Blog - LOST IN HISTORY

The Mariana Trench – a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

The bathyscaphe Trieste in the Mariana Trench, 1960. — **Depiction of the bathyscaphe Trieste in the Mariana Trench, 1960**

A decade before the late 1960’s Apollo Moon Missions, two aquanauts, traveled to the last unexplored place on Earth, the deepest point under all the Earth’s oceans. On 23 January 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, in the bathyscaphe Trieste, descended down to the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, 7 miles, (11 km) beneath the water surface.

The lowest point on our planet is deep underwater, in the western Pacific Ocean near the island of Guam. It’s here where converging geological plates crash together, forcing one plate down beneath the other, forming the formidable Mariana Trench. The deepest portion, at nearly 11,000 meters was discovered in 1951 by the British survey ship Challenger, hence the name “Challenger Deep.”

The distance between the surface and the trench bottom is greater than the height of Mount Everest.

The Trieste ‘bathyscaphe’ was named after the Italian city of its birth. A bathyscaphe (deep boat) is a type of mini-sub with a ‘bathysphere’ attached to the bottom for piloting and observation. Auguste Piccard, a visionary Swiss inventor and aeronaut designed the Italian-built Trieste, a precursor to today’s modern submersibles. Piccard was already famous for setting the record for the highest altitude balloon flight ever thirty years earlier in 1932.

Trieste’s two-man crew would be working inside a 6.5 foot (2 meter) wide pressure sphere lodged on the underside of the submersible. To withstand the intense pressure at the bottom of Challenger Deep [8 tons per square inch or 15,750 psi], the bathysphere’s walls were 5 inches (8 cm) thick. To see outside into the dark depths, the crew would rely on a single window made of a solid cone of Plexiglas.

**Mariana Trench in the South Pacific Ocean**

The rest of the nearly 60-foot (18-meter) long Trieste was primarily a 50 ft. tank. It was filled with 33,350 gallons (126,240 liters) of gasoline for buoyancy. Plus nine tons of iron pellets as ballast to weigh it down. (Why gasoline? Because it is more buoyant than water and resistant to compression.) The Trieste also had the advantage of being controlled by the pilot inside and didn’t need to be tethered to any surface ship. Piccard developed an ingenious method to control the buoyancy, using both the gasoline and iron pellets.

Why partake on such a dangerous mission?

During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy realized the ocean depths could be exploited for military advantages against the Soviets. The Office of Naval Research purchased the Trieste in 1958 and hired Auguste’s son, Jacques, as consultant. The dive was not just about setting a new record, the Navy wanted to prove the feasibility of human exploration at such extreme depths, Project Nekton.

Piccard’s radical design would be put to the test in January 1960 at the deepest place on Earth, with none other than his 38-year-old son Jacques as one of the 2 crew. So a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Wandank, carried the small sub to the South Pacific Ocean for its historic dive into the Mariana Trench. 31-year-old oceanographer Don Walsh, a U.S. Navy Lieutenant, would be the other “aquanaut.”

Floating over the undersea trench after launch, the 2 men waved one last time to the crew of the mother ship. They then climbed down through a tube in the Trieste ballast tank into the bathysphere underneath. It took 4 hours and 48 minutes to drop to the very bottom of the Challenger Deep at a rate of about a yard (0.9 m) a second. One can only imagine the creeping fear and tension the two men experienced trapped inside. They descended slowly and silently into the pitch-black darkness, the bathysphere getting progressively colder and colder with each minute.

The Trieste’s hull could buckle at any moment from the extreme pressure, or it might violently explode without warning.

Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh inside the Trieste, 1960 — Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh inside the Trieste bathysphere, 1960

As if to highlight the peril, after passing 27,000 feet (9,000 meters) the outer window pane cracked, violently shaking the entire sphere! Were they about to die? Should they abort? But since no leaks or pressure drop occurred, the brave men decided to continue their decent. Throughout much of the trip, they lost contact with their mother ship on the surface. Nevertheless, Piccard and Walsh successfully reached the flat bottom of the Mariana Trench at a depth of 7 miles.

The floor of Challenger Deep was a fine, snuff-colored, oozy silt made of microscopic algae known as diatoms. The explorers were shocked to see jellyfish, shrimp-like creatures, and a couple of small white flatfish, proving that some life could withstand the extreme depths. Unfortunately, they carried no external camera and one of the external lights had imploded from the extreme pressures. Skeptics at the time criticized Piccard’s observations, claiming life was impossible at such depths and they were hallucinating from the pressure.

Due to the cracked window, two men decided to spend just 20 minutes on the Mariana Trench floor.

Eating chocolate bars for energy, the pair shivered in the cold. The bathysphere temperature was only 45 F (7 Celsius). The water temperature outside was 39 F/4C. They finally managed to speak with their mother ship using a sonar-hydrophone. Traveling at a speed of nearly a mile per second, it still took 14 seconds for a message to travel from the Trieste to the surface and back again.

Piccard slowly and carefully unloaded the iron pellet ballast and the floor of the Mariana Trench disappeared beneath them. The Trieste began to slowly float back to the surface. The ascent was much quicker than the dive, taking only three hours and fifteen minutes. If you consider that faster, when you are freezing inside a cracked, cramped, and cold dark sphere.

At the surface came cheers and champagne from the U.S. Navy crew. As word spread, both men were celebrated internationally as two of the world’s great modern explorers. For a time, the Piccard family, father and son, held the record for both the highest altitude balloon and the deepest ocean dive.

The historic dive ushered in a golden age of underwater exploration. Men like Jacques Cousteau and Robert Ballard led the way in which submersibles, both manned and unmanned, would make amazing discoveries in oceanography, marine biology and exploration. Ballard went onto discover the wreck to the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic using submersibles in 1985. In fact, Robert Ballard made his first submarine dive in Jacques Piccard’s next submersible, the Ben Franklin in 1969.

The Trieste was retired by the U.S. Navy in 1963. You can view the original today on exhibit at the U.S. Navy Museum in Washington DC. So costly and risky was the descent into the Mariana Trench it was not attempted it again for another 52 years. It’s been repeated only once, in 2012. This time done solo by Canadian explorer and filmmaker James Cameron (of Titanic and Avatar movie fame). He did it in the torpedo-shaped, DeepSea Challenger. Don Walsh was a part of his research team. And this time, Cameron was sure to take copious videos, recording the sea life. It was more than enough for an award winning documentary James Cameron’s Deepsea Challenge (2014).

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Lost in History

The Armenian Genocide – the Forgotten Holocaust

**Armenian Genocide: children on a Death March into the Syrian Desert, 1915**

Most know of the Jewish Holocaust, committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. But many are unaware of the Armenian Genocide, the 1st modern atrocity of the 20^th century. It occurred 30 years earlier during World War I. In 1915, leaders of the Ottoman Empire began the systemic expulsion and extermination of Armenian Christians living in what is today eastern Turkey. Somewhere near 2 million Armenians (10% of the Empire) were forcibly deported from their homeland, resulting in 1.5 MILLION Deaths.

Call it a holocaust or ethnic cleansing – the Armenian Genocide was an attempt to exterminate an entire people.

Armenians have been in the Caucasus mountains of the northern Middle East for millennia. Armenia was an independent kingdom in the 4th century and became the first nation to make Christianity its national religion. Ruled at various times by Persians, Romans, Arabs and Mongols, it was eventually absorbed into the mammoth Ottoman Empire in the 16^th century. At its peak, the vast Ottoman Empire included much of southeastern Europe, ALL of the Middle East, and much of North Africa.

While the Ottoman Sultans permitted Armenian Christians to maintain autonomy, they also treated them as infidels, with few rights. In spite of this, Armenians tended to be wealthier & better educated than Turks: businessmen, lawyers, doctors, and professors educated in European universities. The Ottoman Sultans, however, resented their wealth and success.

By contrast, the majority of Muslim Turks were poor and illiterate. The Sultans had placed little worth on public education, valuing blind obedience instead. Layered on this were long held suspicions that Armenians were more loyal to Christian nations, most especially their nearby enemy, Russia. The empire shared a disputed border with the Russian Empire, including Crimea on the Black Sea.

By the beginning of the 20^th century, nationalist reformers, called the “Young Turks,” overthrew Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The “Committee of Union and Progress” (CUP) established a new constitutional government. Unfortunately, 3 Pashas within the Young Turks (Talaat, Enver & Cemal) assumed dictatorial control, just like the Sultan. They promised a pure Muslim, nationalist state, and viewed Armenian Christians as a traitorous threat. Anti-Armenian demonstrations were staged by the CUP in Istanbul, often leading to violence against Christians.

In 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered WWI on the side of Germany and Austro-Hungary.

The Eastern Front eventually included the disputed border with the Russian Empire. Christian Russia was now the enemy. The 3 Pashas argued that Armenians were traitors who could not to be trusted and would if fact fight for the Allies. This led the dictators to push for the complete removal of Armenians from the Empire. About 40,000 Armenian men were serving in the Ottoman Army in the war. They were quickly disarmed and switched to forced labor battalions, building roads or carrying supplies. In 1915, the Armenian Genocide began.

In April 1915, the CUP ordered the execution of 300 Armenian intellectuals (clergy, journalists, doctors, lawyers, teachers) in Istanbul. Next came mass arrests of Armenian men for “treason” throughout the country. The 3 Pashas created a ‘Special Organization’ which organized ‘Killing Squads’ to deal with deported Armenians. Men were taken to the outskirts of their towns and shot. Armenian women, children, and the elderly were ordered to leave their homes and villages. They were told it was for “relocation” to non-military zones for their own safety. Ottoman families quickly moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.

**Armenians being marched to execution at Turkish gunpoint in Kharput, 1915**

With the new Tehcir Law, Talaat Pasha ordered a million Armenians be taken on what became Death Marches. As part of the Armenian Genocide, they were forced to walk hundreds of miles into the scorching Syrian desert. When food or water ran out, they were given nothing more by their military guards. Some were raped, stripped naked and forced to walk under the desert sun until they dropped from dehydration. Any who stumbled from exhaustion were beaten or shot. Gendarmes pushed them off cliffs, or burned them alive.

Soon, unburied corpses littered the Empire’s roads to the south. Photographs by western journalists shocked foreign diplomats at the time. Young girls were raped, killed or forced to become sex slaves in harems. Children who survived were placed in Syrian concentration camps, made to denounce Christianity and forcibly converted to Islam. Newspapers like the New York Times published reports with shocking headlines like: “Armenians Are Sent to Perish in the Desert – Turks Accused of Plan to Exterminate Whole Population” (18 August 1915).

In 1916, Talaat Pasha ordered a second wave of Armenian death marches and massacre for 200,000. By the end of WWI, there were less than 390,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire, over 75% of them had been killed. The Ottoman government in Istanbul denied there was an Armenian Genocide, but rather the removal and killing of an enemy force within their borders during wartime.

World War I ended in 1918 with the defeat of Germany and the Ottoman Empire.

The 3 Pashas who had ordered the genocide fled by ship to Germany where they were offered asylum. Turkey’s new, post-war government asked Berlin to extradite the Pashas. Germany turned down all requests. Post-war treaties briefly created a separate Armenian nation. Then Turkey’s new nationalist leader, Mustafa Ataturk, refused to accept the post WWI treaty. He instead re-occupied Armenian lands in 1920. Sadly, no Allied powers came to aid the fledgling republic.

**Young Turk Talaat Pasha ordered the Armenian Genocide in 1915.**

The new Turkish government held a Special Military Tribunal that ruled that the ‘crime of mass murder’ of 800,000 Armenians was organized and carried out ‘by the top leaders of CUP in exile.’ Two years later, Armenia was partitioned between Turkey and the Soviet Union. Armenian activists, the Dashnaks, took matters into their own hands. They located 2 of the Pashas responsible for the Armenian genocide (Talaat and Cemal) living lavishly in Germany. Armenian assassins killed each with a bullet to the head. The Russian Red Army executed the third, Enver Pasha, in 1922.

Britain, France and Russia formally condemned the Ottoman Empire for “crimes against humanity and civilization.” They threatened to hold all the perpetrators accountable … but never did. To this day, the Turkish government denies it was an attempted Armenian Genocide. Many western countries have avoided an official recognition in order to preserve diplomatic relations with NATO member Turkey.

The half-hearted reaction of the world’s major powers, including Britain and the U.S., to the Armenian Genocide was duly noted by none other than Adolf Hitler as he envisioned the Jewish Holocaust. After becoming Germany’s Fuhrer in 1934, Hitler put the wheels in motion, telling Nazi generals:

“I have sent to the East my Death’s Head Units with the orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Jewish blood. Only in such a way will we win what we need. After all, who still talks of the Armenians?” – Adolf Hitler

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Lost in History

Krakatoa Volcano Eruption Shook the Globe

**Depiction of Krakatoa volcano eruption, 1883**

The eruption of Krakatoa Island in August 1883 was THE most deadly volcanic explosion in modern history. More than 36,000 people in over 300 coastal villages perished in the most ghastly ways imaginable. Many died of burns and suffocation from the super-heated pyroclastic blasts that blew the peak off the island. Thousands more drowned from the 4 Tsunamis that followed when the volcano collapsed into the sea.

The Indonesian island of Krakatau (Krakatoa) sits in the narrow Sunda Straits between Sumatra to the north and Java to the south. Before the 1883 eruption, the uninhabited tropical island had no less than 3 volcanic peaks. They were Perboewatan, the most active, Danan, in the middle, and Rakata, the tallest. Krakatau and its two nearby islands were remnants of a previous eruption that left an undersea caldera simmering beneath the sea floor.

The eruption story starts 3 months before. Early in the morning of 20 May 1883, an 11 kilometer high cloud of ash and pumice plumed above the normally silent Krakatau, the first eruption in over two centuries. Over the next 2 months, it would deliver similar spectacles, all of which brought churning clouds of incandescent ash high into the warm tropical skies. People living in the nearby Dutch colonies on Java & Sumatra actually held parties celebrating nature’s spectacular fireworks. These awe-inspiring displays, however, were a prelude of far worse things to come.

Celebrations would come to a tragic halt in late August 1883.

At 12:53 o’clock PM on Sunday 26 August, the eruption’s first major blast sent a cloud of hot gas, ash and pumice 24 km into the afternoon sky! Debris from the smaller summer eruptions had plugged the neck of the cone, allowing pressure to build in the magma chamber. This surprise initial blast generated an eardrum-rupturing barrage accompanied by a black churning cloud that quickly turned daytime into night. Terrified villagers and Dutch colonists covered their mouths and fled into houses and huts to escape the raining storm of hot ash and pumice. This was but the opening salvo to a climactic eruption the next day.

Colonists and villagers slept anxiously through the night, praying the worst was over. Then the first of 4 stupendous eruptions began at 5:30 AM Monday morning, awakening all. They once again faced skies choked with pumice and hot ash. It all climaxed in a colossal blast at 10:00 AM that literally blew Krakatau Island apart. People heard the noise over 4600 km away, throughout the Indian Ocean – from Sri Lanka in the west, to Australia in the east. TWO-THIRDS of the island collapsed beneath the sea, into the now vacated magma chamber. Twenty-three square kilometers of the island, including all of Perboewatan and Danan, fell into a caldera 6 kilometers across.

**The climatic eruption of Krakatoa volcano, August 1883**

The explosive force was estimated at 200 megatons of TNT. By comparison, the 1945 atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima was a mere 20 kilotons. When the northern half of the island dropped beneath the ocean, it generating a series of devastating pyroclastic ash flows at sea level. Black clouds blasted across the waters of the Sundra Straits at speeds up 100 kph. Dazed villagers had barely enough time to take in the destruction of Krakatoa island before it hit. Blistering pyroclastic flows struck southern Sumatra and western Java with a vengeance. It was so hot that it incinerated entire villages and their occupants.

One thousand people alone died in the Sumatra town of Ketimbang, over 40 kilometers away. Dutch Controller Willem Beijerinck lived and worked in Ketimbang with his wife Johanna and their three children. Huddled in their house, he seriously contemplated killing his wife and children to spare them the hideous death of suffocation by hot ash. The family managed to survive by heading to high ground soon after the Sunday eruption.

Still Krakatau was not finished, as the worst was yet to come.

The collapse of the island into the sea generated immense tsunamis that ravaged the coastlines on both sides of the strait. Thousands of people who survived burns from the hot ash were now faced with a Tidal Wave 120 feet tall. Completely unprepared, survivors scrambled frantically for higher ground. Most of the closest islands, after first being overwhelmed by the hot ash, were totally submerged by the fierce wave. It stripped away of all vegetation, washing helpless people away, and removing all signs of human occupation.

The tsunami carried the helpless steamship Berouw a mile inland on Sumatra and beached in a river bed; all 28 crew members died. The Loudon was anchored in Lampong Bay, near the village of Telok Betong when the first wave approached. The ship’s Captain Johan Lindemann quickly raised anchor and turned its bow to face the tsunami. The ship somehow managed to ride over the steep crest. The wave continued past them and the shocked crew watched as the waters consumed the town until nothing remained but the open sea.

All told, the explosions hurled 45 cubic kilometers of debris into the atmosphere darkening skies 440 km away. Survivors did not see sun over Sumatra and Java for three days. Geologists recorded the shock wave around the globe as far away as London, and circled the planet seven times. Within 13 days, a layer of volcanic gas had circled the Earth, making for spectacular sunsets over Europe and the Americas. Average GLOBAL temperatures were up to 1.2 degrees C COOLER for the next FIVE years! Mother Nature had indeed put on one of her better shows.

Nobody knows how many native souls were washed out to sea by the tsunamis.

For months, the Sunda Straits were clogged with so much debris that it looked like solid ground, peppered with decaying corpses. Relief ships were unable to reach devastated coastal communities like Telok Betong for weeks. The official number of dead, calculated by the Dutch East India Company was 36,417, ninety percent of which were directly killed by the ash or tsunamis. Truer estimates including native populations and the aftermath are over 100,000 dead. Krakatoa then went to sleep.

Anak Krakatau volcano erupts 2020 — **Anak Krakatau (Son of Krakatoa) volcano erupts in 2018.**

In December 1927, local fishermen in the Sundra Strait were shocked when a column of steam began spewing from the old collapsed caldera. Krakatau had awakened after 44 years of silent slumber. Within weeks, a small, new island cone appeared above sea level. Within a year, it grew into a small island, named appropriately Anak Krakatau, Child of Krakatau.

The new peak continues to grow on average 7-9 meters every year. Krakatoa Jr. was now a 1,109 ft. island mountain again and up to its old tricks. It erupted on December 22, 2019 spewing ash and lava into the air. The eruption caused a 5 meter deadly tsunami in Banten, Pampung and Anyer. 426 people lost their lives. Anak Krakatau has erupted since in 2019, 2023, and as recently as September 11, 2026, disrupting regional air travel. Let us hope these minor eruptions are the worst it has to offer the tranquil South Pacific.

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Lost in History

Japan’s Minamata Disease was a Man-made Disaster

**Japanese mother comforting son with Minamata Disease**, **1956**

Minamata Disease is a sobering reminder of the dangers of unregulated industries in modern times – a purely human-created disease. It was first seen in 1956 in the children living in Minamata City on the coast of Japan’s southern island of Kyūshū. Medically, it’s a severe neurological syndrome with symptoms including loss of muscle control and weakness, loss of feeling in hands and feet, tunnel vision, loss of hearing, and speech abnormalities. Within a few weeks of onset, extreme cases tragically end with paralysis, convulsions and eventually death. In pregnant women, it can also lead to birth defects.

But what did humans do to create such a terrible disease?

It goes back over century to 1908, when the Japanese Chisso Corporation opened a factory in Minamata. First manufacturing fertilizers, the company saw more profit in the chemical industry. So in 1932, Chisso started producing acetaldehyde at its Minamata plant. By 1951, production was up to a whopping 6,000 tons a year. The process unfortunately lead to the production of highly toxic methyl mercury as a waste product. As is the case in such large-scale plants, they produced large quantities of chemical wastewater. Chisso’s solution was to simply dump the wastes, untreated, directly into the surrounding Minamata Bay. They did this for decades, until 1968!

The poisonous methyl mercury slowly bioaccumulated in the fish and shellfish living in Minamata Bay and the surrounding Shiranui Sea. Inevitably, Chisso’s pollutants had an environmental impact. Fisheries were damaged with reduced catches. In response to lawsuits, Chisso reached a compensation agreement with the Fishery Cooperative in 1943. While that was good, the population of Minamata still relied heavily on the bay for a substantial part of their diet. So when fished and eaten by the locals over the years, it resulted in mercury poisoning.

The first case of what would be called Minamata Disease was recorded in 1956. A 5 year-old girl was brought to the Chisso factory hospital. The doctors there were puzzled by her odd symptoms which included convulsions, difficulty walking and slurred speech. Two days later, her younger sister also began exhibiting the same symptoms and was hospitalized as well. The girls’ mother then told the doctors that her neighbor’s daughter was also sick!

After the city conducted a house-to-house check, eight more patients were found and hospitalized. By May, the hospital’s director officially reported an epidemic of an unknown illness of the central nervous system, calling it Minamata Disease.

As it was confined to Minamata, they suspected it was contagious, quarantining all the patients.

Unfortunately, this only led to the fear and stigma towards the victim’s families from their own community. As the investigation continued, the doctors heard alarming stories of the strange behavior of animals as well. For several years, cats had been convulsing, ‘going mad’ and dying. Locals called it the “Dancing Cat Disease” due to their odd seizures. Crows often fell from the sky and died, seaweed no longer grew in the bay, and hundreds of fish routinely floated dead on the surface of the Shiranui Sea every day.

Researchers from the Kumamoto School of Medicine flocked to Minamata to investigate. Slowly, doctor’s uncovered a more complete picture of the disease. It began with severe headaches and a loss of sensation and numbness in patient’s hands and feet. They became unable to grasp cups or simply fasten buttons. Then they could not walk without stumbling, their voices changed to an odd pitch. Finally they had difficulties seeing, hearing, tasting and even swallowing. The symptoms quickly worsened and were ultimately followed by severe convulsions, coma and eventual death.

**Japanese patient with Minamata Disease in 1956**

By the end of 1956, 40 people had been hospitalized, 14 of whom eventually died: a shocking mortality rate of 37%. Researchers then began to focus on what could be the cause of the strange disease. Epidemiologists realized that the victims were all clustered in fishing districts along the shores of Minamata Bay. The staple food of those families was mainly fish and shellfish caught from the sea. The local cats and dogs tended to eat scraps from family tables and died with symptoms similar to humans.

This led the researchers to deduce the outbreak was caused by heavy metal food poisoning.

The Chisso plant’s wastewater was immediately suspected as the source. The company’s own data showed that its wastewater contained heavy metals like lead, mercury, and arsenic in high enough concentrations to cause serious environmental damage. Throughout the next 2 years, many theories were proposed, until a British neurologist, Douglas McAlpine, realized that Minamata Disease closely resembled mercury poisoning.

In 1959, the mercury in Minamata Bay was finally measured. The results shocked the researchers – 2 kilograms mercury per ton of sediment. Large quantities of mercury were detected in fish, shellfish and the sediment from the bottom of the bay. The highest concentrations centered near the point where the Chisso wastewater canal entered the bay, clearly identifying the factory as the source.

Ironically, Chisso had always been a boon to the local economy. Over half of Minamata’s tax revenue came from Chisso and its local employees. And the company was responsible for supplying over a quarter of all jobs in the city. This fact, combined with the lack of other industries in the area, meant that Chisso had great power and influence in Minamata’s city government. One plant director had even been mayor. Japan allowed its chemical industry to self-regulate.

Even after Chisso was identified as the culprit, it did not stop dumping for 9 more years, until 1968.

Researchers collected hair samples from the victims and the general Minamata population. In patients, the average mercury level recorded was 705 ppm (parts per million), indicating heavy exposure. For healthy residents, the level was 191 ppm, compared to an average “safe” level of 4 ppm for the rest of Japan.

In 1959, the Japansese Ministry of Health and Welfare published its results: Minamata disease is a poisoning disease that affects the central nervous system, caused by the consumption of fish and shellfish living in Minamata Bay and its surrounding sea, the causative agent being organic mercury. The disease is not contagious or transmitted genetically. There is no cure.

The contaminated sludge in Minamata Bay was dealt with partly by land reclamation and partly by dredging – at a cost of 49 billion yen over the next 14 years. Ironically, Chisso set up a subsidiary to reclaim the mercury recovered from the sludge and sell it on the open market! Minamata Disease broke out again in 1965, along the banks of the Agano River in Niigata. The polluting factory this time was owned by Showa Denko.

Japanese Minamata Disease Map of Outbreaks — Japan’s Minamata Disease Map of Two Outbreaks in 1956 and 1965.

2,265 victims have been officially recognized in Minimata. In 1971, American photojournalist Eugene Smith spent 2 years documenting the effects of Minamata disease in a book and LIFE magazine, bringing worldwide attention to the tragedy. Finally in 1973, over 17,000 Minamata residents finally received financial compensation from Chisso amounting to 86 million (in US dollars).

The Governor of Kumamoto declared Minamata Bay safe in 1997, allowing fishing again. In 2004, 48 years later, Chisso was finally ordered by the Japanese government to pay for the clean up of its contamination. As you can imagine, additional lawsuits and compensation claims continue to this day.

In 2016, Japan ratified the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a global treaty to reduce mercury emissions. Those children who survived the disease are now in their sixties, continuing to receive regular treatment to this day. All along, their greatest wish was simply to not be ostracized by their own community. Even after it was determined that mercury was the cause, and the disease was not contagious, victims were still reviled as threats to Chisso and thus their economic livelihood in Minamata.

A movie, Minamata, was released in 2021, starring Johnny Depp as photojournalist Eugene Smith.

Hard environmental lessons were learned with Minamata and Chisso. Harder lessons were still to be learned in further industrial disasters like Union Carbide at Bhopal, India in 1984 and Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986. It teaches us that we human beings, in our endless quest for profits above population, can be both the victims and the perpetrators of its consequences.

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Lost in History

Both Germany and the Allies used Chemical Weapons in World War I

**British troops with gas masks in the World War I trenches of France, 1916**

The horrors that man is capable of unleashing upon his enemy during warfare reached a pinnacle during World War I, when BOTH slides used Poison Gas against the other’s army. World War I was the first conflict to devolve into stagnant trench warfare. This happened when the front line between the equally matched armies of Britain & France vs. Germany & Austro-Hungary stopped moving. They dug thousands of miles of trenches between them. In the middle lay a “No Man’s Land,” snaked with razor sharp barbed wire and obliterated by heavy artillery. After numerous, high-casualty battles that did nothing to move the front, both the Germany and Allies looked for any way to win battles.

New poison gas technology appeared to be the answer to their prayers.

Chlorine gas was first deployed by the German military at the Second Battle of Ypres on 22 April 1915. French, British and Canadian troops lined a 10 mile long front against the German army. At 17.00 hours, the day’s shelling ceased, and winds favorably blew toward the enemy in the west. German troops opened pressurized tanks of chlorine gas hidden at the front line trenches.

French sentries first noticed a strange, greenish-yellow cloud drifting towards them. Thinking it was a smoke screen to cover a German advance, all troops were ordered to the ladders of their trenches. The gas’s impact was immediate and horrifying. Chlorine gas destroyed a man’s ability to breath in a matter of seconds. causing death by asphyxiation. The surviving French troops retreated in terror. Even the Germans were so shocked by the deadly effect of their gas, they never followed through with a full assault.

Germany’s use of poison gas provoked immediate and widespread condemnation around the globe. Nevertheless, the poison gas cat was out of the bag, so to speak. Its use escalated for the remainder of “The Great War to End all Wars,” by Both Sides.

The first of the Allies to respond was Britain in 25 September 1915. Newly formed Special Gas Divisions attacked German lines at Loos, France around 5 o’clock AM with their new “Accessory.” They were forbidden, to use the word Poison Gas, else they be as guilty as the ‘Jerries.’ Unfortunately, along parts of the British front lines, the wind changed direction unexpectedly! The chlorine gas was blown back onto the British troops, causing over 2,000 casualties, more than inflicted on the Germans.

**A better means of delivery was needed, so both sides began firing poison gas in artillery shells.**

After chlorine, came phosgene, a gas that induced less coughing, so more would be inhaled by the enemy, increasing the kill rate. But what was the average trench soldier to do in response? At first, they were instructed to hold a urine soaked kerchief over their face to protect against the effects! Needless to say, this failed miserably. Gas mask production lagged behind gas production. It took several ineffective versions before the troops were finally provided with a reliable full face model. Uncomfortable masks with round goggles and a single filter cartridge were effective if applied fast enough.

**German chemists were a step ahead of the Allies and switched to Mustard Gas in 1917.**

Made of sulphur dichloride, the oily, brown liquid gave off what survivors described as a garlic, horseradish or mustard stench. Mustard gas was nearly invisible, and rather than immediately choking the victim, it caused large, severe and painful blisters, both in the mouth, lungs, and on the skin. Temporary blindness and pulmonary edema were induced. Mustard gas also remained potent in clothing and the soil for weeks, making infected trenches impossible to live in.

To the thousands of souls fighting in Flanders, Belgium, it was hard to imagine how the hell of trench warfare could get any worse. On 12 July 1917, German gunners fired more than 50,000 artillery shells of poison gas into the British and Canadian lines. Hospital tents up and down the front were soon bursting with more than 2,000 Allied victims, suffering from excruciating blisters across their bodies. Most were blinded, others slowly suffocating, leaving the rest disfigured and writhing in agony.

Despite the outrage, the Allies immediately engineered their own stockpiles of mustard gas.

By autumn, mustard gas was in use up and down the Western Front from Belgium to Switzerland, once again by both sides. By year’s end, the British were dropping poison gas shells onto German trenches as well. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, America’s Dow Chemical manufactured the chemical weapons for the troops.

**British soldier with gas mask for poison gas in World War I**, **1917**

Mustard gas terrified soldiers because unlike phosgene, victims were initially unaware they were being gassed. Gas masks only protected the lungs; everything else burned and blistered, even skin beneath clothing. Since it was heavier than air, clouds would settle into bomb craters and trenches, remaining there for hours, if there was no breeze.

The Germany military continued to develop a deadly array of delivery methods including artillery shells, mortar rounds, free falling bombs from bi-wing airplanes, and even in land mines. The British army alone suffered 20,000 mustard gas casualties in just the last year of the war.

The use of Mustard Gas continued right up until the Paris Armistice at 11 pm on 11 November 1918.

Although the use of poison gas was banned by the 1925 Geneva Convention, armies around the world continued to use it up through the 1930s. For example, the Japanese Empire gassed both Chinese armies and Chinese civilians in its invasion of Manchuria before WWII. During World War II, the Allies stockpiled millions of tons of mustard gas behind frontlines just in case the Nazis and Japanese decided to use it first.

In modern times, mustard gas was used most recently in the 1980’s Iran-Iraq War. Saddam Hussein ordered its use against the Iranian army, and even against Iraq’s own Kurdish population, where more than 5,000 civilians died from exposure. The legacy of those chemical weapons in Iraq later became the so-called “weapons of mass destruction” a decade later.

Today, advanced post-Cold War militaries have much more modern Nerve Agent Gases, like VX, Novichok and Sarin. They remain largely unused and stockpiled -once again by both sides (this time the U.S. and Russia). They are kept as a deterrent only, of course. Or until our military enemies, extremists, or terrorists, decide to use them against us first. Then, the deadly cycle of escalation seen during World War I, might just begin again in our modern times.

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Lost in History

The Cuban Missile Crisis – the Day Russia Blinked

Kennedy, Castro and Khrushchev — **President John F. Kennedy, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev**, **1962**

For 13 nerve-wracking days in October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the Earth closer to a nuclear WORLD WAR III than ever before. It was a direct confrontation between two major superpowers, the United States and the USSR (Soviet Union) during the so-called Cold War. It was the worst confrontation since the construction of the Berlin Wall a year earlier in 1961.

The U.S. Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 spectacularly failed to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. So in 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a secret agreement with Castro. The Soviets would place nuclear missiles on the Caribbean island to deter any future U.S. invasion. The Soviet Union’s Kremlin also disliked the number of nuclear weapons pointing at them from Western Europe’s NATO allies. They saw missiles in Cuba as a way to level the playing field.

So the secret construction of Soviet missile sites on Cuba began.

In September, President John F. Kennedy issued a public warning against the introduction of any offensive Soviet weapons into Cuba. Despite this, in October, a U–2 spy plane flew over and took aerial photos. It clearly showing construction of a medium-range ballistic nuclear missile site in Cuba. The Pentagon rushed these images to the White House on October 16th, beginning what would be called the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cuba was a mere 90 miles from Key West, Florida. The range of these missiles included New York and Washington DC!

Kennedy quickly summoned his security advisers to the West Wing, a group called the Ex Com (Executive Committee) to consider options and a course of action. The Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for an immediate air strike on the sites, followed by a U.S. invasion of Cuba! Non-military advisers recommended only stern warnings and sanctions to the Soviet Union. Kennedy and the ExCom all agreed that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. The challenge was to get them removed without triggering a nuclear world war.

In tense deliberations that stretched for nearly a week, they came up with a variety of options to end the Cuban Missile Crisis, including diplomacy, a bombing attack, and a full-scale U.S. invasion of Cuba. In the end, President Kennedy decided upon a middle-of-the-road course. On Monday, October 22nd, he ordered a U.S. Naval “Quarantine” of Cuba. Calling it a “quarantine” technically meant this was not a “blockade,” which assumed a State of War existed between the superpowers.

That same day, President Kennedy sent a strongly worded letter to Premier Khrushchev.

In it, he declared the U.S. would NOT permit offensive weapons of any kind in Cuba. He demanded the Soviets dismantle the missile bases under construction, AND return all offensive weapons to the Soviet Union. President Kennedy then went on national TV that night and informed American citizens, and the world, of the threat to national security these Cuban missiles represented. He explained the naval quarantine he had ordered, and the global military consequences if the crisis escalated. His stern message was clear:

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba anywhere in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
President John F. Kennedy, 1962

The Joint Chiefs of Staff moved the USA to DEFCON 3 as naval ships began to surround Cuba, preparing for a possible military strike. People around the globe nervously worried and waited. WHAT WOULD THE SOVIET RESPONSE BE? Many feared the Earth was finally at the brink of nuclear annihilation and looked for the location of the nearest bomb shelter.

cuban missile crisis headline 1962 — **Cuban Missile Crisis Headline, October 1962**

Americans began hoarding food and gas in their basements.

In schools around the country, teachers ran daily Duck and Cover drills in their classrooms. In Duck and Cover, students drop quickly to the floor and scramble under their desks. Then they lie curled up in a ball, face down, and cover their head with their hands. The goal being to protect against a nuclear blast where the force of the explosion could shatter glass windows and create an immense blast of heat.

On Wednesday, October 24th, Khrushchev responded with his own statement. He said the U.S. “Blockade” was an “Act of Aggression” and that Soviet ships would proceed to Cuba. The crisis had reached a superpower stalemate. A crucial moment arrived later that day, when Soviet ships neared the line of U.S. Navy vessels enforcing the quarantine outside Havana, Cuba. Any attempt to breach the blockade would spark a military confrontation that could escalate to a nuclear exchange and World War III. But the Soviet ships stopped short of the blockade!

Meanwhile, U.S. spy planes showed the Soviet missile sites were nearly operational and ready to fire. The Pentagon placed military forces at DEFCON 2—meaning war was imminent. President Kennedy and the ExCom huddled at the White House and prepared for an attack on Cuba. On October 26th, Kennedy told his advisers it appeared that only a U.S. attack on Cuba would end the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he insisted on giving diplomacy … one last chance.

“I thought it was the last day I would ever see.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, 1962

That afternoon, the crisis took a strange turn. ABC News told the White House they’d been approached by a Russian agent. He suggested the Soviet Union would remove their missiles from Cuba, IF the U.S. would not to invade the island. While the Pentagon scrambled to validate this “back-channel” offer, Nikita Khrushchev sent Kennedy a communication in the middle of the night, October 26th. It was an emotional message raising the specter of nuclear holocaust, and proposed a resolution that matched what ABC had heard!

“If there is no intention to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.”
Kremlin message to the White House, 1962

The next day, Saturday, October 27th, Khrushchev sent a second message, indicating that any proposed deal must include the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. That same day, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba. 35-year-old pilot Major Rudy Anderson was killed in the crash. President Kennedy decided to ignore the 2nd message and respond only to the 1st. That night, he sent a communication to Khrushchev proposing the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba under supervision of the United Nations, and a guarantee that the U.S. would NOT invade Cuba.

It was a risky to ignore the 2nd Khrushchev message. So Attorney General Robert Kennedy (the president’s younger brother) met with Soviet Ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, in Washington. He said the U.S. was planning to remove the missiles from Turkey anyway, and that it would do so soon, but this could NOT be part of any public statement. The next morning, October 28th, Nikita Khrushchev issued a statement that Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed from Cuba!!

The planet and its anxious population took a collective sigh of relief.

By the end of November 1962, the U.S. was satisfied with the complete removal of Soviet missiles and ended its naval quarantine of Cuba. The U.S. also quietly removed their Jupiter missiles from Turkey the next year, in 1963. The resolution of Missile Crisis strengthened President John F. Kennedy’s image both in the U.S. and internationally. It also helped turn the negative world opinion surrounding his failed Bay of Pigs Invasion a year earlier.

In an effort to prevent this type of confrontation from ever happening again, a direct telephone link between the White House and Moscow’s Kremlin was established in 1963, known as the famous “HOTLINE” (though never red) phone. So a direct verbal conversation could now take place between the U.S. President and Soviet Premier when needed, and avert a World War III.

**Countries with Nuclear Weapons, 2026**

The tense Cold War between the East and West was far from over though. It would last another 29 YEARS, until the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Of course, the world’s nuclear arsenals, though greatly diminished by subsequent arms reduction treaties, still contains tens of thousands of nuclear warheads. They remain under the control of the U.S., Russia Federation, Britain, France and many other countries, including China, North Korea, Israel, India and Pakistan. Let us hope another such nuclear crisis does not evolve between any of those players.

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Lost in History

Mother Jones, the Mother of Labor Unions

You may know the name Mother Jones from the progressive news magazine & website. But its namesake, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones however, was a fearless fighter for the working class and a tireless labor activist. Her wealthy opponents in industry and congress labeled her “The most dangerous woman in America!” Mary Jones combined radical organizing methods and energetic speeches to mobilize thousands of lower-class workers into unions between 1872 and 1924. She literally shaped the way civil disobedience could be used to fight for economic and social justice.

The fiery Mary Harris Jones actually started her life quite humbly. She was born in County Cork, Ireland in 1837. Her family was one of the starving thousands that fled the Irish Potato Famine and emigrated across the Atlantic. They landed first in Canada, where her father worked laying railroad tracks, and eventually settled in the United States. She went to school in Toronto, then moved to the U.S. to begin a career as a simple dressmaker in Tennessee.

Young Mary Harris experienced far too many tragedies in her early life. In Memphis, she married George Jones in 1861, an iron worker and active member of the Iron Molders’ Union. He fought for worker’s rights at a time when unions were still in their infancy. In rapid succession, they had four young children together. But a devastating yellow fever epidemic in 1867 killed her husband and ALL FOUR children. She was only 30 by the time the tragedy was complete.

“One by one, my four little children sickened and died. . . I sat alone through nights of grief. No one came to help me.” – Mary Harris Jones

In shock and heart-broken, Mary moved to Chicago and opened a seamstress shop, sewing clothes for the wealthy residents of the North Side. It has here, watching workers slave away in textile factories, that Mary’s resentment for economic inequality began to bubble. But then suddenly, tragedy struck again. She lost both her home and shop in The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (see related post).

With all her possessions in ashes, Mary sought shelter with a union, the Knights of Labor. There, she slowly began to see the labor movement as her new family, and started working as an activist. She would commit the rest of her life to the struggle for humane blue collar wages and working conditions.

Mary found her voice and began giving inspirational speeches to encourage workers to unionize. She traveled to numerous strikes, helping coal miners in Pennsylvania in 1873 and railroad workers in 1877. From 1880 onward, Jones participated in hundreds of strikes across the country. The way in which she genuinely cared for any and all workers earned her the well-deserved nickname “Mother” Jones.

They also called her “The Miner’s Angel,” but she rejected that label, saying bluntly, “I’m no Angel.” Mother Jones became an active campaigner for the United Mine Workers Union in West Virginia. In the 1890s, she mobilized miners’ wives to march with brooms and mops in order to block company strikebreakers from entering the mines.

She once proudly said of herself, “I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a hell-raiser!”

Her workers rights movement assisted both the United Mine Workers and the American Railway Unions. They launched major strikes for living wages in 1894, a concept still relevant today. For Mary Jones, it was about more than just a fair union contract. She argued that miners should be able to collectively direct their own economic destinies, a radical idea at the time.

Mother Jones even encouraged militant action when warranted. While the workers militias and the strikes were often brutally crushed, they helped perfect Jones’ methods for mobilizing struggling communities. She emerged from these skirmishes undeterred, inspired by the new labor and socialist movement.

She was considered by the authorities (both corporate and political) to be a dangerous radical. Only five-feet tall, now with snow-white hair, and in her typical all-black dress, Jones was indeed a confrontational presence. She was mocked by factory and mine owners as the “Grandmother of all Agitators.”

Mother Jones replied that she would someday be known as “the Great-grandmother of all Agitators!”

She believed in organizing at the community level. to demonstrate to workers their capacity to manage their own destiny. Wherever she went, Mother Jones entered into the lives of the common workers and truly became a part of them. She put women and children at the center of struggles, making it a family-based movement.

One of Jones’ key contributions was building unions that bridged racial and ethnic divides. She believed that unskilled immigrants and blacks should be included as well. She condemned white supremacy groups and argued that black and immigrant workers were some of the best, most loyal union members.

Oddly, Mother Jones opposed Women’s Suffrage. She worried that focusing on the vote was diverting working-class women from more important economic justice. She saw the Suffrage movement as only a richer women’s distraction. “You don’t need a Vote to raise Hell!” she proclaimed.

A political progressive, she was a founder of the Social Democratic Party in 1898. Jones also helped establish the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, and published numerous articles in national newspapers and the International Socialist Review.

When asked where she lived, Mother Jones replied that her home was “Wherever there was a fight.”

Jones insisted that the national and state governments address social injustice as well. Demanding child labor laws, she organized children textile workers to march on President Theodore Roosevelt’s Oyster Bay home in 1903. In 1914, the Colorado militia massacred 20 women and children in a miners tent colony. Jones persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to intervene and negotiate a truce between the workers and the state.

Mother Jones with President Calvin Coolidge, 1924 — **Mother Jones with President Calvin Coolidge**, **1924**

At other times, the authorities were not so tolerant of Mother Jones. When violence broke out during a 1912 miners strike in West Virginia, the court convicted her, at age 82. The judge sentenced her to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder. Nationwide rallies and protests led the governor to quickly commute her sentence. Undeterred, she returned to organizing workers. Nothing it seemed could dissuade Mother Jones from her work for workers.

Mary was also a global organizer, who believed in a world-wide labor revolution. By 1910, she was fighting for Mexican labor rights against the country’s dictatorship and its U.S. supporters. When she finally traveled to Mexico City in 1921, workers showered her with red carnations and blue violets, calling her “Madre Juanita.”

Newspapers of the day called her a “Folk Hero” and “the most well-known woman in America.”

Mother Jones lived her last years with friends in Silver Spring, MD. In 1930, her life was celebrated with special labor events across the country. She even gave her last speech for an Edison moving picture camera. She died in November, 1930 at age 93. A friend of laborers to the end, she asked to be buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Illinois, next to victims of an 1898 mine riot. Her funeral was attended by ten of thousands of mourners.

Mother Jones was truly an inspirational folk hero to generations of American laborers for over six decades. Many of her dreams were not realized in her lifetime, but they did come to pass after World War II, when the GI solders returned home. The men took jobs in countless factories, mills and mines scattered across the U.S. and, yes, joined countless established labor unions. These unions ensured fare wages, health benefits, and pensions to millions of Americans of the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers, a fine legacy of Mother Jones.

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Lost in History

The Rise and Fall of the Germany’s Infamous Berlin Wall

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THE RISE – 1961

The fortified Berlin Wall and No Man's Land — The fortified Berlin Wall and “No Man’s Land” in East Berlin, 1962

By 1961, the Cold War raged between the U.S. and USSR. The fortified ‘Iron Curtain‘ border had been raised; national borders dividing Western & Eastern Europe. ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) with nuclear warheads were pointed at Moscow, Washington and nearly every major city by either side. Germany was split into communist East and democratic West Germany at the end of WWII. Berlin, however, though divided as well, still allowed free movement of its citizens between the East and West halves. The Berlin Wall would soon change all that.

Berlin therefore provided an “escape route” via which suffering East Germans could defect to the booming West, in pursuit of freedom and a better way of life. Since the end of World War II, 2.5 million people had fled to the West, reducing East Germany’s population by more than 15%. The country was rapidly losing its most skilled workers and educated professionals. During the summer of 1961, the East German exodus reached record, critical levels. In July alone, some 30,000 people fled East Germany through West Berlin!

So on a fateful summer weekend, the Communist Party in Moscow’s Kremlin decided upon the unthinkable -plug the leak and completely seal off West Berlin from the surrounding East Germany. Communist First Secretary, Walter Ulbricht, gave the order. Just past midnight on Saturday 12 August 1961, hundreds of trucks crowded with soldiers and construction workers rumbled through the dark streets of East Berlin. They worked quickly and quietly, stringing up a 100 mile long barbed wire fence, completely surrounding West Berlin. While most Berliners were happily sleeping, the crews then began tearing up the streets that entered into the West.

Just before dawn, East Germany cut the East Berlin telephone wires to the West.

When they woke Sunday morning, Berliners on both sides were stunned by the shocking sight in their city. No longer could East Berliners freely cross the border for plays or soccer matches. No longer could the 60,000 commuters head to work in West Berlin for better-paying jobs. No longer could families and friends cross the border to hug their relatives and loved ones. Whichever side of the border one went to sleep on August 12th, they were stuck on that side for the next 3 decades. East German armed patrols, under shoot-to-kill orders, made sure of that. The few East Berliners that attempted to charge the fence were shot dead on the spot. Sunday, August 13th, became forever known as Stacheldrahtsonntag Barbed Wire Sunday.

In just two weeks, the East German military and an army of construction workers replaced the simple wire fence with a 12 foot high concrete block wall, topped with more barbed wire AND 186 guard towers. Roads, subways, canals and bridges were all cut off from West Berlin. That half of the city was basically a democratic island in Communist East Germany. The Soviet Politburo dubbed it the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” though it would be known as the Berlin Wall or the Wall of Shame to the rest of the world. Checkpoint Charlie, near the Brandenburg gate, became the most famous of the heavily armed border crossings.

Over the years, East Germany strengthened the wall and widened the zone on the East Berlin side. It became a heavily fortified, perpetually guarded, and booby-trapped barrier, dividing the city in two. Entire city blocks on the East side were demolished to create a carefully guarded NO MAN’S LAND in front of the wall. President John F. Kennedy denounced the Berlin Wall ,and visited West Berlin in 1963 to give his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, standing before the wall and the Brandenburg Gate. Over the next 28 years, hundreds of escape attempts, either over or under the wall, would be made by daring, desperate East Berliners. A few succeeded, but most ended fatally.

THE FALL – 1989

Ironically, the fall of the Berlin Wall happened nearly as suddenly as its rise. There had been signs that the Communist bloc of nations was weakening. But the East German Communist Party insisted their country just needed modernization rather than any drastic revolution. Communism began to give way to democracies in early 1989 in countries like Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. This opened new border exodus points to East Germans who still wanted to finally flee to the West. East Germany responded by closing the borders to those once Communist nations. East German citizens did not agree and for the first time in decades began to mount demonstrations in East Berlin’s plazas chanting:

Wir wollen Raus! Wir wollen Raus! (We want out!)

In October 1989, the long-time East German president abruptly resigned. The new leader, Egon Krenz, appeared to be more in step with his neighbors and tolerant of round trip travel between countries. Would the borders finally be re-opened to allow this? people wondered. German citizens on both sides held their breath. Then suddenly, on the evening of November 9th, 1989, around 7 o’clock pm, a Politburo spokesman announced at a press conference broadcast on Berlin TV and radio:

“Permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints between the GDR (East Germany) into the FRG (West Germany).”
Gunter Schabowski, Politburo spokesperson

When asked by reporters if this included Berlin, he shrugged and said, “Yes.” The official blundered however when asked “WHEN?” Since the order he was given failed to mention the timing, he hesitated for a second and said “Immediately.” If fact, it was suppose to take effect late the next day, which would have allowed orders to reach the surprised border guards.

People on both sides of the Berlin Wall heard the news on television and were in shock. Were the borders really open? Hundreds of East Germans left their homes and marched to the 6 checkpoint border crossings, demanding to be allowed to cross. “Tor Auf! (Open the Gate)!” they shouted. No officer among the overwhelmed guards was willing to give a kill order to maintain order, so instead, … they allowed people to cross to the West, with little to no identity check.

Very quickly, thousands inundated the Berlin Wall from both sides. West Berliners greeted East Berliners with flowers and champagne. There were huge impromptu celebrations, with people hugging, kissing, cheering, dancing, and crying. Many began climbing to the top of the wall, chipping away at it with hammers and chisels. More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that unbelievable weekend. One journalist called it, “The greatest street party in the history of the world!”

Fall of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989 — Fall of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate, November 9, 1989

Over the next few weeks, the Checkpoints remained open. Berliners slowly chipped away at the Berlin border Wall and cut it into smaller slabs, and removed chunks by bulldozers and cranes. By the end of its destruction, it produced 1.7 million tons of rubble. Crowds around the world cheered every single moment of it. Some of the larger pieces of the Berlin Wall toured the world and have become museum pieces and even collectibles.

It would take 3 years to completely removed all of the hated border wall. German national reunification of East and West was officially complete less than a year later in October 3rd, 1990 after 45 years of separation. Over the decades since, the property once covered with the Berlin Wall has been redeveloped into housing and businesses. All that remains of the infamous Checkpoint Charlie is nothing more than a small shack in the middle of a street. A simple row of cobblestones remains in the streets, snaking its way across Berlin, marking the Walls once foreboding presence.

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失落的历史

Bhopal India – the World’s Worst Industrial Disaster

Union Carbide plant, Bhopal, India after explosion — **Union Carbide plant, Bhopal, India after the 1984 explosion**

Over 40 years ago, on the night of December 3, 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, released 30 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate gas into the air. It went primarily into the poor slums surrounding the factory, exposing more than half a million souls to the deadly cloud.

The thick, heavy gas stayed low to the ground, causing victims throats and eyes to burn, inducing vomiting, internal bleeding, and death. Estimates of the death toll vary from as few as 3,800 in the early days to as many as 16,000.

How could this disaster have happened in today’s modern age?

In the 1970s, the Indian government lured Union Carbide (UC) to build a pesticide plant in Bhopal in central India. The government itself would keep a 22% stake in the company’s Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited. The plant produced the pesticide carbaryl using methyl isocyanate (MIC). The densely populated Bhopal site was unfortunately not zoned for such a hazardous industry.

In 1984, the factory operated with safety equipment and procedures far below the standards found in its sister plant in the United State’s West Virginia. The local government was aware of the safety issues. But they were unwilling to burden the owners with pollution regulations for fear of the economic impact and the loss of such a large regional employer.

At 11 o’clock pm on 2 December 1984, a million Bhopal resident slept in the nearby slums. An operator at Plant C noticed a leak of methyl isocyanate gas and growing pressure inside storage tank #610. A faulty valve allowed water meant for cleaning pipes to mix with 40 tons of MIC. The vent-gas scrubber, which neutralized toxic emissions, had been turned off 3 weeks earlier. A refrigeration unit that cooled the storage tank had been drained of coolant for use elsewhere. The gas flare tower was out of action for 3 months. Pressure and heat from the MIC + water exothermic reaction continued to build for 2 hours.

Finally, at 1 am, December 3, a loud explosion rumbled through the plant as a safety valve blew away, sending a plume of methyl isocyanate gas into the night air. Within minutes, a toxic gas cloud flooded the surrounding streets of Bhopal. Within hours, those same streets were littered with human corpses and the carcasses of cows, dogs and birds. An estimated 3,800 people died immediately that night, mostly in the poor slums adjacent to the plant. As a cool morning breeze picked up, it carried the poisonous yellow gas to the rest of the city, killing even more.

The Union Carbide plant’s alarm system was not triggered for hours. The factory managers raised NO alarm to the city. Suddenly, thousands of people awoke choking. Those that could, started running to Bhopal’s 2 local hospitals. They were soon overwhelmed, a crisis exacerbated since doctors didn’t know what gas was causing the odd symptoms they were seeing. Victims were coughing up blood, unable to breathe, fainting from dizziness, suffered blistering skin rashes, and sudden blindness. Bhopal’s doctors had no experience in dealing with an industrial disaster.

“I woke up suffocating! It felt like someone had thrown hot coals in my eyes.”
Quote from Bhopal victim

Victims of the Bhopal Disaster in India, 1984

In the neighborhoods closest to the plant, the gas caused internal hemorrhaging, pneumonia and death, leaving bodies in the streets as they tried to flee their homes. The government later estimated over 3,000 people died within a few hours. The two hospitals treated over 50,000 patients in the first 2 days.

Methyl isocyanate is extremely toxic and, if its air concentration reaches 21ppm (parts per million), it causes death within minutes. Near the Bhopal plant, the level was several fold higher! Bhopal had a population of about 8,500,000 souls that night. Approximately a half a million people were immediately exposed.

Overwhelmed with the dead, mass burials and cremations began within days.

Officially, the government stated the gas leak was contained in 8 hours. It’s estimated that about 40 tons of methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide factory. Estimates of the dead in the first few days run as high as 10,000, with 20,000 premature deaths reported in the subsequent 20 years.

Immediately after the disaster, Union Carbide began to distance itself from responsibility, shifting blame to its Indian subsidiary. It also spread sabotage theories that it was perpetuated by Sikh extremists, but no evidence existed to substantiate that. At every turn, Union Carbide attempted to manipulate and withhold data. To this date, the company has never stated exactly what was in the deadly cloud that enveloped the city that December night.

The toxic plume had barely cleared when the first multi-billion dollar lawsuit was filed in a U.S. court. This was the beginning of years of litigation in which the affects of the tragedy on Bhopal’s poor were largely ignored.

The Indian government sued Union Carbide in a civil case.

In a 1989 settlement agreed by the Indian Supreme Court, UC finally agreed to pay $470 million to the Indian government, to be distributed to Bhopal victims as a final settlement. The figure was based on the disputed claim that only 3,000 people died and 100,000 suffered permanent disabilities. The Indian government, notorious for its corruption, has yet to distribute all of the settlement. Had compensation in Bhopal been paid at the same rate that victims were awarded in U.S,. the liability would have been greater than $10 billion!

By 2003, over 500,000 people were awarded compensation. The average amount to families of the victims was between only $550 to $2,200, which could not pay for the chronic lung ailments, life-long eye problems, and birth defects survivors developed.

Victims Wall in Bhopal, India, 1984 — Victims Wall Of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India, 1984

As a final insult, Union Carbide closed its Bhopal plant and failed to completely clean up what was now a hazardous waste site. Today, the rusting, deserted complex continues to leak toxic chemicals and heavy metals into the soil and aquifers of Bhopal. Thousands of tons of hazardous waste remain buried underground. In 1999, Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide for $9 billion in stock. In 2009, the Delhi based Centre for Science and Environment monitoring lab reported that pesticide groundwater contamination was still detectable 3 km from the factory.

As its legacy, the Bhopal tragedy became the worst chemical catastrophe in global history to date. The name ‘Union Carbide‘ is today synonymous with industrial mismanagement, disaster, and death. In 2023, Netflix released a mini-series on the heroes of the Bhopal Disaster entitled, “The Railway Men.“

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Lost in History Menu

The Santiago Church Fire – the Deadliest in History

La Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, Santiago, Chile, 1863 — **La Iglesia de la Compan**ia de Jesus fire, Santiago, Chile, 1863

The deadliest fire disaster ever recorded is not where you might think. Not the Great London Fire, not the Great Chicago Fire, not in New York City. It occurred at The Church of the Company of Jesus in Santiago, Chile on 18 December 1863. The horrible Santiago Church Fire consumed the large cathedral during a Catholic Mass for the Virgin Mary, killing over 2,500 people, mostly women and their families.

La Iglesia de la Compania de Jesús was a huge Jesuit cathedral that stood in downtown Santiago. The terrible fire occurred during the Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception no less. The congregation celebrated this popular Catholic Holy Day by decorating the church’s interior with hundreds of flowers, candles, oil lamps and ornate, cloth wall coverings. A statue of the Virgin Mary was moved to the main altar, surrounded by a half-moon shaped candelabra.

It was Santiago’s custom to celebrate this Holy Day with great pomp and passion.

The congregation’s curate had begun a ladies religious society, known as Las Hijas de Maria (the Daughters of Mary) who organized the annual celebration. It always ended with a grand illumination of the Church’s interior for a mass on Tuesday evening, December 8th.

That fateful year, determined to outdo all prior celebrations, the women adorned the interior with long garlands of flowers and an unprecedented number of candles and paraffin oil lamps. The ladies had spent the year weaving ornate cloth tapestries with images of the life of the Virgin Mother. The Archbishop expressed concern over the extravagance, but reluctantly gave his consent to the ladies.

Towards dusk, a stream of mostly women, both old and young, garbed in their best dresses and gowns, poured into the church until every seat and aisle was packed. Attendants closed the side doors, except for the main entrance, so the sound of the hymns and prayers could be heard in the courtyard outside. At a little before seven o’clock, the attendants began lighting up the church. It was truly an amazing site to see – the cathedral’s dark interior aglow with thousands of flames and hundreds of intricate tapestries.

The Santiago Church Fire started in the middle of Mass, a few minutes before 7 o’clock pm.

One of many oil lamps on the main altar ignited one of the cloth wall hangings behind it. An attendant jumped up and attempted to smother the flames with another wall cloth. He knocked over the lamp, spilling its flammable oil. This caused the fire to jump to the flanking wall hangings. From there, flames curled up the garlands of flowers to the church’s wooden roof! All this happened rapidly in a few shocking minutes.

The first few moments were filled with the shock and shrieks of the attendees at the destruction of their beloved altar. They quickly changed to thousands of screams as the flames shot up the walls to the wooden roof. It was clearly time to run for your life! The crowds rushed to the closed side doors only to find they swung inward and were impossible open with the crush of bodies pressing forward. Attendants had closed the doors in order to create more space for extra worshipers to stand. Loud screams of horror burst from the panicked masses.

The crowd of mostly women, rosary beads still clutched in their hands, rushed next for the main exit, a single set of doors. Chilean women of 1863, like those in Europe, wore large hoop skirts. These dresses contributed to the crush of people in the aisles, and the tripping and trampling that ensued as the throng rushed to escape the fire behind them. Soon the main doors too became blocked by a growing mass of bodies, trapping all the poor souls behind them.

The great wooden dome over the altar caught fire next.

Interior of the Santiago Church of the Company of Jesus fire, 1863 — **Interior of the Santiago Church Fire, Chile, 1863**

Traveling along the dry ceiling, the flames ran like hissing serpents down the length of the church roof. The lamps suspended from the roof by ropes, snapped and dropped, exploding among the mass of women beneath. Burning embers and firebrands rained down on the compacted crowd. Clothing soon caught fire. Smoke quickly filled the cathedral, making it harder and harder to breathe.

Those out in the plaza stood paralyzed by the horrible sight. The lurid glow inside illuminated the thousands of struggling women, some with faces elevated in prayer, others with hands stretched out towards the door. The scorched and injured sank to the floor, while the stronger battled over them, climbing in desperation. Mothers clasping their little children close, shielding them from the flames, already blistering their own skin. Children clung back in fear.

Outside the church, men desperately tried to chop down the thick side doors. Rescuers at the main doors were seized by dozens of outstretched hands. Imagine seeing those fearful faces and hearing the screams of thousands behind them. They continued to drag out hundreds of the burnt living, until falling roof timbers halted any hope of saving more. The entire floor of the church was now a sea of fire. Thousands of women, from the white-haired to hairless infants, madres, abuelas, hermanas, and hijas began to die.

Gradually, the terrible screams from within grew fainter and fainter.

Soon an awful silence filled the plaza, with only the angry roar of the hellish furnace, that just minutes before been their beloved iglesia. The two bell towers followed the roof within the hour. The belfry fell to earth with an awful crash, burying the scorched bodies and ending their suffering. Many in the plaza knelt silently to pray.

The plaza was filled with the rescued, spread out on the ground. Hundreds of husbands and fathers rushed about, calling the names of loved ones. All the physicians of the city rushed to the plaza, ministering to the burned survivors. Rescuers took hundreds to Santiago hospitals. Many of those only lived a few hours however, due to their severe burns.

In hindsight, even the most common-sense precautions had not been taken. The absence of any fire brigade at that time contributed to the devastation. Santiago, a city of a hundred thousand, possessed only 3 three steamer engines, all out of order that night. Of the 3,000 persons within the church, only five hundred escaped, and most of them wounded or severely burned.

By midnight, 5 hours later, the flames finally began to subside.

At dawn, the church had been reduced to a smoldering heap of black rubble, surrounded by 4 scorched stone walls. By the light of day, the spectacle was indescribably horrible. 2,500 corpses, in every stage of combustion, lay in agonizing mounds inside around the exit doors. The layers of the bodies were disfigured beyond recognition.

All the officiating priests escaped through the vestry door with the holy relics in hand. The vestry door was then closed to keep the Santiago Church Fire from spreading to the rectory mansion next door. No doubt hundreds of victims could have found safety through that door. Vocal outrage fumed in the press and public at the near criminal indifference of the priests to the safety of their largely female congregation.

Around 2,500 perished in La Iglesia de la Compania de Jesús fire, about 2 to 3 percent of Santiago’s entire population of 100,000 at the time. Entire families were killed. Santiago was a city of mourning with the entire Chilean Republic joining in their grief. Clean up of all the burnt or suffocated victims took 10 gruesome days. Most bodies were so badly burned they could not be identified. The city buried those poor souls in a mass grave at the Cemetario General de Santiago.

Virgin Mary statue at the site of la Iglesia de la Compana de Jesus — Virgin Mary statue at the former site of la Iglesia de la Compana de Jesus, Santiago, Chile.

The city eventually destroyed the remains of The Church of the Company of Jesus the next year. A garden was planted in its place, which is now a part of the grounds of the Ex Congreso Nacional (former National Congress) on the Calle Compania de Jesus. A white statue of the Virgin Mary was erected where the main altar had once stood.

The Santiago Church Fire remains deadliest fire disaster ever recorded. The garden and statue still exist today. Should you visit Santiago, Chile, take time to pause a moment at its base. Ponder the tragic loss of life during the Santiago Church Fire and say a prayer for the fallen women and children.

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Lost in History