight of potential salvation. Was it inevitable? Or could a human being, properly instructed and equipped with nothing but the sea around him, survive for weeks on end?

Bombard intended to prove the latter, and he was willing to risk his life to do it. His vessel, a 15-foot inflatable boat christened L’Hérétique, was loaded with the absolute minimum: a sextant, a few emergency tools, and books. What he refused to carry was the most shocking part—no food, no fresh water, and no full sails or engine to ease the journey. The point was not simply to cross the Atlantic. The point was to simulate a shipwreck, to live exactly as a castaway might, and to see if nature could supply what the body needed.


Alain Bombard on his raft.

Origins of a Radical Idea

Bombard’s experiment did not emerge from idle curiosity. In 1951, while working as a junior doctor at the hospital in Boulogne, a trawler sank in bad weather outside the harbour, and 43 bodies were brought to the hospital. “In spite of all our efforts we failed to revive a single one,” he wrote. “At that moment the full measure of the tragedy conjured up by the word ‘shipwreck’ was brought home to me.”

Bombard moved to the Oceanographic Institute, Monaco, to research the nutritional properties of marine creatures. Bombard believed the human body was far more resilient than commonly assumed. What doomed castaways, he argued, was ignorance of how to use the ocean’s resources.

His controversial theory held that a shipwrecked sailor should be able to survive indefinitely without supplies by drinking seawater, consuming raw fish for both food and fluids, and harvesting plankton for vitamins. The only way to prove this, he decided, was to undertake the ordeal himself.

The Voyage of L’Hérétique

Bombard began with a series of coastal trials in 1952, deliberately casting himself adrift in the Mediterranean. Satisfied with the results, he set off from Tenerife on October 19. For the next 65 days, Bombard lived at the mercy of the waves.

He allowed himself no freshwater stores and no food, and he drank from the sea—about a pint-and-half (about 700 ml) of seawater every day, supplemented by water squeezed from caught fish and the occasional rainwater. To ensure he did not fall victim to scurvy, Bombard towed a very fine silk net with which he managed to catch a fair amount of plankton as well as fish. One or two teaspoonful of this tiny organism a day provided him with the necessary vitamins. The meagre diet kept him alive, though at a cost: he lost more than 25 kilograms, suffered constant hunger, and endured painful sores.

Almost at the start of his voyage, a storm nearly wrecked his tiny craft. His sail was ripped and his spare was torn away, so that he had to repair the original with a needle and thread. Once, when his inflatable cushion fell aboard, Bombard dived in the waters to retrieve it and was horrified to discover that his sea anchor, a parachute-type canvas gadget used to slow down the boat, had fouled up the trailing ropes and the dinghy began to drift away. Only training as an accomplished swimmer (Bombard had swum across the English Channel in 1951, swimming 21 hours) enabled him to return to the dinghy safely.

Although Bombard was a great swimmer, he wasn’t much of a sailor. He carried a sextant but lacked the skills of a navigator. On his 53rd day at sea, he encountered a British freight liner, the Arakaka, whose crew informed him that he was still over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) short of his goal. He thought of giving up and even accepted a meal from the crew. Bombard later wrote, the "fried egg, a little piece of liver, a spoonful of cabbage and some fruit... gave me the worst stomach trouble of the whole voyage." One thing the meal did, however, was to revive his sprits and he decided to continue with his journey.

At last, on December 23, 1952, L’Hérétique and her gaunt captain washed ashore in Barbados. Bombard had crossed more than 2,700 miles of ocean alone, alive, and triumphant.

Bombard's experiment was critically examined by the French and Taiwanese navies, both of which concurred with his findings. His ideas also attracted the attention of a German physician, Hannes Lindemann, who undertook two short Atlantic crossings of his own in an effort to test Bombard’s survival methods, especially the use of seawater. His feet and legs swelled dangerously. In his 1958 book Alone at Sea, he not only questioned the notion that seawater could sustain a castaway but went further, accusing Bombard of secretly carrying extra provisions.

Bombard, for his part, had never claimed that survival depended on drinking seawater alone. He consistently argued that only small, carefully limited quantities could be tolerated, and then only when combined, particularly in the absence of rainwater, with the fluids obtained from raw fish. Bombard argued that many castaways, once adrift and with all fresh water exhausted, turn to seawater (or even urine) only in a state of acute desperation. By now severely dehydrated, the kidneys can’t handle the sudden accumulation of salts and an agonising death soon follows, supporting the mariner’s lore that drinking seawater was fatal. According to Bombard the key was to drink early but drink little.

If there is nothing to drink, the body’s water content will decline steadily until death by dehydration occurs on about the tenth day.

Any supply of water or fresh liquid which becomes available at a late stage of this process, needs to exceed the day’s basic requirement, if it is to restore the body to a normal condition. The survivor has to ‘catchup’ on his body’s water content, and not just satisfy his day-to-day needs. The essential thing, therefore, is to maintain the body’s water content at its proper level during those first few days before fish can be caught. The only solution is to drink sea-water.

In 1958, while continuing his research into survival techniques, Bombard and six companions were testing a rubber dinghy in rough seas off the coast of Étel in Brittany when a powerful wave overturned the craft. A rescue team attempted to reach them, but the lifeboat itself was capsized by another massive wave, throwing nine of the fourteen rescuers into the water. In the end, only Bombard and four others survived the tragedy.


The route of Alain Bombard's oceanic voyage. Credit: Alain Bombard

Toward the end of the decade, Bombard established a floating marine laboratory named Coryphène, but the venture soon faced serious financial difficulties. He was eventually rescued—not by the sea this time, but by Paul Ricard, the pastis magnate, who offered support and later appointed Bombard director of his new Oceanographic Institute in 1966.

In 1974, Bombard joined the Socialist Party and became involved in an environmental advocacy group created by the polar explorer Paul-Émile Victor. Among its members were his close friends Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the volcanologist Haroun Tazieff. Bombard later entered local politics, and in May 1981 was appointed Minister of the Environment. His tenure was barely a month—cut short when his uncompromising views on hunting provoked opposition in influential circles.

That same year, however, he was elected to the European Parliament. From 1981 to 1994 he proved a forceful and persistent campaigner on environmental issues, speaking out on everything from nuclear power to the culling of baby seals. His strong opposition to the force-feeding of geese for pâté de foie gras even resulted in death threats against him and his family.

Alain Bombard died in 2005.

References:
# “Alain Bombard, 80, Dies; Sailed the Atlantic Alone”, The New York Times
# “Alain Bombard”, Times Online
# “The incredible story of the man who crossed the Atlantic in an inflatable boat without water”, Vela
# Alain Bombard, “The Bombard Story”

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Wilhelm Voigt: The Amiable Scoundrel

On a crisp October morning in 1906, a man in an immaculate Prussian captain’s uniform marched into the Berlin suburb of Köpenick and coolly carried out one of the most extraordinary confidence tricks in modern European history. His name was Wilhelm Voigt, a 57-year-old shoemaker with a long, unhappy acquaintance with the German penal system. For a few hours on October 16, Voigt, armed with nothing more than authority borrowed from a uniform, seized control of a town hall, arrested its mayor, and walked away with 4,002 marks and 37 pfennigs of municipal funds. The affair would become legendary: a pointed satire of Prussian militarism and unquestioning obedience.


Wilhelm Voigt. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Wilhelm Voigt was born in 1849 in Tilsit (modern-day Sovetsk, Russia), the son of a shoemaker. His early adulthood, however, was overshadowed by a succession of minor crimes—mostly theft and forgery—that led to repeated prison terms. By his mid-fifties he had spent nearly half his life behind bars.

When Voigt was released from prison in February 1906, he attempted to go straight, moving in with his sister in Rixdorf and finding work through a local cobbler. But his criminal record made even legal residency difficult. Police expelled him from the town and from several others where he tried to settle. His attempts to get official permission to live and work in Berlin all failed. These bureaucratic obstructions, layered onto years of marginalisation, pushed Voigt towards a desperate, almost theatrical solution.

The Uniform and the Plan

Through second-hand shops and former military stores, Voigt purchased parts of a Prussian captain’s uniform. He knew how much power such a uniform carried in an empire where military rank was revered. It needed no explanation, no paperwork—a captain was obeyed. And Voigt intended to take full advantage.

At around midday on 16 October 1906, Voigt put on his disguise and approached a detachment of soldiers near Köpenick station and ordered them to follow him for a “secret mission.” He summoned a second troop of relieved guards from the firing range of the 4th Guards Regiment and placed about ten or eleven men under his "command". The authority of his attire was unquestioned.

Telling the soldiers that he was unable to acquire motor vehicles, he rode the tramway with them to Köpenick, east of Berlin. At a layover in Rummelsburg, he bought the men beer. He even gave the soldiers one mark each to buy lunch at the station. After they arrived at Köpenick, he explained to his soldiers that he planned to arrest the mayor and other officers on charges of corruption.

Together they marched to the city hall of Köpenick, where he ordered the men to seal off all entrances. He then announced that the mayor and treasurer were under arrest for suspected financial irregularities.

Voigt then directed the treasurer to prepare an accounting statement and informed him that the municipal treasury would have to be confiscated. After the money had been counted, Voigt had bags brought to him, which he filled with the help of the treasurer, who held the bags and sealed them. The confiscated amount totalled 4002 marks and 37 pfennigs.

The false captain then had the mayor and treasurer escorted to a military vehicle, instructing the soldiers to deliver the officials to Berlin for interrogation. The troops saluted and obeyed.

Voigt even managed to shut down the Köpenick post office for one hour, preventing phone calls to Berlin. Only after the detainees were released, some city councillors were able to notify the district administration office via telegraph.

After Voigt had collected the town’s cash reserves, he calmly left, catching a tram and then a train, and then vanishing into the city before anyone realised what had happened.

Arrest and Pardon

Voigt’s freedom was short-lived. He was captured on 26 October after a former cellmate, who knew about Voigt's plans, tipped off the police. Voigt was sentenced to four years in prison for "unauthorized wearing of a uniform, offence against public order, deprivation of liberty, fraud, and serious forgery of documents."


Wilhelm Voigt's mugshots after his arrest. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

International newspapers reported the story with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. To many Germans, Voigt’s “coup” was deeply symbolic: it exposed a social order where the uniform commanded automatic obedience, and it highlighted the rigid bureaucracy that had ensnared Voigt for years. Popular sentiment swung decisively in his favour. Kaiser Wilhelm II himself was amused by the incident, referring to him as an “amiable scoundrel”. He had him pardoned on 16 August 1908. The pardon was justified on grounds of public sympathy but also reflected Germany’s embarrassment that such a deception had been possible.

After his release, Voigt became a minor celebrity. He toured with theatre productions, appeared in variety shows, signed autographs, and lent his name to early film adaptations of his story. Carl Zuckmayer’s 1931 play Der Hauptmann von Köpenick later immortalized him as a tragicomic figure—the everyman crushed by officialdom, who momentarily turned the system against itself.

In 1909, he published a book in Leipzig, How I became the Captain of Köpenick, which sold well. Although his United States tour almost failed because the immigration authorities refused to grant him a visa, he arrived in 1910 via Canada. He also inspired a waxwork in Madame Tussaud's museum in London.

On 1 May 1910, Wilhelm Voigt received a Luxembourgish passport and relocated to Luxembourg, where he worked primarily as a waiter and shoemaker as his public appearances dwindled. He earned considerable riches as a result of his fame and the "Captain of Köpenick" was actually one of the first car owners in the Grand Duchy. He lived modestly until his death in 1922.


Wilhelm Voigt's statue at Köpenick city hall. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Dicran Hadjy Kabakjian’s Radium House

In the early decades of the twentieth century, as radium fever gripped scientists and entrepreneurs alike, one Philadelphia businessman joined the race for the glowing substance that promised medical miracles and industrial riches. His name was Dicran Hadjy Kabakjian—an Armenian immigrant and inventor, whose ambition outpaced the safety knowledge of the era.

Kabakjian was neither a famous physicist nor a well-funded industrialist. He was part of a smaller, largely forgotten world of independent experimenters—men who believed that with enough perseverance and chemical ingenuity, they too could produce a substance worth more than its weight in gold.

What Kabakjian did not know, and what few in his day fully understood, was that radium was a danger unlike anything that had ever been handled in small workshops or private homes. In trying to refine it, he contaminated both places so thoroughly that decades later federal surveyors would still find his walls, floors, and pipes ticking ominously on a Geiger counter.

When Marie and Pierre Curie announced the discovery of radium in 1898, the world was dazzled by its faint green glow. Physicists and chemists everywhere scrambled to probe this strange new realm of radioactivity and search for practical uses for the element. Kabakjian was no different. With a background in physics, he quickly established himself as one of the leading American authorities on radiation and its properties.

In 1913, he developed a process for extracting radium salts from carnotite, the yellowish clay-like uranium ore mined in Colorado and Utah. His method called for crushing the ore into a fine sand and treating it with strong acids, a technique that could recover nearly 90 percent of the radium present—far more efficient than existing extraction processes. Kabakjian sold the exclusive rights to this method to the W.L. Cummings Chemical Company, where he served as their “chief radium consultant.”

In 1915, Cummings established a radium-refining facility in Lansdowne, housed in a wooden building beside the train tracks near South Union and Austin Avenues. Powerful grinding machines reduced the ore to fine sand, which workers then manually shovelled into towering two-story vats. There, the sand was subjected to a series of chemical treatments designed to coax out minute quantities of radium. The plant processed as much as two tons of carnotite ore a day, yet its yearly yield amounted to only about three grams of radium—roughly the mass of a modern penny.

While such a return might seem miserly for the effort involved, the economics of the era told a different story. A single gram of radium commanded an astonishing $100,000—well over $2 million in today’s money. And Cummings’s operation was one of only six radium-producing facilities in the entire world. The business flourished for a time, and both Cummings and Dr. Kabakjian enjoyed the profits.

But the success was short-lived. In the early 1920s, richer ores were discovered elsewhere, and despite Kabakjian’s continued refinements to the extraction process, Cummings could no longer compete. The refinery shut down for good in 1922.

Kabakjian, however, saw an opportunity in miniature. Although his method was no longer viable on an industrial scale, it remained profitable for small-batch refining. So in 1923, he set up a modest radium-processing workshop in the basement of his elegant three-story Victorian duplex, located not far from the shuttered refinery.

Kabakjian purchased ore by the truckload, which arrived at his home every few months. His two sons, Armen and Raymond, hauled the heavy sacks into the basement, where they ground the ore into sand. Even the daughters took part in the operation. Alice heated the sand until radium crystals began to form, Louise weighed the crystals and packed them into fine-gauge platinum needles, and Lillian kept the accounts. Kabakjian and his wife oversaw the entire enterprise from start to finish.


A piece of carnotite in sandstone, mined in Colorado. Credit: James St. John

The radium they produced was sold to doctors and hospitals for the rapidly growing field of cancer radiotherapy. During the Second World War, the family even supplied radium to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where it was used in industrial x-ray work to detect microscopic cracks and flaws in ship components.

By the 1940s, Kabakjian’s health began to decline, forcing him to close the family business. He died in 1945 at the age of seventy. An autopsy later revealed that he suffered from fibrosis of the lungs, caused by years of inhaling fumes from the strong acids used in his refining process.

After his death, the Kabakjian family sold their three-story house and moved to a smaller residence. The property passed to the Tallant family, who were initially unaware of Kabakjian’s long history of radium work in the basement. When Anna Tallant learned of it from neighbours, she quickly moved out, selling the house once again, this time to another unsuspecting buyer, the Kizirian family, in 1961.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pennsylvania began identifying former sites where radioactive materials had been processed, checking them for lingering contamination. Dr. Kabakjian’s name surfaced during the review, and one day investigators from the Department of Health arrived at the Kizirian home carrying Geiger counters. The family was stunned to learn what their house had once been used for, and even more alarmed when the instruments began to chatter. Radiation levels throughout the property were far beyond what could be considered safe.

The basement, where Kabakjian had conducted most of his refining work, was the worst. One basement sink emitted so much gamma radiation that inspectors refused to come within several feet of it. But the contamination was not confined to the cellar. The first-floor dining room, the front porch, the garage, and even the driveway all showed elevated readings.

State authorities ordered the Kizirians to clean up the property, but Harry Kizirian had no way to cover the estimated $10,000 cost. At the time, state and federal clean-up programs funded only military and industrial sites, not private homes. The Bureau of Radiation Protection ultimately announced that the house would have to be demolished.

Desperate, the Kizirians hired a lawyer, who persuaded a congressman to intervene. His efforts succeeded in securing a joint state–federal decontamination effort led by the U.S. Air Force. Clean-up began in 1964, and by the time the work was completed, more than 120 drums of radioactive material had been removed and shipped to a disposal facility near Buffalo, New York.

Fortunately, the Kabakjian and Kizirian families, along with others who had lived or worked in the house, were tested, and no long-term health effects were found. As part of the investigation, the bodies of Dr. and Mrs. Kabakjian were exhumed for analysis. Tests revealed that the professor’s remains contained 5.7 micrograms of radium—at the time, the highest concentration of radioactive material ever recorded in a human body.

The initial clean-up cost the state $200,000, yet even after a thorough decontamination, the house still emitted enough radiation to raise the long-term cancer risk for anyone living there, particularly the risk of lung cancer from inhaling radon gas and microscopic radium particles. The Kizirians were barred from returning, and because further remediation was impractical, the state decided the house would ultimately need to be demolished.

But demolition did not come immediately. The structure remained standing as a curious piece of local lore for nearly twenty more years. When the Environmental Protection Agency returned in the 1980s with fresh surveys, the results were alarming. A resident living in the house would have received an annual dose of roughly 1.6 rem—about ten times the accepted limit. The surrounding soil was also heavily contaminated with radium, thorium, actinium, and protactinium.

The most serious dangers came from radon gas and radium dust trapped inside the house. Once inhaled, these internal sources irradiate the body from within, posing far greater risks than external exposure.

Dismantling finally began in 1987 and concluded in 1989. The clean-up cost the government $11.6 million. Workers removed 1,430 tons of radioactive rubble to a nuclear waste site in Utah, along with an additional 4,000 tons of contaminated soil. More than 6,000 tons of clean soil were brought in to replace it, and 246 feet of municipal sewer line had to be excavated and replaced.

Following the demolition of the Kabakjian house, the EPA turned its attention to the former W.L. Cummings Chemical Company refinery on Austin Avenue. During the investigation, officials discovered that Cummings had, years earlier, disposed of waste sand containing trace amounts of radioactive material by giving it to local contractors. The sand had been mixed into mortar, stucco, plaster, and concrete—meaning that an unknown number of homes in Lansdowne and nearby communities had been built or repaired with radioactive materials containing radium, thorium, and possibly uranium.

EPA crews spent weeks driving through the neighbourhood in a van outfitted with external radiation detectors, scanning houses from the street in search of radioactive stucco. Their survey ultimately identified 21 contaminated sites. The agency repaired one house, demolished and rebuilt ten others, and permanently condemned and relocated the residents of eight more.

With these actions, the radioactive legacy that began with Dicran Hadjy Kabakjian was finally brought to an end.

Luckily, no one who had purchased contaminated concrete in the 1920s appeared to suffer serious harm. Most problems were confined to the Kabakjian home, where several individuals later developed illnesses that, while impossible to conclusively link to radiation, remain unsettlingly suggestive

  • Anna Tallant, who lived in the house from 1949 to 1961, died in 1969 of breast cancer at age 54.
  • Raymond Kabakjian, Dicran’s son who spent most of his youth in the house, died in 1977 of abdominal cancer at age 65.
  • Raymond Kabakjian Jr., Dicran’s grandson, died in 1983 of bladder cancer at age 37.
  • William Dooner, who delivered carnotite ore to the Kabakjian home for two decades, died in 1984 at age 71 from lung cancer.

References:
# The Hot House, The Ancient and Esoteric Order of the Jackalope

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Jean-Baptiste Denys and the First Blood Transfusion

In 1667, in a small Parisian chamber lit by oil lamps and crowded with curious observers, a young physician named Jean-Baptiste Denys carried out an experiment that would ignite debate across Europe. With a goose-quill tube, a silver cannula, and the blood of a gentle lamb, Denys performed what is widely regarded as the first documented transfusion of blood into a human being. It was a moment of bravery, ingenuity, and—by today’s standards—remarkable risk, but it also marked a milestone in the long and troubled history of transfusion medicine.

To understand the audacity of Denys’s procedure, it is necessary to look back at the ideas, ambitions, and early experiments that shaped the 17th-century scientific imagination.


Jean Denys performing a xenotransfusion from dog to man. Credit: Johannes Scultetus’ Armamentarium chirurgicum (1693)

For centuries, blood was viewed less as a biological fluid and more as a mystical essence—life, vitality, courage, or temperament. Medieval physicians believed illness came from imbalances in the four humours, not from anything measurable in blood. As a result, bloodletting—rather than transfusion—became the most common intervention.

In 1628, English physician William Harvey published De Motu Cordis, describing the circulation of blood. With this revelation, blood became something that could be measured, manipulated, and potentially replaced. Harvey’s insight unlocked the possibility that blood might carry transferrable qualities—nourishment, heat, or even character.

Early Animal Experiments

By the 1660s, natural philosophers at the newly formed Royal Society in London and the Accademia del Cimento in Florence were pushing the boundaries of experimental physiology. They performed transfusions between animals, usually dogs, by connecting their blood vessels with quills or brass tubes. These experiments showed that animals could survive the passage of blood from one to another, at least briefly.

In Florence, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli studied circulation mechanically. In Oxford, Christopher Wren injected animals with various experimental solutions using quills. And in London, Richard Lower, a brilliant physician associated with the Royal Society, performed the first successful transfusion between dogs in 1665.

These early successes suggested a radical possibility: if animals could exchange blood, perhaps humans could too.

Jean-Baptiste Denys

Jean-Baptiste Denys was not yet 30 when he was appointed personal physician to King Louis XIV. Born around 1640, he trained not only in medicine but also in mathematics—an unusual combination that aligned him with the experimental spirit sweeping through Europe.

Denys watched the English experiments closely. The Royal Society had begun circulating letters describing their dog-to-dog transfusions, and he believed France should not fall behind.

Denys started collaborating with the barber-surgeon Paul Emmerez to undertake blood transfusion. In one of his first recorded cases, he transfused nine ounces of blood from one dog to the other. The experiment was terminated only when one of the dogs took ill suddenly. In a later experiment, Denys noted that the dogs behaved predictably with no changes in eye movement, food consumption, and the weights of the subjects.

Emboldened by the success with the dogs, Denys decided that he could take the next leap: transfusing blood from animals into humans. He reasoned that cross-species transfusion from a gentle and docile creature, such as a lamb, was not only safe but it might even cure certain illnesses, soothe agitation and restore vitality.

Denys’ vison went against the ideals of the Academy of Sciences of Paris and Faculty of Medicine, and so he took his research to the private academy established by scholar Henri Louis Habert de Montmor, who saw an opportunity to surpass both the English and the conservative French Academy of Sciences and consequently gain his own glory.

The opportunity came in June 1667. A fifteen-year-old boy, wracked by two months of fever and weakened by excessive bloodletting, was brought to Denys. Using a goose-quill tube and rudimentary surgical connectors, Denys transfused around 12 ounces of lamb’s blood into the boy. The boy not only survived the ‘treatment’, his conditions remarkably improved.


Jean-Baptiste Denys performs the first human transfusion. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

News travelled quickly. Europe buzzed with the rumour that France had accomplished what England dared not. For a brief moment, Denys became a star.

Buoyed by success, Denys performed several more transfusions. The second transfusion, conducted on a middle-aged butcher, was equally successful. The third patient fared badly: he died shortly after having a transfusion. It was Denys’ fourth patient that finally undid him.

The Death of Antoine Mauroy

Antoine Mauroy was a man who was suffering from violent mental disturbances. Denys believed Mauroy’s agitation could be softened by transfusing the mild “temperament” of calf’s blood.

According to the Wikipedia article on Jean-Baptiste Denys, Mauroy was “abducted from the streets of Paris by Montmor's guard and tied to a chair and transfused with blood in front of an audience of noblemen.” I couldn’t verify the authenticity of this seemingly bizarre way of acquiring subjects, but whatever the circumstances, Mauroy became Denys’ final transfusion patient.

In the hours following the procedure, Mauroy experienced a debilitating fever, nausea, diarrhea, nosebleeds, and urine that was as black as 'chimney soot', fever, tachycardia, and abundant sweating. Today these are recognized as classic signs of acute haemolytic transfusion reactions, triggered when a recipient’s immune system destroys incompatible blood. But a few days later, the man had apparently fully recovered. This was the final proof for Denys, who immediately publicized his success.

Mauroy and his wife Perrine eventually returned to their modest home, but Perrine soon found out that her husband's newfound calmness was temporary, lasting only two months. The man's state of health and mind changed abruptly due to his binges of wine, tobacco, and 'strong waters' (alcohol). The man's madness was worse than before.

Denys performed a second transfusion which diminished the delirium but induced other major side effects. On the insistence of Mauroy’s wife, Denys prepared for a third infusion but before he could inject more blood, Mauroy's body shook in a 'violent fit', at which Denys decided to end the transfusion. Mauroy died the next day.

Mauroy’s widow accused Denys of murder, claiming he had killed her husband with his strange procedures. Denys was convinced his procedure was safe and insisted that this trial was rather a consequence of his decision to pursue research against the will of the King's Academy of Sciences as well as that of the major players of the conservative Parisienne Faculty of Medicine.

An inquest was held where it was discovered that Mauroy's widow had, allegedly, persuaded and offered large amounts of money by several "unknown" physicians, to bear false witness and file reports against Denys' blood transfusion experiments. A police investigation revealed that Mauroy had actually been poisoned by his wife.

Denys was cleared of all accusations, but the judge ordered that "no transfusion should be made upon any human body but by the approbation of the physicians of the Parisian Faculty (of Medicine)", forcing Denys to end his studies in blood transfusions.

Finally, in 1670, the Royal Society and the French government formally banned transfusion. Even the Catholic Church weighed in with prohibitions. The Royal Society in London also abandoned the field.

For almost 150 years, no one dared to revisit the idea.

Renewed Interest

Transfusion resurfaced only in the early 19th century, when British obstetrician James Blundell used human-to-human transfusion to treat postpartum haemorrhage. But it was Karl Landsteiner’s discovery of the ABO blood groups in 1900 that made transfusion reliably safe. Once blood types could be matched, the haemolytic reactions that killed Mauroy were finally understood.

From that point forward, transfusion medicine evolved rapidly—blood banks, anticoagulants, refrigeration, plasma separation, and the modern logistics that support surgeries and emergency care worldwide.

Today, blood transfusions are a critical component of medical treatment, having saved millions of lives worldwide.

Jean-Baptiste Denys died in 1704. After the trial, he returned home and resumed teaching. Four years later, he invented styptic, an antihemorrhagic liquid, that is now commonly used around the world to staunch bleeding.

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The Niland Geyser: California's Wandering Mud Pot

In California’s Imperial Valley—an expanse of desert where geothermal energy, agriculture, and quiet rural towns coexist—lies one of the most unusual natural features in the United States. It is known as the Niland Geyser, though the term “geyser” is somewhat misleading. This phenomenon is in fact a moving mud pot, the first in recorded history known to migrate at a measurable pace across the landscape. Its slow but relentless movement has reshaped infrastructure, challenged engineers, and drawn worldwide scientific attention.

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Tektite Habitat: The Pioneering Undersea Laboratory

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States conducted one of the most ambitious experiments in human undersea habitation: Project Tektite. Designed to explore how people live and work beneath the ocean’s surface for long periods, the Tektite habitat became a landmark in oceanographic research, psychological studies, and the development of saturation diving.


An artist rendering of the Tektite habitat showing its inner structure. Credit: NOAA Central Library Historical Fisheries Collection

Origins of Project Tektite

Project Tektite began as a joint effort of the U.S. Navy, the Department of the Interior, and later NASA, at a time when nations were racing not only into space but also into the depths of the sea. Named after tektites—natural glassy objects formed from meteor impacts—the project symbolized exploration in an extreme environment.

The central goal was to determine how scientists could perform extended research underwater and how humans psychologically and physiologically adapted to long-duration confinement under pressure. This knowledge would aid both oceanography and emerging space programs.

Design of the Habitat

The Tektite habitat was installed in Greater Lameshur Bay in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1969. The location was selected for its generally moderate seasurface swell, warm clear water, and a biologically diverse coral environment. The habitat consisted of two cylindrical living modules 12.5 feet in diameter and 18 feet tall connected by a flexible tunnel. The structure was anchored roughly 40 feet below the surface.


Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inside, the habitat housed sleeping quarters for several aquanauts, a common living and working area, communications and scientific equipment, life-support systems that maintained pressure, oxygen, humidity, and temperature, and a “wet room” with a moon-pool entrance for divers

The habitat operated as a saturation diving environment, where aquanauts worked and lived under increased pressure which caused their bodies to become saturated with dissolved gases. They could work underwater for extended hours without needing repeated decompression.

Tektite I: A Historic 60-Day Mission

The first major mission, Tektite I, was launched in February 1969. Four civilian scientists—Ed Clifton, Conrad Limbaugh, Richard Waller, and John Van Tyne—lived underwater for a record-setting 60 days. At the time, it was the longest continuous underwater habitation ever attempted.

The team conducted marine biological research, surveyed local reef systems, and tested new diving techniques. Equally important were the observations gathered about team dynamics, psychological stressors, and the effects of confinement—data later compared with astronaut studies.


Diver swimming down to the vessel used during the Tektite II Project. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Tektite II: The First All-Female Aquanaut Team

In 1970, Tektite II expanded the program with multiple shorter missions focused on scientific research and behavioural studies. Among these missions, the most widely reported was the first all-female aquanaut team, led by marine biologist Dr. Sylvia Earle. The five-woman team spent two weeks underwater conducting ecological surveys and physiological measurements.

This mission attracted significant media attention and helped challenge assumptions about women’s capabilities in demanding scientific environments.

Scientific Contributions

Project Tektite generated valuable findings across several fields. Researchers collected baseline ecological data on coral reefs, fish populations, and benthic communities around the Virgin Islands. The long-term presence underwater allowed methods impossible on short dives.

Researchers also studied the effect of confinement and isolation on human physiology and psychology. The program studied sleep cycles and circadian rhythms, physiology under saturation diving conditions, as well as stress and coping mechanisms.

These insights were later applied to both naval operations and space missions. Lessons from Tektite influenced subsequent undersea labs, including Hydrolab, SEALAB, and later Aquarius.

 
Credit: OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); National Park Service

When Tektite II ended in 1970, General Electric placed the habitat in storage in Philadelphia. A group of interested parties purchased the habitat from General Electric for $1.00 with the stipulation it would be removed from the GE storage facility. The habitat was trucked across the United States to Fort Mason in San Francisco, where it was placed on display.

By 1980, the habitat was fully restored and certified to be used underwater, and named Tektite III; however, funds for actually submerging and operating the habitat again were not available. While the habitat was on display at Fort Mason, many school children were taken through the habitat free of charge by volunteers. Lack of funds ended the project and the habitat was moved to storage along the Oakland Estuary in 1984. After several years, the habitat again deteriorated. In 1991, the habitat was dismantled by welding school students and the metal was recycled. 

Though Project Tektite ended in 1970, it remains a milestone in human undersea habitation. It demonstrated that scientists could live and work underwater for extended periods, advanced the technology of undersea laboratories, and contributed foundational data for future long-duration missions in extreme environments.

Tektite also played a symbolic role in the scientific culture of the late 20th century: just as astronauts explored space, aquanauts proved that the oceans—Earth’s inner frontier—could be inhabited and studied with similar ambition.


Credit: OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); National Park Service


Credit: OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); National Park Service


Credit: OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); National Park Service


Credit: OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); National Park Service

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The 1938 Yellow River Flood

Few rivers in human history have been so closely tied to a nation’s destiny as the Yellow River—Huang He, the “Mother of China.” Rising in the Tibetan Plateau and meandering nearly 5,500 kilometers to the Bohai Sea, it has nourished farmlands and given rise to early Chinese civilization. Yet the same river has been a source of immense suffering, earning the grim title “China’s Sorrow.” Its floods, often caused by the accumulation of fine loess silt that raises the riverbed above the surrounding plains, have repeatedly transformed prosperity into ruin.

The Yellow River’s flooding history reads like a recurring national tragedy. Ancient Chinese records detail countless inundations and course changes that wiped out towns and dynasties alike. The flood of 1887, near Zhengzhou in Henan Province, was among the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. The river broke through its embankments, drowning more than 900,000 people and devastating the heart of northern China.


Soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army wade through flooded area of the Yellow River in 1938. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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The Golden Letter of King Alaungpaya

In 1756, King Alaungpaya of Burma sent an extraordinary diplomatic letter to King George II of Great Britain and Hanover. The missive was engraved on a sheet of pure gold, studded with rubies, and rolled inside a hollowed elephant’s tusk for delivery. It carried a bold proposal of trade and alliance, but despite its impressive and costly packaging, the letter was met with neglect. King George II, preoccupied with continental conflicts as Elector of Hanover, gave it scant attention. The ornate golden sheet was treated as a curiosity rather than as state correspondence and was dispatched to the royal library in Hanover, where it remained for 250 years until its rediscovery in the early 2000s.


A section of the Golden Letter of King Alaungpaya. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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The Ball of The Burning Men

On a freezing January night in 1393, music and laughter filled the Hôtel Saint-Pol, a sprawling palace on the right bank of Paris. The French court had gathered for a masquerade ball in honour of a lady-in-waiting’s remarriage — a diversion meant to lift the spirits of King Charles VI, a 24-year-old monarch already shadowed by bouts of mental instability.

By dawn, four courtiers would be dead, the king barely alive, and the French monarchy’s reputation scorched beyond repair. The event would be remembered for centuries as the Bal des Ardents, or the Ball of the Burning Men.


The Bal des Ardents depicted in a 15th-century painting from Froissart's “Chronicles”. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Popigai: The Crater of Diamonds

The Earth is bombarded by thousands of micrometeorites every day, but only once in tens of millions of years does an asteroid large enough arrive to leave a lasting mark on the geography of a region and the geology of its underlying rocks. The Popigai Crater in northern Siberia, located about 550 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, is the result of one such impact event.

The Popigai Crater was formed about 35 million years ago when an asteroid, estimated to be 5 to 8 kilometers in diameter, slammed into what is now the Taymyr Peninsula of northern Siberia, Russia. The impact instantly melted some 1,750 cubic kilometers of rock, about half of which was ejected into the atmosphere. Some of this material travelled high into the air and landed thousands of kilometers away on other continents, leaving behind a crater roughly 100 kilometers wide and 8 to 10 kilometers deep.


A digital elevation model shows the topography of the crater and the surrounding area. Credit: NASA

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Yossele The Holy Miser

In the Jewish quarter of Kraków in the 17th century lived a man named Yossele, who was both infamous and pitied. He was a miser, so the townspeople said—a man of means who refused to share a single coin with the poor. He dressed in threadbare clothing, ate little, and avoided company. When beggars came to his door, he turned them away. When the community fundraisers came calling, he sent them off empty-handed. In a city where charity was a sacred duty, Yossele’s reputation sank lower each year.

When he died, no one mourned him. There was no rabbi to eulogize him, no crowd to escort him to the cemetery. The burial society consigned him to a lonely corner of the graveyard, among the least respected of the dead. The people of Kraków were relieved that the stingy old man was finally gone.


The tombstone of Yossele the Holy Miser in the Remah Cemetery, Kraków, Poland. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Petrarch’s Ascent of Mont Ventoux And The Birth of Renaissance

In March 1923, when British mountaineer George Leigh Mallory was touring the United States to raise money for an expedition to Mount Everest planned for the following year, a journalist asked why he wanted to climb Everest. He famously replied, “Because it’s there.”

The question, which seemed odd to an adventurer like Mallory, was perfectly reasonable to ordinary people. Why would anybody want to risk their life to climb a piece of rock? Mallory explained: “Everest is the highest mountain in the world, and no man has reached its summit. Its existence is a challenge. The answer is instinctive—a part, I suppose, of man’s desire to conquer the universe.”

Mallory’s desire to conquer Everest cost the lives of seven Tibetan Sherpa porters, who were killed in an avalanche. Two years later, it cost Mallory his own life.


Mount Everest’s peak rises in the backdrop of Rongbuk monastery in Tibet. Credit: Göran Höglund

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The First Caesarean Section on a Living Woman

In the early years of the sixteenth century, in the small Swiss village of Siegershausen, a man named Jacob Nufer faced a situation of unimaginable desperation. His wife had been in labour for days. The local midwives had exhausted every known method to deliver the child, but nothing worked. In an age before modern obstetrics, such a prolonged labour almost always ended in tragedy. Yet Nufer, a humble pig-gelder by trade, who was accustomed to performing surgical operations on livestock, refused to give up.

According to later accounts, Nufer begged the town authorities for permission to attempt what no man had ever done before: to operate on his living wife to deliver the baby. It was a radical request, for in those days a caesarean section was typically performed only after the mother’s death, as a last resort to save the infant’s soul through baptism. The idea of cutting open a living woman was nearly unthinkable.


Woodcut by Jonas Arnold made in the 16th century shows a caesarean section being performed.

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Rhizanthella Gardneri: The Underground Orchid

Rhizanthella gardneri, often called the Western underground orchid, is one of the most remarkable plants in the world because it spends its entire life cycle underground, including flowering. It’s native to Western Australia, where it grows beneath the leaf litter and soil of the broom honey-myrtle and Acacia shrubland.

Unlike almost all other plants, Rhizanthella gardneri lacks chlorophyll, meaning it cannot photosynthesize. Instead of making its own food from sunlight, it depends entirely on a symbiotic relationship with fungi.

The orchid connects to a specific mycorrhizal fungus, which in turn, forms associations with the roots of nearby broom bushes (Melaleuca uncinata). Essentially, the orchid taps into the underground fungal network that links it to the photosynthetic Melaleuca plants. The orchid parasitically draws the nutrients and carbon it needs through the fungus, indirectly obtaining the energy that originates from the Melaleuca’s photosynthesis.


Credit: Jean and Fred Hort

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Yaoya Oshichi: The Girl Who Tried to Burn Down Tokyo For Love

In the winter of 1682, a massive fire swept through Edo, present-day Tokyo. Known as the “Great Tenna Fire” it raged through the city’s crowded wooden districts, destroying thousands of homes and leaving many people homeless. Among the displaced was a teenage girl named Yaoya Oshichi, the daughter of a greengrocer who lived in the Hongō district. Seeking refuge, her family went to a nearby temple, where Oshichi met and fell in love with a young temple priest. That fleeting encounter would ignite a passion so powerful it would ultimately consume her life.


Japanese wood block print depicting Yaoya Oshichi climbing the clock tower. By Utagawa Kunisada, 1866. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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John Elwes: The Miser Who Inspired Dickens

You may not recognize the name John Elwes, but you almost certainly know his literary and cartoon heirs— Ebenezer Scrooge (the cold-hearted miser at the center of Charles Dickens’s 1843 classic A Christmas Carol), and Scrooge McDuck (the fabulously wealthy yet miserly uncle of Donald Duck). Both were modelled, at least in part, on this extraordinary 18th-century Englishman whose avarice was so extreme that it became a national curiosity. Born into immense wealth yet living as if penniless, Elwes’s life was a study in contradiction— a man who hoarded riches but dressed in rags, who lent vast sums yet refused himself a fire on a freezing night, and whose eccentricities would inspire one of the most famous misers in fiction.


Ebenezer Scrooge sitting by the fireplace. Illustration by John Leech. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Oyster Shell Houses of Guangdong

Along the southern coast of China, particularly in Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta, a curious architectural tradition took shape during the late Ming and Qing dynasties — houses built from oyster shells. These oyster shell houses are a unique example of how coastal communities turned the sea’s bounty into durable shelter.

Oyster shell houses trace their origins to the 15th century, during the Ming dynasty, when the port city of Quanzhou flourished as a major hub on the Maritime Silk Roads. Merchant ships from Xunpu set sail laden with tea, silk, and porcelain bound for destinations as distant as the east coast of Africa. On their return journeys, the empty cargo holds made the vessels unstable, so crews filled them with oyster shells collected from local beaches to serve as ballast and prevent capsizing.


Close-up of the wall of an oyster shell house in Guangzhou. Credit: geneva_wirth

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The Befouled Statues Of Yue Fei’s Killers

Yue Fei is among the most celebrated generals in Chinese history, remembered for his loyalty and patriotism. His life unfolded during one of the most turbulent eras of the Southern Song dynasty, when northern China had fallen to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty, and the Chinese court struggled to defend what remained of its realm.

Yue Fei was born in 1103 in Tangyin County, Henan Province, during the final decades of the Northern Song dynasty. His childhood coincided with a period of cultural flourishing but political decline. The Song court, though rich in art and learning, had grown militarily weak. The empire’s northern neighbours, the Jurchen tribes of Manchuria, were on the rise, and by the early twelfth century they had established the powerful Jin dynasty.


Statue of Yue Fei at his mausoleum. Credit: Gary Todd

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Fukushima’s ‘Umbilical Cord’ Border

This is a very simplified political map of Japan showing various prefectures in the northern end of Honshu, the largest of Japan's four main islands. Our area of interest today is the region marked by the bright red pin.

If you zoom into this area, you will notice a very peculiar cartographic oddity. The borders of Fukushima, Niigata and Yamagata doesn’t meet at a tri-point as the zoomed-out map seems to suggest. Instead, you will see a very thin strip of land attached to Fukushima snaking into Niigata. This is called a salient. The Fukushima Prefecture salient —famously called the umbilical cord—extends about 8 km starting from the summit of Mount Mikuni, following the ridge of Mount Kengamine, passing through the summit of Mount Iide, and ending on the summit of Mount Onishi. At its narrowest, it is only about 35 inches across (90 centimetres).

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The Ramgarh Crater And The Temple Within It

In the district of Baran in the Indian state of Rajasthan, about 200 km south of capital city Jaipur, lies a prominent impact crater. The crater is located within an extensive flat terrain of Neoproterozoic sandstone in the western end of the Vindhya range. The crater is about 4 km across with a rim some 250 meter high. Because of its elevation and the surrounding flat plain, the crater can be spotted from a distance as far as 50 km. The crater acquired its name from the village of Ramgarh that lies outside the crater rim. At this location, the rim is breached by the Parvati river which flows into the crater interior to form a small wetland and a lake.

Aside from its extra-terrestrial origin, the crater is famous for the 10th century Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, which is located near the centre of the crater.


The Ramgarh Crater as seen from an aeroplane flying at around 9000 feet. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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