Browsing: Nature

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…

A Brief History On May 22, 2021, what may be the saddest and most bizarre event to strike an athletic competition in progress occurred in Gansu, China.  An ultra-marathon held in the Yellow River Stone Forest was the final race for 21 of the 172 long distance runners competing in the 100 km race. Digging Deeper During the race, the weather had turned cold, rain and possibly graupel, a form of frozen rain, pelted the hapless runners as temperatures dipped from an “apparent” 34 degrees Fahrenheit to about 23 degrees Fahrenheit in wind gusts between 47 and 55 miles per…

A Brief History On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off on his non-stop, solo trans-Atlantic flight, a flight into aviation history.  Five years later, in 1932, Amelia Earhart took off on her flight as the first female pilot to fly non-stop solo across the Atlantic. Digging Deeper Numerous great aviation milestones have been achieved, including around the world flights, solar powered flights, altitude and speed records, and other great feats of aviation skill and technology.  We wonder what the next great aviation milestones are going to be, or even should be, and we nominate a few of those here:…

A Brief History On May 17, 1983, the US government was obligated to release information due to a newspaper’s Freedom of Information Act request about the largest Mercury pollution source in history, the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex, nuclear facilities first constructed during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. Digging Deeper The site of the second self-sustaining atomic pile reactor in the world, Plutonium was produced there from Uranium to make atom bombs.  From 1950 to 1963, 11 million kilos of Mercury were used for isotope separation,…

A Brief History On May 15, 2010, Australian 16 year old Jessica Watson completed a non-stop and solo unassisted sail voyage around the world, the youngest person to achieve this feat. Digging Deeper Watson piloted a 33.6 foot sailboat on her trip of seven months that covered nearly 20,000 nautical miles.  She is just one of many people that achieved great feats before turning 18 years old, some of whom include: American Marjorie Gestring became the youngest Olympic Gold Medalist in 1936 when she won the 3-meter diving event at the age of 13.  Eight Olympic champions have been age…