OF THE
TIMES
The first reports of a strange glow in the sky came from across Europe. Shortly after midnight on 1 July 1908, Londoners were intrigued to see a pink phosphorescent night sky over the capital. People who had retired awoke confused as the strange pink glow shone into their bedrooms. The same ruddy luminescence was reported over Belgium. The skies over Germany were curiously said to be bright green, while the heavens over Scotland were of an incredible intense whiteness which tricked the wildlife into believing it was dawn. Birdsong started and cocks crowed - at two o'clock in the morning. The skies over Moscow were so bright, photographs were taken of the streets without using a magnesium flash. A captain on a ship on the River Volga said he could see vessels on the river two miles away by the uncanny astral light. One golf game in England almost went on until four in the morning under the nocturnal glow, and in the following week The Times of London was inundated with letters from readers from all over the United Kingdom to report the curious 'false dawn'. A woman in Huntingdon wrote that she had been able to read a book in her bedroom solely by the peculiar rosy light. There were hundreds of letters from people reporting identical lighting conditions that went on for weeks... (Tom Slemen)None of the people witnessing this strange phenomenon had any idea that, in the central Siberian plateau, just after 7:15 a.m. local time, the planet had been hit by a cometary impactor that exploded - as most such impactors do - in the atmosphere just above the Earth's surface.
Astronomy books and papers far too numerous to cite offer the assurance that "no one has ever been killed by a meteorite." (John S. Lewis, University of Arizona)
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©Julian Baum |
Spending all that money to combat a threat that is as rare as a catastrophic comet hitting the United States makes little sense. If NASA were able to use the same scare tactics as DHS, perhaps the space agency could persuade a reluctant Congress to give it the paltry $1 billion (by comparison) for its equally absurd Spaceguard Survey program, which tracks asteroids and comets that have an equal probability of killing Americans as terrorists do.As you can see from the article above, Mr Eland knows not of what he speaks. But how many people on the planet do? How many of your fellow citizens have any idea that the human species has passed its due date? Think about that the next time you see a shooting star or read about a fireball in the newspaper...
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©Unknown |
Cometary fire ruins, as seen from the corner of Dearborn and Monroe Streets, Chicago, 1871. |
Comment: The Daily Mail further clarifies the comments: And The Telegraph: Meanwhile the overall press coverage seems to be dancing around the issue, such as with the following from The Standard: Whilst one could put this down to infighting and/or incompetence - and it does come amidst the German Navy's recent embarrassment - what with the admission from the US about CIA bases stationed in Ukraine since 2014; with Macron's calls to send in France's troops to Ukraine; and the seeming need for the West to escalate matters, one can't help but wonder whether it's, at least in part, laying the ground for a provocation.
Although perhaps that's giving the desperate, bungling, albeit sinister, establishment puppets too much credit.
Either way, the outcome seems as though it will be the same: note that Russia's response is that, indeed, a direct (official) confrontation does seem to be brewing: