What a strange place the world is:
During one wavy Saturday, the filmmakers behind the production team, Inspired Planet Productions, headed out to the western side of the Bruce Peninsula, where they set their drone down into the lake.
A typical visual in the depths of Lake Huron is a deserted land filled with quadrillions of invasive quagga mussels, which they, of course, saw.
But, as they kept exploring, they never imagined what they'd encounter.
“Out of the sands of time, this huge shipwreck comes into focus,” Drebert said.
Melnick and Drebert took notice of the wooden frame and steam sack attached to the shipwreck. This was a pivotal moment for the production team. Melnick's initial observation was that “we have a wooden steamship, perfectly preserved on the bottom of the lake, that nobody knew about.”
Unbeknownst to them, what they had found was the wreckage of the steamship Africa, an American cargo steamer that had been lost for over a century.
Built in 1873, the ship is described by Drebert as "the transport truck of the 1800s”. A key observation that helped them confirm that this was indeed the Africa was that they found coal lying all around the sunken vessel.
Drebert and Mlenick teamed up with marine archaeologists and historians to find the history behind this mysterious ship. Throughout their research, they discovered that the Africa was caught in an “early season snow storm.”
“At first, the wind was really agreeable coming from the south," Drebert said. "But then it started changing, moving westward, and then coming from the north.”
This caused the unfortunate deaths of 11 sailors.
This story became personal for Melnick and Drebert as they did more digging. Ironically, the filmmakers live in a community called “Larson Cove," named after the captain of the Africa, Hans Larsson. Once the news was out that they had found the ship, three of the great-grandchildren of Captain Larsson reached out to Melnick and Drebert.
“So we're going to work with them to try to find a way to honour these sailors who went down 128 years ago; we're going to take them out to the wreck next year and just give them a moment to reflect about what happened to their ancestors. And then after that, try to find a way to memorialize them at the local museum," shared Melnick.
Thanks to their discovery, the Africa is now protected under Ontario law as a historic archeological site.
**
An undersea volcano erupted off Japan three weeks ago, providing a rare view of the birth of a tiny new island, but experts say it may not last very long.The unnamed undersea volcano, located about 1 kilometer (half a mile) off the southern coast of Iwo Jima, which Japan calls Ioto, started its latest series of eruptions on Oct. 21.
**
The haunting sound that Roman soldiers would have heard from their Celtic enemies before battle was produced by the Celtic Carnyx. This ancient wind instrument was used by the Celts during the period from 300 B.C. to 200 A.D.
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) November 5, 2023
According to the Greek historian Polybius, the Carnyx… pic.twitter.com/dC4N7sFwsU
**
The archaeologists used carbon dating to estimate that the man was likely between 30 and 50 years old and died between 1450 and 1620, the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation said in a statement.
The prosthetic was made from iron and replaced four missing fingers.
"Even for experienced archaeologists, this was a particularly special find," the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation said in the statement, adding that the fingers appeared to have been amputated.
The report also said it remains unclear how the man lost his fingers and how he might have used the prosthetic.
"The hollow prosthetic on the left hand replaced four fingers," Walter Irlinger, the head of the conservation department at the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation, said in the statement.
"The index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers are individually formed out of sheet metal and are immobile. The prosthetic fingers lie slightly curved, parallel to one another. The prosthesis was probably strapped to the stump of the hand."
A gauze-like material was found inside the prosthetic, which the wearer may have used to cushion the stump of his hand.
Archaeologists found the skeleton in a grave near a church in Freising, close to the Bavarian state capital of Munich in southeast Germany.
The department said archaeologists have previously discovered about 50 similar prosthetics in central Europe from the late Middle Ages — from around 1300 to 1500 — and the early modern period — from around 1500 to 1800.
The department also noted one particularly advanced example of a prosthetic the 16th-century German knight Götz von Berlichingen wore. It said that after Götz lost his right hand to cannon fire during a battle, he began wearing a "movable" and "technically extraordinarily complex" prosthetic in its place.
Freising has been the scene of numerous military battles, including during the Thirty Years' War of 1618 to 1648, likely leading to increased amputations and demand for prosthetics, the statement continued.
**
If the movies have taught me anything - and they haven't - we're all going to be vampires.
Except some A-list actor:
In March 2020, Tagide deCarvalho saw something truly strange - something she thinks no other scientist has ever seen before: a virus with another, smaller virus latched onto its "neck." The backstory of this viral attachment is like a master class in how wild and weird biology can be.
The two microbes are both bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, that were harvested from a clump of dirt in Poolesville, Md. Bacteriophages, also called simply phages, are among the most abundant organisms on Earth. There can be millions in a gram of dirt.
But with a special kind of microscope that uses a beam of electrons to capture images, deCarvalho witnessed a truly bizarre moment - kind of like a wildlife photographer who captures an animal behavior that no one had anticipated.
"I could see literally hundreds of them had this little guy attached at the neck, and it was clearly not random," said deCarvalho, who manages the Keith R. Porter Imaging Facility at University of Maryland at Baltimore County. "We know that viruses can do some amazing, interesting things. But this is just another new thing that no one could have predicted we would see."
**
Dubbed Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna, the rare egg-laying mammal has the “spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater and the feet of a mole,” according to Oxford biologist James Kempton, who led the four-week expedition.Sharing a name with a mythological Greek figure that’s part human and part serpent, the mammal belongs to the monotremes, a unique egg-laying branch that diverged from other mammals around 200 million years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment