Interesting Information

On February 15, 2013, an asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the southern Ural region of Russia and exploded. The event was witnessed by thousands of people and became the largest known airburst since the 1908 Tunguska event. The blast produced a light brighter than the Sun, and the shock wave was felt by people all over the area. The energy of the explosion was equivalent to 20-30 of the atomic bombs used at Hiroshima. The asteroid was not detected by the authorities before the airburst, and the event surprised many people. It wounded 1,500 and damaged over 7,000 buildings. The meteor was caught on tape by multiple sources, which shows a giant fireball in the sky - followed by an enormous explosion of light. It was reported that the meteor made the ground hot, and the city smelled like gunpowder after the explosion. The event was an extremely rare occurrence and the only time in history that a meteor has been known to cause human injury.

On October 8, 1871, the Midwestern United States experienced an enormous firestorm that burned 6,100 square kilometres (2,300 sq mi) of land around Peshtigo, Wisconsin. The event is the deadliest fire in US history and killed 1,500 to 2,500 people. On the same day, the United States experienced the Great Chicago Fire, the Port Huron Fire, the Holland Fire, and Manistee Fire. The 1871 firestorm was caused by strong winds and forest fires. After gaining enough energy, the blaze quickly developed into a massive wall of fire that reached a speed of 160 kph (100 mph) and produced tornado-style winds. The fire was so hot that sandy beaches were turned to glass, and people were incinerated. The fire jumped over the waters of Green Bay and destroyed 12 separate communities in the area. It tossed rail cars and houses into the air and left thousands of people with nothing.

At first glance, international adoption seems like a good thing. Western parents get a kid to raise, and said kid gets taken out of their third-world orphanage and into a world of comfort. Win-win, right? Yep, especially if you happen to be a human trafficker. It all comes down to supply and demand. Right now, there’s a demand in our culture for third-world orphans - with the result that a horrifying supply chain has grown up to cater to our needs. In Ghana, a 2009 raid on orphanages found that over 90 percent of the children had at least one living parent. In 2007, a French charity called Zoe’s Ark was stopped while attempting to fly 103 “Sudanese war refugees” out of Chad - only for authorities to discover that none of them were Sudanese, none were war refugees, and nearly all of them had been forcibly taken from their parents.

It’s now pretty much irrefutable that our planet is getting hotter. Temperatures are soaring, sea levels are going up, and we’re now comfortably cruising toward an apocalypse of our own making. So it makes sense that you’d want to do something about it. But I’ve got some bad news: Chances are, whatever you’re doing isn’t helping. Take carbon offsetting. The idea goes that you pay a little extra for your flight, and in return your airline plants a tree or whatever. Sounds good, except for the part where it doesn’t make any sense. See, we in the West produce a lot of emissions - so much so that offsetting them all would require the rest of the world to start producing negative carbon. In other words, offsetting is no help at all, just like recycling. Yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, but recycling has become a global market. That means that suppliers of recycled goods follow the money - even if it involves shipping their produce across the world, at ozone-shredding energy costs

Volunteering for organ donation is shorthand for showing you think about other people. Each year in the US, 9,000 people die waiting for a transplant, and it’s not like you’ll need your liver in heaven or Jannah or wherever. So by all means, sign up, but for the love of God make sure you’re healthy beforehand, because the hospital sure won’t. In the early 2000s, organs from a deceased alcoholic were sent to around 40 patients. Within two years, eight recipients had come down with Hepatitis C, a disease you may recognize as one you really don’t want to have. According to the Wall Street Journal this happens more often than we’d like to think. One woman donated a kidney, unaware she was infected with the parasite Strongyloides. The man who received it felt fine for three months, then began vomiting blood and quickly expired. All told, at least 97 serious infections from donated organs were recorded in a 2007 study, with many more thought to go unreported by hospitals. The troub

To be fair, Hanno has not been completely forgotten; the Carthaginian sea-captain and original “Navigator” is the titular inspiration for a 2008 song. Long before Pytheas journeyed through the Pillars of Hercules and north, Hanno made his way south along the West African coast. Whereas several explorers are notable for their solo efforts, Hanno amazes with the incredible scale of his undertaking. Hanno’s fleet consisted of 60 ships and 30,000 men and women. Hanno wasn’t merely exploring; he was colonizing. And to that end he was successful: the Carthaginians established several lasting towns and trading posts. Unfortunately, dwindling provisions forced Hanno to abandon his attempt at circumnavigating Africa. However, Hanno’s account did leave scholars with several intriguing references to African geography and animals, like the following: