Showing posts with label Middle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle. Show all posts

Thursday, October 9, 2025

How do they build lighthouses in the middle of the ocean?

 The Lighthouse That Couldn't Defy Gravity.

Then in 1939 a handful of men conceived the idea of doing something which seemed to be crazy, to construct a lighthouse on Þrídrangar, three inaccessible rocks jutting out of the freezing North Atlantic off of Iceland. No land. No shelter. Just wind, waves, and stone.

It sounded impossible. But they did it anyway.

They must climb it first,--and that was almost suicide. The cliffs were even wet walls of rock, slippery and cold. They possessed neither gear, nor ropes, nor safety. Where the ascent proved too steep a human ladder was made, the one man standing on the shoulders of the next and the other drawing him up.

A method of transporting people had to be developed before construction. So they cut metal spikes into the cliff and bound them together--a tremulous way of iron floating on the sea. Then there was the supplies, buckets of cement, rowed up out of boats below one after the other, in the teeth of cold wind and smashing water.

A month they had to work that way. No dock. No break. Just survival.

And as the end of it came, there was a lighthouse on a point where no-one believed men could even stand.

It still remains there, alone, silent and laughing at gravity.

Which person of the Nazi regime was the most despised by the Germans themselves during WW2?

World War 2 was a difficult time not knowing which of the leaders of the Nazi party Germans disliked most. The government was highly strict(Read full)

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

A “PARADISE” IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT


Waw an Namus (or Mosquito Oasis) is a conical volcano (or what remains of it) located in southern Libya, in particular in the Sahara Desert, in whose caldera there are three salt water lakes and rich vegetation. The caldera of a volcano is nothing more than a depression or a basin formed following the sinking of the magma chamber of a volcanic edifice, usually due to the reduction of its activity, which leads to a lower gas pressure inside the chamber, not sufficient to support the entire edifice. About 100 meters deep and about 4 kilometers wide, inside Waw an Namus it is possible to find a 140-meter high scoria cone and three small lakes (the largest with a maximum depth of 12.5 meters), probably fed by underground water, since in the area rainfall is much lower than total evaporation, therefore not sufficient to support these small bodies of water. Probably in the area there are also fresh water springs, which favor the growth of vegetation, while the basaltic rocks of the old volcanic building, of a darker color and which make up the small oasis, form an incredible chromatic contrast with the sand of the desert around, giving life to a suggestive visual effect.

Source: “Miocene to recent alkaline volcanism between Al Haruj and Waw an Namous (southern Libya)”, Jacques-Marie Bardintzeff, 2011.