Tunnels and How They Are Built: Immersed Tubes

I’ve always been fascinated by the process of building tunnels …

Immersed tube is what it sounds like: constructing sections above ground that are then immersed and connected together.

Venice is an Engineering Marvel, Far More Impressive Than You Thought

Using engineering genius the Venetians — refugees from nearby towns seeking shelter from Visigoths and later Attila the Hun around 500-550 AD — turned a series of swampy islands into a real city and then into the global center of commerce by the 9th century, well before the time of Marco Polo in the late 13th century.

As the population grew they encountered the usual problems with growing cities — fresh water and waste disposal — and once again employed engineering genius to solve them in simple, effective and efficient ways.

Venice was the capitol of the Republic of Venice, for 1100 years a global power until conquered by Napoleon in 1797.

Another “Great Lake” Besides the Five We Already Knew

The Great Slave Lake in Canada, in the Northwest Territories, is over 2,000 feet deep, deepest in North America.

I have never heard of it. Learn something new every day!

And yes, the name seems a little odd but it’s named after a family named “Slavey”. Also kinda odd, but then lots of names are odd when you really think about it … 

Today in 1843: First Large Oregon Trail Migration

 

In 1841 the Oregon Trail wagon train was around 70 people, and in 1842 around 100, but by 1843 as a result of “encouragement” (maybe propaganda is more accurate) by government and other hucksters the wagon train was 1,000 strong plus 5,000 oxen and cattle.

The Oregon Territory was not even technically part of the U.S. yet — this did not happen until 1846 when Britain just handed it over for free, essentially — but over the preceeding 30 years fur trappers and traders, missionaries, and other pioneers had established a trail from Missouri.

The Oregon Trail was laid by fur traders and trappers from about 1811 to 1840 and was initially only passable on foot or horseback. By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. Wagon trails were cleared increasingly farther west and eventually reached the Willamette Valley in Oregon, at which point what came to be called the Oregon Trail was complete, even as almost annual improvements were made in the form of bridges, cutoffs, ferries, and roads, which made the trip faster and safer. From various starting points in Iowa, Missouri, or Nebraska Territory, the routes converged along the lower Platte River Valley near Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory. They led to fertile farmlands west of the Rocky Mountains. From the early to mid-1830s (and particularly through the years 1846–1869) the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by about 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners, ranchers, and business owners and their families to get to the area known as Oregon and its surrounding counterparts. The eastern half of the trail was also used by travelers on the California Trail (from 1843), Mormon Trail (from 1847), and Bozeman Trail (from 1863) before turning off to their separate destinations. Use of the trail declined after the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, making the trip west substantially faster, cheaper, and safer.

It was 2,170 miles long. They rode on horseback or in covered wagons, and many died along the way from drownings during river crossings, disease, injuries, Indian attacks, and more.

A map:

This Week in 330 AD: Constantinople Dedicated

 

May 11, 330 AD … nearly 1700 Years Ago

A “second Rome” essentially — a replacement for it, in reality. 

Keep this date in mind next time you call something “old”.

Constantinople is named after Constantine I who should be more widely recognized as the first Emperor to convert to Christianity and use his power to spread the relatively new religion throughout the Roman Empire. 

And hoo boy is that history complicated — feel free to read about it in detail above — but here is a summary from that page:

Constantine reigned during the 4th century CE and is known for attempting to Christianize the Roman Empire. He made the persecution of Christians illegal by signing the Edict of Milan in 313 and helped spread the religion by bankrolling church-building projects, commissioning new copies of the Bible, and summoning councils of theologians to hammer out the religion’s doctrinal kinks.

The Edict of Milan mandated religious tolerance via legal rights — seems that this too should be more well-known than it is:

... granted all persons freedom to worship whatever deity they pleased, assured Christians of legal rights (including the right to organize churches), and directed the prompt return to Christians of confiscated property.

“Granted all persons freedom to worship watever deity they pleased”. This is full-on frredom of religion, 1446 years prior to 1776, when it seemed like a revolutionary idea mainly because for several hundred years the entire world had been unable to avoid killing each other over religion, not because nobody ever thought of it before. 

It goes on to say this ponderous bit: “Previous edicts of toleration had been as short-lived as the regimes that sanctioned them, but this time the edict effectively established religious toleration.” 

“This time”? Why did it work better this time? We are left to surmise that it was because of Constantine’s own conversion and strong leadership, although he died in 337, just 7 years later. Of course the Roman Empire fell in 476, so all of this “freedom” silliness died off with it, ushering in the Dark Ages and Vikings and Crusades and nearly endless war and plunder for over a thousand years.

A good video about Constantine I:

History of Major Trade Routes

 

A useful addition to my recent Silk Road post… 

History of major trade routes, mapped out

Seeing all this on a giant map, and learning the scale of trade between far-away peoples, and how early it all started, was a real learning experience for me.

Britain Hands Over Oregon for Free, In Essence

 

The early and mid-1800s were such a wild time in North America… 

No Man’s Land in Louisiana

 

This territory in today’s Louisiana was part of border disputes between France and Spain during the 1700s, and later informally recognized as a lawless “no man’s land” from 1806 until Louisiana became a state in 1821. 

It was the Wild West before the Wild West became a thing, basically.

Obviously, the people who lived there had to be extrememly tough and fiercely independent, providing all of their own food and security against pirates, outlaws, predators, and the like. 

Louisiana has a very interesting cultural history and this is easy to understand when you consider that the major influences were a “gumbo” of Spanish, French, and Native American going back hundreds of years. 

Here’s a good short primer on the area and its history.

Apparently “Natchitoches” is pronounced NACK-i-tesh. The more you know… 

A longer but still very interesting PBS video.

Slavery Refresher, Barbary Pirates Edition

We’ve all heard about Barbary Pirates, but other than the U.S. Marines defeating them in the early 1800s, what do we really know about that era?

Well, it lasted over 300 years, from 1500-1815 more or less, and during that time the Barbary Pirates captured lots of loot but also lots of people and either enslaved them or sold them into slavery.

One historian estimates that 1.5 million Europeans were enslaved in this way. The slave trade was a thriving business.

Did you know that Barbary Pirates raided towns as far away as Ireland to capture slaves? Neither did I.

And if you’ve ever heard the term “galley slave” but were unsure exactly what that means, well … you won’t be unsure any more. Think about living that life next time you’re having a bad day. The phrase “hell on earth” seems pretty close.

Slavery was not just common throughout the world for thousands of years, it was a major source of revenue for many of the richest people.

It was not invented in America in 1619.

The Silk Road

In 130 BC the Han Dynasty opened trade with the West, so this is considered the start date for the Silk Road and for truly global trade, but it had ancient origins even before that.

The Silk Road (a.k.a  “Silk Routes” because it was actually many trails, not just one road) was a major trade route for over 1500 years until it was blocked by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 due to a blockade against China.

When I was in school they talked about Marco Polo and the Silk Road together, quickly and superficially, but the Silk Road was open for 1400 years before Marco Polo, a mercantilist from Venice, explored the entire Asian world visiting many countries as the foreign emissary of Kublai Khan for over 20 years, from 1269-1291, and wrote a book about it, “The Travels of Marco Polo”. 

That book opened European eyes and culture to China and the “Far East”. 

During that same time frame, the 13th Century, the Mongol Empire expanded dramatically, extending from the Sea of Japan to the Mediterranean Sea, the largest contiguous land empire in history. The Silk Road, therefore, was completely controlled by one empire during the travels of Marco Polo.

The key driver of this explansion was Genghis Khan, grandfather of Kublai Khan.

Today in 1871: The Search for Dr. David Livingstone Begins

 

Livingstone was a Scottish doctor, missionary, and explorer with extensive travels in Africa starting in 1840 who left the U.K. in 1865 to discover the source of the Nile. He was quite the leader and a true hero of the Victorian Age:

Livingstone was married to Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th-century Moffatt missionary family. Livingstone came to have a mythic status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion. As a result, Livingstone became one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era.

Why was he so focused on finding the source of the Nile? He wanted to gain enough power to combat the evils of slavery, specifically the Arab slave trade: 

"The Nile sources", he told a friend, "are valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among men. It is this power [with] which I hope to remedy an immense evil."

More details on the Arab slave trade. Like most people, I was unaware until reading about this today that Livingstone’s primary motivation was ending slavery as part of his Christian missionary goals and lifestyle.

By 1871 he’d been gone 6 years with no word, and people were curious. So the publisher of the New York Herald sent a journalist named Henry Stanley to find him. 

Stanley himself had led an interesting life too:

At age 28, Stanley had his own fascinating past. As a young orphan in Wales, he crossed the Atlantic on the crew of a merchant ship. He jumped ship in New Orleans and later served in the Civil War as both a Confederate and a Union soldier before beginning a career in journalism. […] After setting out from Zanzibar in March 1871, Stanley led his caravan of nearly 2,000 men into the interior of Africa. Nearly eight months passed—during which Stanley contracted dysentery, cerebral malaria and smallpox—before the expedition approached the village of Ujiji, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. Sick and poverty-stricken, Livingstone had come to Ujiji that July after living for some time at the mercy of Arab slave traders. When Stanley’s caravan entered the village on October 27, flying the American flag, villagers crowded toward the new arrivals. Spotting a white man with a gray beard in the crowd, Stanley stepped toward him and stretched out his hand: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

Livingstone led an amazing and adventurous life, and was one of the main early explorers of the entire African continent. He is buried at Westminster Abbey.

From Wikipedia, his travels from 1851 until his death in 1873, part of the Scramble for Africa.

99 Years Ago and Still the Deadliest Tornado in U.S. History

 

March 18, 1925:  The Tri-State Tornado killed nearly 700 people

Estimated later to be an EF5 with winds topping 300MPH at times, it ripped through southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southwestern Indiana following this track.

More:

A small tornado that touched down near Ellington, Missouri gained momentum over the course of the afternoon. In the three-and-a-half hours that followed, it ballooned to record widths and speed. At one point, observers calculated that it was a full mile wide, and it maintained an average speed of 62 miles per hour and a top speed of 73 miles per hour.

The devastation in Illinois in particular is on a scale that is difficult to comprehend. 

• Murphysboro:  243 dead, 623 injured (total of 866) and much of the town destroyed 
• 541 dead and 1423 seriously injured in one 40 minute stretch in Murphysboro, De Soto, Hurst-Bush, and West Frankfort 
• Multiple communities wiped completely off the map 

695 total dead, still the deadliest tornado, with the longest track (over 200 miles on the ground), 99 years later.

A collection of sobering photographs can be found at the NWS site for the 1925 Tri-State Tornado, like these:

Why So Many Conifers Up North?

 

I’ve always wondered about this… obviously the short answer is “because they adapt to the northern habitat better than deciduous trees”, but why is that, exactly?

A good short intro on the differences between the two types.

More nerdy details in this one.

Conifers are cone-bearing seed plants …

The great majority are trees, though a few are shrubs. Examples include cedars, Douglas-firs, cypresses, firs, junipers, kauri, larches, pines, hemlocks, redwoods, spruces, and yews. [...]

Although the total number of species is relatively small, conifers are ecologically important. They are the dominant plants over large areas of land, most notably the taiga of the Northern Hemisphere, but also in similar cool climates in mountains further south. Boreal conifers have many wintertime adaptations. The narrow conical shape of northern conifers, and their downward-drooping limbs, help them shed snow. Many of them seasonally alter their biochemistry to make them more resistant to freezing. While tropical rainforests have more biodiversity and turnover, the immense conifer forests of the world represent the largest terrestrial carbon sink. Conifers are of great economic value for softwood lumber and paper production.

Deciduous meanwhile…

In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous means "falling off at maturity"and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, after flowering; and to the shedding of ripe fruit. The antonym of deciduous in the botanical sense is evergreen.

Generally, the term "deciduous" means "the dropping of a part that is no longer needed or useful" and the "falling away after its purpose is finished". In plants, it is the result of natural processes. "Deciduous" has a similar meaning when referring to animal parts, such as deciduous antlers in deer, deciduous teeth (baby teeth) in some mammals (including humans); or decidua, the uterine lining that sheds off after birth.

18th Century Wooden Warships and How Were They Built

 

Always been fascinated by sailing ships in general and especially warships… 

Meanwhile if you ever use expressions like “carried away”, “mainstay”, or “bitter end”, you’re using old sailing expressions without realizing it.

Peru’s Geography is Amazing

 

Deserts, Rainforest, Mountains, Volcanos … The List Goes On and On

Ancient Incan cities too. And terraces for farming on mountainsides. Nazca lines in the desert.

Something for everyone!

Break-Up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1800s

 

Chaotic European History

How chaotic? This chaotic.

It’s important to understand that much of the instability in the modern world is due to the mess that Europe was, and created around the world over centuries, and owns still to this day.  

This Week in 1872: Yellowstone Named First National Park

 

March 1, 1872

First explored by John Colter starting in 1807, on his return trip from the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 

He is considered the first “mountain man” and so by definition he led quite the adventurous life, establishing trade with several Indian tribes and escaping an attack by the Blackfeet tribe by running naked and bloodied through the wilderness until his lone pursuer nearly caught him, only to be killed by Colter (later known as “Colter’s Run” in a retelling by Washington Irving and others).

When he finally returned to St. Louis in 1810 he told tales of steam rising from the Earth — describing geysers — which many people of course did not believe, coining the derisive term “Colter’s Hell” to describe it.

The area would remain largely untouched and un-explored until 1871:

The key to Yellowstone’s future as a national park, though, was the 1871 exploration under the direction of the government geologist Ferdinand Hayden. Hayden brought along William Jackson, a pioneering photographer, and Thomas Moran, a brilliant landscape artist, to make a visual record of the expedition. Their images provided the first visual proof of Yellowstone’s wonders and caught the attention of the U.S. Congress.

Within months it was declared the first national park.

A 45 minute National Geographic video:

Today in 1919: Grand Canyon Becomes U.S. National Park

First named a National Monument in 1908 by Theodore Roosevelt

Coronado and his explorers were apparently the first “white men” to discover it in 1540 — but I’m pretty sure some Native Americans had spotted it at some prior point in history.

In 1540, members of an expedition sent by the Spanish explorer Coronado became the first Europeans to discover the canyon—though because of its remoteness, the area was not further explored until 300 years later. American geologist John Wesley Powell, who popularized the term “Grand Canyon” in the 1870s, became the first person to lead a journey across the entire length of the gorge in 1869. The harrowing voyage was made in four rowboats.

A look at the geography of the area today. 

Obviously there was no Lake Powell or  Lake Mead back then (created in the 20th century by the Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams, respectively). There was no Colorado River Aqueduct, or Central Arizona Aqueduct, or any other manmade diversions of the river water.

So imagine the amount of snow melt that river carried in spring and early summer. And then imagine riding all that in a rowboat like John Wesley Powell did in 1869. 

No thanks.

European History Leading Up to WWI

It’s a giant mess, and that explains a lot

The usual explanations for the causes of World War I — alliances and imperialism — can be confusing because they stop well short of the full set of conditions that led up to the sudden outbreak of war in Summer 1914. 

It always sounded strange to me, probably because like most people in this day and age, and until I started digging into this on my own over the last couple of years, I had no real concept of the level of European chaos and conflict — especially the ruling class vs the ruled, and between ethnic groups — that fed a constant system of discontent for centuries, creating a powder keg ready to erupt at any time. 

One of the biggest players in the late 19th century was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which also serves as a good example of the kind of ever-present ethnic and tribal conflict and ruling class power struggles that has always defined Europe.

Keep in mind, this was known as the “civilized” world.

Austro-Hungarian Empire 1848 - 1922 

 

Layered on top of that, this mess of international alliances and protection of global imperialist interests.

The First World War and International Relations 1900 - 1920

530 Years Ago Today, in 1492

 

Columbus Discovers America

And it was just the first of four voyages he would take, discovering not just the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola (today’s Dominican Republic  and Haiti), but the Gulf of Mexico, and South and Central America too.

He was a busy guy, when he wasn’t subjugating entire races of people I guess.

On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, with three small ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina. On October 12, the expedition reached land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and “Indian” captives in March 1493 and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century.

He had a bit of trouble getting the first voyage financed, rejected by King John II of Portugal and then King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain (twice) before they finally agreed after Spain defeated the Moors (or “Moops”) in January 1492 at Granada.

Just 14 years later in 1506 he passed away, and Spain — which had hoped to find a route to the “Far East” — instead discovered the New World and all the riches and peoples they could plunder.

Columbus died in Spain in 1506 without realizing the scope of what he did achieve: He had discovered for Europe the New World, whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth. He also unleashed centuries of brutal colonization, the transatlantic slave trade and the deaths of millions of Native Americans from murder and disease.

Well, let’s be honest here, it wasn’t really Columbus who “unleashed” all that, it was Spain, followed by the British, French, and Dutch. 

Colonization, slavery, murder and disease was just how the whole world worked. For thousands of years. This was nothing new.

Slavery and the slave trade was practiced by every nation with the power to do so, since the beginning of time. Until the British outlawed slavery in 1807 (and the slave trade in 1833) it was the worldwide historical norm. All of history has been thus, for everyone everywhere — except for the rich and powerful of course, and they got rich and powerful by subjugating and enslaving and murdering people, and taking land and property, and every other form of unpleasantness one can imagine. 

What exactly are we supposed to do about it? Impose modern expectations of civilization, of human rights that didn’t exist yet, upon an earlier time? It was what it was, and it’s best to view it by the norms of the time. 

Life for everyone everywhere was nasty, brutish, and short.

If it wasn’t Columbus who discovered America somebody else would have, and that man would get blamed as Columbus is now, and either way the exact same colonization and enslavement and murder would have followed just as night follows day, for the reasons given above. 

The revisionist tries to willfully misrepresent history and demonize everyone who ever did great things for daring to live in their own times according to the accepted norms of the time, instead of in today’s times according to today’s norms. It’s tiresome, ahistorical, and tremendously disrespectful towards leaders of the past, and makes us all dumber and myopic. 

Link:

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/columbus-reaches-the-new-world