A Brief History On July 10, 2007, Turkish adventurer Erden Eruç, almost 46 years old at the time, set off on what may be the greatest feat of human endurance and physical performance in history, the solo, only human powered circumnavigation of the Earth. As if this feat was not daunting enough, he threw in making it a point to climb the tallest mountain on each continent as part of his trip! For financial reasons, he ended up journeying on a route that did not include all of the tallest mountains on each continent. Digging Deeper Eruç accomplished this feat…
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A Brief History On June 18, 2023, the deep-sea submarine Titan imploded 3,500 meters beneath the surface of the Atlantic, killing the crewman and the four tourists aboard. The Titan was a commercial sub designed to take tourists to visit the resting place of the RMS Titanic, which sank in 1912 Digging Deeper If you think ticket prices at Disney World are expensive, try the regular price of a seat in the Titan at $250,000, or the discount price of $150,000! Regardless of price, sometimes tourism goes bad, such as when a tourist airliner or helicopter crashes, a cruise ship…
A Brief History On June 5, 1976, the Teton Dam on the Teton River in Idaho collapsed, a catastrophic failure while it was filling for the first time! Digging Deeper The 3,100 foot long earthen dam soared 305 feet high and was designed to contain over 288,000 acre feet of water. Sadly, its failure cost the lives of 11 people and over 16,000 head of livestock. Unsuitable soil used to construct the dam was blamed for the failure. The killer dam has yet to be rebuilt. Far from the worst US dam related disaster, the Teton Dam failure is dwarfed…
A Brief History On May 28, 2016, animal lovers were subjected to the horror of a zoo worker from the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden shooting a beloved adult male gorilla named Harambe to death. A three year old boy had climbed into the gorilla exhibit and was scooped up by the big ape, causing fear that the boy would be harmed. Digging Deeper The mother of the subject child was at the zoo with perhaps four children and lost track of the boy who climbed into the gorilla exhibit. Her inattention led numerous people to accuse her of causing…
A Brief History On May 25, 2001, American mountain climber, adventurer, author, and speaker, Erik Weihenmayer, became the first blind person to reach the top of Mt. Everest in Nepal. A year later, he added to his collection of fantastic feats by becoming the 150th person to scale each of the “Seven Summits,” the tallest mountain on each of the continents. Digging Deeper Weihenmayer suffered from a degenerative eye disease as a child, resulting in his vision loss by his teen years. A high school wrestler, he also began rock climbing, graduated from Boston College, and became a teacher while…
