Sinkholes That Appeared Out Of Nowhere

The ground is great because it’s there. Of all the fears and uncertainties life throws at us, one thing we can always count on is the ground being exactly where it was yesterday. So when you peek out your front window one morning and see a yawning pit where you used to have a lawn—or neighbors—it can be a bit unsettling. Well, welcome to the lives of these people.

10

Waterloo, Illinois

On March 8, 2013, Mark Mihal was enjoying a round of golf with some friends when a sinkhole suddenly opened up directly below him, plunging him 18 feet down into a muddy pit. Startled, his friends ran to the clubhouse to alert the manager. When they returned, Ed Magaletta, one of Mark’s golfing buddies, tied a rope to his waist and climbed down into the sinkhole to perform an impromptu rescue.

The golf course sinkhole was bell shaped, with just a small opening on the surface that widened to about 10 feet in diameter at the bottom of the hole. According to a local geologist who looked into the matter, the sinkhole was caused by limestone slowly eroding away due to groundwater. The result, as Mark can attest to, is that one moment you’re standing on what appears the be solid ground, and the next moment you’re not. The incident occurred in the Annbriar Golf Course in Waterloo, Illinois.

9

Ottawa, Canada

In early September, 2010, Juan Unger was on his way home from work when all of a sudden the road collapsed in front of him. With no time to stop and no room to swerve lest he crash into the other cars on the road, he took the only option left open to him—he drove straight into it.

The cause of the sinkhole was a sewer line that had burst under the Canadian highway, leaving an open space beneath the asphalt that eventually crumbled in on itself. Although the hole started small—barely large enough for Unger’s car—it quickly expanded across the highway until it was about the size of an Olympic pool.

8

Guatemala City, Guatemala

One of the most famous sinkholes of the past decade occurred in Guatemala City, Guatemala, in 2010. On May 30, an entire intersection in the middle of the city simply disintegrated and left an almost perfectly circular hole 300 feet deep and 60 feet wide, taking one of the buildings with it.

So far geologists aren’t sure what caused the Guatemala sinkhole to form, but believe it was either natural—water erosion on the limestone beneath the surface, forming an empty cavern over the years—or it was caused by a burst sewage line, which creates the same effect, just slightly faster. This is the second sinkhole in Guatemala City in three years—a similar incident happened there in 2007.

7

Picher, Oklahoma

Picher, Oklahoma is one giant sinkhole waiting to happen. Actually, it’s dozens of sinkholes in the midst of happening. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this little Oklahoma town is now the most toxic place in the country. And unsurprisingly, it’s now a ghost town (Wikipedia puts the total population at 20).

Due to extensive mining around and under the city, there have been numerous accounts of sinkholes appearing overnight as old mining shafts collapse. Even worse, some of the sinkholes experience a second life—with a vengeance. Underground water often comes bubbling up to the surface, highly acidic and rich with heavy metals from the mining waste, turning the sinkholes into toxic lakes.

6

Seffner, Florida

On February 28, 2013, a sinkhole appeared where Jeff Bush least expected it—in the middle of his bedroom. Hearing a crash and a yell, Jeff’s brother Jeremy ran to his room and found a 20 foot wide hole right in the middle of the house and his brother nowhere in sight. A television was still dangling through the mouth of the sinkhole, held up by its power cord, and the corner of a bed was still visible a few feet down.

According to Jeremy Bush, he jumped down into the hole to try to save his brother, and had to be pulled out when an emergency crew arrived. So far, Jeff Bush has not been found and is presumed dead. The Bushes live near the city of Tampa, Florida, an area well known for sinkholes—over 500 have been recorded in that one area since 1954, and it’s one of the only places in the country where sinkhole insurance is required for homeowners.

5

Dover, Ohio

On November 29, 2012, another sinkhole opened up out of nowhere. This one was in Dover, Ohio, and had a diameter larger than four football fields (400 yards). A chunk of highway and a pond went down with the sinkhole, but officials know exactly what caused this miniature disaster—for years now a local company has been dredging sand out of the area, digging more than 50 feet down to pull it out. Combine that with the naturally sandy, unstable soil, and a sinkhole was almost inevitable.

4

Daisetta, Texas

On May 7, 2008, the town of Daisetta, Texas got a little bit smaller. Early that morning 600 feet of fields, forest, and residential land sank into the ground, leaving behind a 150 foot deep crater. According to residents who watched it happen, the road began to crack and shake, and then a pit appeared that quickly grew to 20 feet in diameter. And then it kept growing, swallowing everything in its path.

Daisetta is built on top of what’s known as a salt dome—a massive underground pile of salt that, like limestone, is highly susceptible to water erosion. Eventually the dome becomes a cave, and eventually that cave becomes a hole. Now dubbed “Sinkhole de Mayo” by the Daisetta residents (although “Sudden Valley” also has a nice ring to it), the sinkhole is expected to keep growing—and if the entire salt dome collapses, it could take the whole town with it.

3

Schmalkalden, Germany

When Wolfgang Peter woke up at 3 in the morning on November 1, 2010, he thought a fleet of dump trucks was unloading gravel outside his house. As it turns out, the sound he heard was just half of his garage falling 65 feet into the bowels of the earth.

The sinkhole in question, located in Schmalkalden, Germany, opened up right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, but fortunately didn’t claim any lives—although one automobile was sent down to the crumbly depths. Officials were quick to state that the 130 foot wide crater was caused by natural causes—not mining.

2

Changsha, China

In the wee morning hours of June 7, 2012, a man was driving his van through the Guilin City, China, when the road’s surface suddenly got a lot higher. A sinkhole had opened directly under his van, instantly dropping him into the shallow hole and flipping the van onto its side. He was injured, but recovered quickly.

Sinkholes occur all over the world, but they’ve been popping up more and more frequently in China lately. In a separate incident, a sinkhole appeared in the middle of a highway in Changsha, China and swallowed a BMW with three passengers, killing one of them. This pit was at least (30m) wide and was described as being too deep to “see the bottom of the pit with the naked eye.

1

Bayou Corne, Louisiana

Sinkholes are bad enough, but when they’re emitting dangerous levels of radiation it becomes a different matter entirely. That was the situation on August 3, 2010, when a sinkhole appeared in the forest near Bayou Cane, Louisiana.

The 422 foot deep sinkhole was caused by the collapsing of an underground salt dome, but unlike the hole in Daisetta, Texas, this one had been hollowed out by decades of mining by the Texas Brine Co. Rather than natural erosion. Literally engulfing 100 foot tall pines and already on the verge of being highly dangerous, it then turned out that this expanding sinkhole was perilously close an underground storage facility with 63 million gallons of butane gas, and then there’s the matter of methane and natural gas coming out of the ground so fast it makes the swamp look like a “boiling crawfish pot,” according to one resident.

And as the final cherry on the toxic sundae, Bruce Martin, VP of Texas Brine, then came out and said that they had maybe illegally stored some radioactive material in that area in the 90s.

Inchon Girl Who Had Been Frozen

For 500 Years.

Well initially this might look to you like any normal girl being treated by a doctor, the girl in the photo is not any normal living girl but the mummy of a 15 year old child who has been dead for about 500 years. 

She was found in 1999 near Llullaillaco's 6739 meter summit. An Argentine-Peruvian expedition found the perfectly preserved body and she was nicknamed "La doncella" which means “The maiden”. According to the Inca she was chosen to go and live with the gods. But in reality she was a sacrifice to the Inca Gods and had been brutally killed in the name of religion. 

Scientists say that her organs are intact and it's as if she had died just a few weeks ago. From testing the samples of her hair they could determine the type of diet she was on before her death. This lead to the discovery that the Incan fattened their children before killing them. Months or even years before the sacrifice pilgrimage these children were given diets which were those of the elite, consisting of maize and animal proteins.

Source

Judging from the condition of the body, it is believed that she was drugged and left to die in the mountains. It would not have taken much time for her to die due to the high exposure. The Incan high priests took their victims to high mountaintops for sacrifice. As the journey was extremely long and arduous, especially so for the young victims, coca leaves were fed to them to aid them in their breathing so as to allow them to reach the burial site alive. Upon reaching the burial site, the children were given an intoxicating drink to minimize pain, fear, and resistance, then killed them either by strangulation, a blow to their head or by leaving them to lose consciousness in the extreme cold and die of exposure. 

Many Inca children were offered as a sacrifice during or after important events, such as the death of the Sapa Inca (who was the emperor) or during a famine. These sacrifices were known ascapacocha. 

Early colonial Spanish missionaries wrote about this practice but only recently have archaeologists such as Johan Reinhard begun to find the bodies of these victims on Andean mountaintops, naturally mummified due to the freezing temperatures and dry windy mountain air. 

There is also some more information about Inca mummies on Wikipedia.

In 1995, the body of an almost entirely frozen young Inca girl, later named Mummy Juanita, was discovered on Mount Ampato. Two more ice-preserved mummies, one girl and one boy, were discovered nearby a short while later. All showed signs of death by a blow to the head. 

In 1999, near Llullaillaco's 6739 meter summit, an Argentine-Peruvian expedition found the perfectly preserved bodies of three Inca children, sacrificed approximately 500 years earlier, including a 15-year-old girl, nicknamed "La doncella" (The maiden), a seven-year-old boy, and a six-year-old girl, nicknamed "La niña Del Rio" (The lightning girl). The latter's nickname reflects the fact that sometime in the 500 year period the mummy spent on the summit, it was struck by lightning, partially burning the preserved body and some of the ceremonial artifacts left with the mummies.

Problems With Inter-Caste Marriages

India's five-level caste system has been the basis of Indian society for hundreds of years, creating subcultures in which people from the same caste have lived insulated or outcast from those socially considered below or above them. While the status of the caste system has been largely revoked legislatively (particularly in the governmental invalidation of the concept of the "untouchability" of members of the lowest caste), the social mores attached to the caste system have not died away so quickly in this traditional society. As such, inter-caste marriages remain a source of tension for many more tradition-minded Indian families.

Urban vs. Rural Change

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  Many Indian cities-dwellers have been exposed to reformist ideas and have gradually accepted the possibility of inter-caste marriages within their families. Unfortunately, in rural areas, change has been particularly slow in coming. Indian parents already tend to have a large, if not complete, say in the choice of marital partners of their sons and daughters. The relative isolation of rural Indians only exacerbates this traditionalism with regards to caste.

Family Acceptance

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  Thus, no matter what region an inter-caste couple hails from, the most likely difficulty that the pair is liable to face is a set of obstacles to family acceptance. This problem applies both to the family into which one marries and to the family one comes from. Tensions with new in-laws are fairly predictable. A bride or groom of another caste is even less likely to be approved of by in-laws who believe the choice is beneath their son or daughter. However, this type of tension also arises from within the family of someone contemplating entering into an inter-caste marriage. Often the family will feel and communicate a sense of betrayal to the son or daughter for his or her action.

New Caste Traditions

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  Aside from the purely personal aspect of the reception by in-laws or one's own family are the issues that arise from trying to fit in with a cultural pattern that may at first seem foreign. Not only might the rituals specific to a particular caste be hard to get accustomed to, but the process also frequently causes tension between the couple as well, as previous expectations of married life are altered or go unfulfilled.

Extreme Reactions

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  Receiving a cold shoulder from family or failing to wholeheartedly adopt new rituals are certainly problems that inter-caste couples must face. However, in a number of cases, couples who encounter only these problems may consider themselves lucky. Sometimes family reactions are so strong as to effectively disown the "offending" party. In addition to this intense emotional abuse from family members, violence involving inter-caste couples is not unheard of. Families who consider such marriages to be vehement rejections of religious teaching sometimes go as far as to issue death threats to their own family members who contemplate inter-caste marriages.

Positive Trends

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  Although many traditionalists continue to oppose any mingling between castes, many reformers believe that inter-caste marriages are the best way to achieve true equality. In addition to the breaking of rigid social boundaries, inter-marriage has the added benefit of creating such a large degree of mixing over several generations that no significant caste structure can remain. Finally, the Indian government is trying to support reform by providing financial assistance to those who marry into lower (and poorer) castes. With the support of the government and a wave of more educated reformers, inter-caste marriages should gradually become more accepted in all of Indian society.

10 Fascinating Facts About The World of Chocolate

10 Fascinating Facts About 

The World of Chocolate

We all love chocolate, most of us probably eat it every day, or at least several times a week. It is one of the most beloved food products in the world and many would say that they cannot live without it. Most of us probably feel we know chocolate pretty well by now, as it is a regular part of our life. However, there are many fascinating facts about the world of chocolate that most do not know. Below are ten interesting facts about chocolate, some of these facts are bizarre, some are saddening and others are just downright silly.

10

Slavery

Fact: Chocolate farmers are basically slaves.

As we mentioned, many of us enjoy chocolate every day. Unfortunately, we are about to make you feel really guilty about it. Have you ever wondered where your chocolate comes from? Most of it comes from the labor of children, it is believed that in Africa alone, somewhere in the range of 56–72 million children work on chocolate farms. These children are often tricked into working or sold into slavery outright and end up living out their lives working on these farms for the profit of others. The children who has it better lived on bananas and corn paste. The unlucky ones are regularly flogged like animals.

One child interviewed said that he was tricked into believing he would be earning money to help his family, but that's the closest he gets to compensation are the days he is not beaten with a bicycle chain or the branch from a Cacao tree. The child has never even had occasion to try the food he spends his life slaving away to produce. Some would suggest that we buy Fair Trade, the problem is that Fair Trade does little if anything to help.

9

Not Really Chocolate

Fact: Many chocolate confections only contain a very small percentage of actual chocolate.

According to Hershey there is no standard in the United States for Dark Chocolate, however, there are standards for Milk Chocolate and Semisweet chocolate. In some countries the standards are different. The UK is said to have slightly higher chocolate contents in most of their confections. In the USA, however, Milk Chocolate only has to contain about ten percent chocolate liquor, whereas Semisweet chocolate has to contain at least thirty-five percent chocolate liquor. Milk chocolate, which has slightly different rules, must contain at least twenty percent Cocoa Butter.

8

Milk Chocolate

Fact: Milk chocolate is a fairly recent invention.

Dark chocolate has gained popularity in recent years; however, it is still not nearly as popular as the milk variety. We are often exposed to semisweet chocolate when baking delicious cookies, but milk chocolate is still by far the most popular. The interesting thing about it is that milk chocolate wasn’t even invented until 1875. The first European invention in regards to chocolate involved removing about half of the Cocoa Butter, then crushing what remained and mixing it with salts to mitigate the bitter taste, this was known as Dutch Cocoa. Milk chocolate was discovered by taking this powder and mixing it with sweetened condensed milk, which had recently been invented by a man named Nestle. And the rest, as they say, is history.

7

Chocolate Money

Fact: The Aztecs and Maya’s used chocolate as currency.

The history of chocolate pretty much begins with the Mayans. Cacao beans were so valuable to them that they were used as currency. It is said that ten beans could buy a rabbit, or even a prostitute. And one hundred beans were enough to buy a slave, though slavery in those days was a much different institution in many ways. When the Aztecs came along they adopted these traditions and continued using cacao beans as currency. People would buy everything from livestock, to food and tools with the beans and some people actually created counterfeit beans using clay. Generally only the richer people drank chocolate regularly though, because drinking your money is expensive.

6

Antioxidants

Fact: Chocolate is high in antioxidants and is actually really good for you.

Recent research has shown that chocolate contains flavonoids. The particular flavonoids contained in chocolate are called flavonols and procyanidins, which are good for your heart and assist in preventing the onset of cancer. However, it is important to note that the higher the chocolate content the better it is for you, some studies have shown that only dark chocolate really give you a significant boost in antioxidants in moderate doses. Researchers found that dark chocolate was great for reducing blood pressure, but that washing it down with milk, even if you didn’t eat milk chocolate, would mess with the beneficial effects. 

5

Theobromine

Fact: Chocolate doesn’t just contain caffeine but also a lesser known drug called Theobromine.

Chocolate contains a higher portion of Theobromine than anything in nature. Theobromine is similar to Caffeine, but it has a milder stimulant effect. Some preliminary research has shown that it may also be helpful for suppressing coughs. While Theobromine has long been used to treat issues such as blood pressure, and is being tested for its use in fighting cancer, you can have too much of a good thing. At high levels Theobromine can cause poisoning, though animals and the elderly are more susceptible to this. A healthy person would have to eat a lot of chocolate before they would be in any danger.

4

Copious Cups

Fact: The Aztec rulers drank tons of cups of hot chocolate a day.

The opulent Aztec rulers and higher class drank a ton of hot chocolate; Montezuma himself was reported to have drunk about fifty cups of chocolate a day. While a normal cup of chocolate wouldn’t contain too much caffeine, the chocolate the Aztecs drank was extremely dark, combine that with the sheer intake and he must have been incredibly weird. What is truly fascinating though is that they did not drink hot chocolate, they drank it cold. They did not drink it with sugar, and it was actually the Spaniards who first added sugar to the drink. The Aztecs would pour the mixture back and forth from pitchers until it got really foamy and believed the foam was the best part.

3

Fraud

Fact: The chocolate manufacturing companies tried to get approval to call a substitute real chocolate.

A few years ago in a move that had chocolate lovers up in arms, the American chocolate manufacturers tried to petition for approval from the FDA to replace cocoa butter with Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil and call it chocolate. This sort of move is something you would expect to see in a bad move, but a spokeswoman for Nestle actually tried to claim that it was okay because consumers didn’t really know what they wanted and didn’t understand things like “manufacturing efficiencies” and “technical improvements”. While the FDA chose not to agree to the demands of the chocolate industry, it is incredible that they even entertained the petition at all.

2

Shortage

Fact: The world is facing a serious chocolate shortage.

The world is facing a chocolate shortage due to serious diseases that are affecting trees in Latin America where much of the worlds cacao is produced. Not only that but the demand for chocolate is increasing all the time, which makes keeping enough supply to satisfy people extremely difficult. Luckily, the diseases that are affecting chocolate production have not spread to Africa. However, these shortages still could lead to eventual price increases if the farmers are unable to get the diseases under control. While Africa has not had diseases, they have dealt with some droughts recently, which made matters even worse.

1

Six Ton Chocolate Bar

Fact: The biggest chocolate bar ever created weighed almost six tons.

In September, 2011, a chocolate bar was created that weighed close to twelve thousand pounds. The bar required roughly seventeen hundred pounds of cocoa butter and about fourteen hundred pounds of chocolate liquor. The bar is supposed to tour around the country in an effort to get kids to “think big” and “eat smart”. We aren’t sure exactly how a gigantic confection will help kids eat smart. More recently in England, the record was broken with an even bigger chocolate bar. The bar took more than fifty people to make and was inspired by the story of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Fortunately, all of that chocolate is not going to go to waste. This particular bar is slated to be broken up into pieces and sold, with the proceeds all going to charity.