Triple trip nowhere
Melanesia, 1774. The famous captain James Cook drew a large island of sand on a map covering the current area of New Caledonia. The captain named the island Sandy, a sign of its ingenuity and originality. This island was reproduced in maps until the year 2000. Until the cookies proved that there was no more than water in the place drawn. Is it possible that the alleged amount of sand discovered by the explorer has been submerged over the centuries? No, because in that area the ocean is about 1,400 meters deep.
The fact is that at one time the French claimed, and succeeded, the rights on the part of land that does not exist. Since then, this empty water area is called Ile de Sable.
An English whale, Captain Dougherty, reported in 1841 that he had found a small island near Australia. In all humility he called him the island of Dougherty. In the original description the captain said the alleged land was covered in snow, but a 1909 expedition was unable to find the island. Years later, a fellow man from Cook and Dougherty, Captain Davis, wrote: “I have the impression that the island of Dougherty has collapsed.” There wasn't the island either, but in this case the fishing whale didn't get right what it had seen, but found an iceberg.
In 1798, the cartographer James Rennel, based on the information provided by the Scottish explorer Mungo Park, drew on a map of central Africa a chain of thousands of kilometres: Kong Mountains. A gigantic mountain range would pass through, among others, the present Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
Rennel, the founder of the Royal Geographical Society of London, did not doubt what he had drawn and, for a hundred years, travelers gave a long rodeo to avoid the abrupt orography. Of course, when Frenchman Luis Gustave Binger decided to explore the mountain range on purpose, he found nothing. So in the late 19th century, the mountains of Kong began to be removed from the maps.
Archaeologists have discovered more than 600 engraved stones at the Vasagård site in Denmark. According to the results of the data, dating back to 4,900 years ago, it is also known that a violent eruption of a volcano occurred in Alaska at that time. The effects of this... [+]
Vietnam, February 7, 1965. The U.S. Air Force first used napalma against the civilian population. It was not the first time that gelatinous gasoline was used. It began to be launched with bombs during World War II and, in Vietnam itself, it was used during the Indochina War in... [+]
I just saw a series from another sad detective. All the plots take place on a remote island in Scotland. You know how these fictions work: many dead, ordinary people but not so many, and the dark green landscape. This time it reminded me of a trip I made to the Scottish... [+]
Japan, 8th century. In the middle of the Nara Era they began to use the term furoshiki, but until the Edo Era (XVII-XIX. the 20th century) did not spread. Furoshiki is the art of collecting objects in ovens, but its etymology makes its origin clear: furo means bath and shiki... [+]
In an Egyptian mummy of 3,300 years ago, traces of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that caused the Justinian plague in the 6th century and the Black Plague in the 14th century, have just been found.
Experts until now believed that at that time the plague had spread only in... [+]