Now You Know -- Giant Disaster Trivia Bundle : Now You Know Crime Scenes / Now You Know Extreme Weather / Now You Know Disasters [1 ed.] 9781459724761

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Now You Know Disasters 3

PREFACE Documented accounts of disasters have been found in the earliest chronicles of mankind. Earthquakes, epidemics, and famines colour the pages of the Bible and the epic tales of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and other ancient peoples. Historians have found that many stories from antiquity, once thought to be pure myth, have roots in historical fact. Even the legend of Atlantis can be traced back to a cataclysmic ancient disaster. No period of history has been free of disastrous events. From ancient times up to the present, tragedies of massive scale have shocked and stunned cities and nations, sending entire populations reeling. They have even changed the course of history. Some disasters, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, strike suddenly. Others, epidemics for example, take hold of us by stealth. Many disasters have natural causes — tsunamis, avalanches, or many fires and shipwrecks, for instance. With the advance of technology, however, more and more disasters have the hand of humans in them: plane crashes, collapsing bridges, and blasts caused by explosive materials. All too often the loss of life caused by a natural disaster is escalated by such human factors as war or lack of preparedness. And then there are the single disasters humans inflict upon one another in the form of terrorism and mass murder. This book serves up questions and answers, lists of significant events, quick facts, and intriguing sidebars concerning some of the most dramatic and tragic disasters the world has ever

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known. I hope readers will find this a fascinating and thought-provoking compendium of some of history’s most calamitous incidents.

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AVALANCHES AND LANDSLIDES What causes an avalanche? An avalanche can only happen after a heavy snowfall. There must be an insecure snow base. The initial slide of accumulated snow can be triggered by an earth tremor, a noise, or the uneven melting of the snow base. Even the 6

vibrations caused by skiers can touch off an avalanche. Once the snow and ice start to move, they can quickly become an unstoppable destructive force. How did an avalanche bring tragedy to Hannibal’s army? The Carthaginian general Hannibal made one of history’s great military accomplishments when he took an army (including war elephants) through the Alps to attack Rome. However, Hannibal’s own impatience placed his army in danger, with costly results. In October 218 BC, heavy snows and severe cold held up the army’s progress through the mountains. After waiting for two days for the weather to improve, Hannibal unwisely decided to cross the Col de la Traversette. Fresh snow on top of crusted snow provided prime avalanche conditions. As the army began to move, the snow beneath the feet of the men and animals suddenly gave way. Eighteen thousand men, 2,000 horses, and several elephants were swept to their deaths. Where, during the First World War, were more people killed by avalanches than by gunfire and bombs? In the Tyrol, where Austrian and Italian troops faced each other on deadly terrain, avalanches touched off by the noises of war proved to be far more deadly than actual battles. One avalanche after another roared down the mountainsides, burying civilians in villages and troops in their barracks. It is estimated that between 40,000 and 80,000 people perished in the snow. What community was hit by two avalanches in one day?

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At 9:36 on the morning of January 11, 1954, an avalanche struck the Austrian village of Blons, near the Arlberg Pass. At 7:00 on the evening of that same day, another avalanche roared down on the tiny community. Even though Blons had taken measures in preparation for an avalanche, the two that struck on that fateful day were especially large. Of the 376 people who made up Blons’s population, 111 were killed outright and eight died later. Two residents were never found. Twenty-nine of the village’s 90 homes were destroyed. Some survivors were buried for over 60 hours before being dug out by rescuers. How much of the town of Frank, Alberta, was wiped out by the landslide of April 29, 1903? Frank wasn’t wiped out, as some stories say. About one-quarter of the town was buried in the rock debris from Turtle Mountain, but, in that area, the destruction was complete. Very few survivors emerged from the rocks. The death toll was placed at 70, but because few bodies were recovered, and many itinerant workers had been passing through the town, the actual number of dead was probably much higher. Who was Frankie Slide? Five-month-old Marion Leitch was in bed between her parents when the blast of compressed air that preceded the Frank, Alberta, rockslide tore their house from its foundations and flipped it over. Marion’s parents and her four brothers were killed, but baby Marion was found safe and sound on a pile of hay that had blown from a stable half a mile away. The incredible story inspired a song, “The Ballad of Frankie 8

Slide,” which told the tale of a baby who was the town’s sole survivor of the disaster and was thus named Frankie Slide. This brought about the myth that Marion Leitch was the only survivor of the Frank Slide. Where did the most deadly avalanche in Canadian history occur? Rogers Pass, in British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountains, is a well-travelled route through the mountains that is also very prone to avalanches. On the night of March 4, 1910, workmen were busy clearing away the snow and debris from an avalanche that had buried a section of the Canadian Pacific Railway line earlier in the day. That avalanche had come down Cheeps Mountain on the west side of the pass. At about 11:30 p.m. another avalanche came crashing down into the pass, this time from Avalanche Mountain on the east side of the pass. The work crew was caught completely by surprise, and 62 men were killed. Between 1885 and 1911, avalanches in Rogers Pass took 250 human lives. The Connaught Tunnel, completed in 1916, allows trains to bypass this deadly corridor. Why did bereaved Welsh parents want “Buried alive by the National Coal Board” written on their children’s death certificates after the Aberfan Disaster of 1966? Every coal-mining town has its slag heap — a mountain of waste material from mines. By the mid-1960s, the slag heap at the edge of the town of Aberfan, Wales, had grown to 244 metres (800 feet). Many of the town’s residents considered that too high and had complained to the mine operators. No one knew that underneath the huge, ugly pile of rocks and dirt 9

a natural spring had developed, and water was eroding the very base of the man-made mountain. On the foggy morning of October 21, 1966, even as a maintenance man examined the slag heap and was ready to pronounce it safe, 2 million tonnes of rock, coal, and mud suddenly went crashing down towards the town. Directly in its path was the Pantglas School with almost every schoolchild in attendance. The school and several other buildings were utterly destroyed. Of the 145 people who were killed that day, 116 were children. What multiple calamity struck the Piave River Valley of Italy in 1963? On October 9, 1963, at 11:15 p.m., one of the oddest disasters in history hit the Piave River Valley. An earthquake triggered several landslides, sweeping away mountain slopes at both ends of the Valmont Dam. The dam itself, 266 metres (873 feet) long and 22 metres (72 feet) thick, remained standing. But, at both ends of it, tonnes of water from the mile-long lake that the dam had held back went roaring down into the valley, sweeping away entire villages. More than 4,000 people were drowned in the flooding or buried alive by landslides. Where was the largest recorded avalanche in history? On January 10, 1962, on Mount Huascaran in the Peruvian Andes, 3 million tonnes of ice broke free from Glacier 511 and roared into the gorge of the Calléjon de Huaylas. Great masses of ice and snow fell at a velocity that reached hundreds of kilometres an hour. The mass

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ricocheted from side to side down the gorge, collecting rocks, soil, flocks of sheep, entire villages, and human beings. More than 3,500 people were killed. In terms of the sheer volume of material that fell down the mountainside, the Huascaran Avalanche remained the largest on record until May 18, 1980. On that day the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State triggered a landslide that measured 2.8 cubic kilometres (0.6 cubic miles) and carried enough debris to bury the downtown part of a major city to a depth of 40 storeys. The mass hurtling down the mountainside reached a speed of 402 kilometres (250 miles) per hour. Five Other Significant Avalanches • 1618 in Plurs, Switzerland: A snowslide, known as the Rodi Avalanche, kills 2,427 people. • 1910 in Wellington, Washington: A huge avalanche buries two trains, killing 97 passengers. In terms of lives claimed, this is the worst avalanche in recorded American history. • 1971 in St-Jean-Vianney, Quebec: A 213-metre hole appears in the town after a rainstorm and swallows 36 homes, several cars, a bus, and 31 people. • 1991 in Bingol, Turkey: Several towns are hit by an avalanche that claims the lives of 255 people. • 2002 in Republic of North Ossetia, Caucasus: A 20-million-tonne avalanche off Mount Kazbek kills 150 people, including a Russian movie star and director and some of his film crew.

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DISASTER IN THE AIR What was the world’s worst airplane crash? If we except the horrific events of September 11, 2001 — which clearly belong in a category all their own — the air disaster that resulted in the single greatest loss of life occurred on March 27, 1977, at the airport at Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands. Due to foggy weather, confusion over takeoff

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instructions, and interference in radio transmissions, a KLM Boeing 747 collided on the runway with a Pan Am Boeing 747. The fuel tanks of both aircraft exploded, and 583 people were killed. Miraculously, some people sitting in the front of the Pan Am plane survived. When did the first aviation accident that could be classified an “air disaster” occur? There had been accidents among the pioneers of aviation, some of them fatal. The first that might be termed a disaster was the fiery crash of the German dirigible LZ-18 on October 17, 1913. All 28 people aboard died in the crash, or succumbed to severe burns within a few hours. Why did the Hindenburg disaster mark the end of the era of lighter-than-air passenger travel? The German dirigible Hindenburg was the largest and fastest airship in the world. It could carry 97 passengers and 61 crew members across the Atlantic much faster than an ocean liner, and with all the luxurious accommodation offered to first-class passengers on the finest ships. The big airship had made several successful transatlantic crossings and had become the pride of Nazi Germany. Then, on the evening of May 6, 1937, as the Hindenburg approached the mooring tower at Lakehurst, New Jersey, the great hydrogen-filled sphere caught fire. Within seconds the entire ship was ablaze and dropping to the ground. Horrified witnesses watched as people jumped or fell from the stricken ship. Thirty-five of those aboard were killed, and many were injured. The cause of the fire was never satisfactorily established. It might have been static electricity or sparks from the engine’s exhaust 13

igniting escaping gas. Some people suspected it was the work of an anti-Nazi saboteur. The Hindenburg tragedy wasn’t the worst dirigible disaster. The crash of the American Akron killed 73 people. But the Hindenburg disaster was broadcast live on radio and was captured by newsreel cameras. Millions of people heard Herbert Morrison’s eyewitness broadcast and saw the terrifying event in movie theatres. The wealthy few who could afford to travel by airship were no longer willing to take the risk. Nine More World’s Worst Air Disasters • August 12, 1985, Tokyo, Japan: Japan Airlines 747 crashes after takeoff, 520 killed. • November 12, 1996, Delhi, India: Midair collision between Kazakhstan IL-76 cargo plane and a Saudi 747, 349 killed. • March 3, 1974, Paris, France: Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashes after equipment malfunction, 346 killed. • June 23, 1985, Irish coast: Air India 747 en route from Toronto to Bombay blows up as a result of Sikh terrorist bomb, 329 killed. • August 19, 1980, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Fire breaks out aboard a Saudi L-1011, 301 killed. • July 3, 1988, Straits of Hormuz: USS Vincennes mistakenly shoots down an Air Iran Airbus, 290 killed.

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• May 25, 1979, Chicago, Illinois: American Airlines DC-10 takes off from O’Hare Airport and an engine falls off, causing the plane to roll and explode, 273 killed. • December 21, 1988, Lockerbie, Scotland: Pan Am 747 explodes in the air as a result of a Libyan terrorist bomb, 270 killed, including 11 on the ground. • September 1, 1983, Near Sakhalin Island in the Soviet Union: Korean Airlines 747 shot down by Soviet fighter plane after crossing into Soviet airspace, 269 killed. What did Albert Guay of Quebec City and Jack Graham of Denver, Colorado, have in common? On September 9, 1949, Albert Guay had a bomb smuggled aboard a Canadian Pacific Airlines DC-3 on which his wife, Rita, would be travelling. Guay wanted to kill Rita so he would be free to marry his mistress, and to collect on a life insurance policy. The plane blew up midair, killing all 23 people aboard. On November 1, 1955, Jack Graham hid a bomb in the luggage belonging to his mother, Daisie King, before it was taken aboard a Douglas DC-6B for a flight to Alaska. Graham wanted to kill his mother out of resentment and to claim on insurance policies he bought from vending machines at the airport. The plane exploded shortly after takeoff, killing all 43 passengers. Both mass murderers were caught. Guay and two accomplices were hanged. Graham, who confessed he had been inspired by Guay’s method of killing, went to the gas chamber.

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EARTHQUAKES What causes an earthquake? An earthquake occurs when there is an abrupt shift in the rock along a fracture in the Earth’s crust, called a fault. The sudden release of stress that has accumulated in the rock, often over centuries, causes the ground to shake.

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Where was the earliest accurate recording of an earthquake? The earliest known accurate recording of an earthquake was done in Corinth, Greece, in 856 AD. In its long history, Corinth was wrecked by earthquakes nine times. On this occasion the city was reduced to rubble and 45,000 people were killed in Corinth and the surrounding countryside. How did an earthquake help start a war in ancient Greece? In 464 BC a massive earthquake shook the Peloponnesian Peninsula, the southern part of Greece dominated by the city-state of Sparta. According to ancient records, all but five houses were destroyed, 20,000 people were killed, and many more were injured. One chronicler wrote that “the flower of Spartan youth was overwhelmed.” Sparta’s huge slave population, the Helots, took advantage of the disaster to stage a revolt. The Spartans asked the Athenians, their allies in the Persian Wars, to help them put down the rebellion. Once the uprising was crushed, the Spartans rather rudely told the Athenians to go home. (The Athenian soldiers might have provoked the Spartans by being a little too forward with the Spartan women.) Resentments that resulted from this incident strained relations between Athens and Sparta. The two leading cities of classical Greece were soon embroiled in a ruinous war. Who was the Richter in the Richter scale? Charles Francis Richter (1900–1985), in collaboration

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with Beno Gutenberg (1889–1960), was the creator of the Richter magnitude scale, which is used to measure seismic forces and even man-made explosions, such as nuclear blasts. Richter and Gutenberg were working for the California Institute of Technology, and many scientists feel the measurement method should be called the Richter-Gutenberg scale. The table they developed ranges from micro (less than 2.0), which isn’t felt and occurs about 8,000 times a day, up to great (9.0 to 9.9), which is devastating in areas several thousand miles across and happens once in 20 years. No earthquake of greater intensity than 9.9 has ever been recorded. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake registered 9.3 and had the power of 32 gigatons of TNT. Four Wonders of the Ancient World Destroyed by Earthquakes • The Colossus of Rhodes, Greece: This giant bronze statue of the god Helios was toppled by an earthquake in 226 BC. • The Temple of Artemis, Ephesus (now in Turkey): The Goths damaged this magnificent Greek temple in 262 AD. After that, a series of earthquakes shook the structure until by the fifth century it was nothing but rubble. • The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (now in Turkey): This final resting place for Persian King Mausolus (origin of the word mausoleum) and his wife/sister Queen Artemisia was built in the fourth century BC. It survived numerous invasions and stood up to the ravages of time, but by 1400 AD earthquakes had destroyed it.

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• The Lighthouse at Alexandria, Egypt: Built in the third century BC, this ancient architectural marvel survived the great earthquake that shook Alexandria in 365 AD. However, it was severely damaged by earthquakes in 1303 and 1323. The building blocks of the ruined lighthouse were used in the construction of a fortress. Where was the world’s worst earthquake? In terms of lost lives, the worst earthquake in human history was one that struck Shenshi Province in central China on February 2, 1556. Little was recorded about this cataclysm except that it killed more than 820,000 people. What city actually had its elevation raised by an earthquake? On November 19, 1822, an earthquake shook the city of Valparaiso, Chile. The quake toppled buildings and killed 10,000 people. By the time it was over, Valparaiso’s elevation had been raised by 1.2 metres (4 feet). What was significant about the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906? The San Francisco earthquake and the conflagration that followed combined to create one of the worst disasters in American history. At least 700 people were killed, 500 city blocks were obliterated, and the cost in damages — $500 million — would amount to billions of dollars in today’s money. However, no earthquake has ever been as well

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documented as this one. Scientists and politicians had plenty of material for study. No one could stop an earthquake, but they could certainly prepare for one. Five Celebrities Who Survived the San Francisco Earthquake • Jack London (writer) • John Barrymore (actor) • Enrico Caruso (tenor opera singer) • William James (psychologist) • Alice Eastwood (botanist) Why does Los Angeles experience so many earthquakes? Los Angeles is very close to the San Andreas Fault, the place where the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate grind against each other. This is part of the Ring of Fire, a series of unstable earthquake-prone regions and volcanic hot spots that encircle the Pacific Ocean. Thousands of tremors run through the ground upon which Los Angeles sits every year, but most of them are too mild to be felt. However, Los Angeles has been shaken by earthquakes of destructive force in 1933, 1971, 1987, and 1994. Scientists fear that before 2020 Los Angeles will be hit with an earthquake more powerful than any that has yet struck an American city.

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EPIDEMICS Who was the first person to document the effects of an epidemic? Plagues have long figured largely in myths, legends, and Biblical stories — in the latter often as the wrath of God. The first ancient writer to leave a factual account of an epidemic, from the symptoms shown by individual sufferers, to the demoralizing effects on the population, was the Athenian historian Thucydides. He chronicled the strange plague that 21

devastated Athens in 430 BC while the city was under siege by the Spartans. What was the Black Death? From 1348 to 1666 “Black Death” was the name given to bubonic plague, so called because the first symptoms were swelling of the lymph glands — which were then called buboes — in the groin and armpits. The cause of the disease was a bacterium called Pasteurella pestis, which was carried by rats and other rodents. It was spread to humans by fleas. The disease was then passed from person to person by droplets of moisture. A sneeze, a cough, or a kiss was all it took. It has been estimated that over 25 million people, about a third of the population of Europe, died. Why didn’t people carry out large-scale rat extermination campaigns to fight the Black Death? At the time people knew nothing about germs and bacteria. They thought diseases were caused by “evil vapours” that came from the ground, or “ill humours” in the body, caused by an imbalance of fluids; hence the practice of doctors “bleeding” patients to try to get the blood back to a “correct” level. Many people believed the Black Death was sent by an angry God to punish the world for its sinful ways. Sanitation and hygiene were extremely primitive. All houses had rats. Everybody had fleas. Nobody made the connection between the vermin and the disease. How is the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” connected to the Black Death?

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Many of the verses now called nursery rhymes weren’t always meant for children, but were popular commentaries on what were then current events. “Ring Around the Rosie” has more than one version. “Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies” refers to the flowers people carried or even wore around their necks for protection from the Black Death and to cover the foul odour that came from the dead and from the sick. “Hush-a, hush-a, we all fall down” simply means “we all drop dead.” There were also versions in which “hush-a, hush-a” was replaced with “ashes, ashes” or “achoo, achoo.” Prescriptions to Prevent or Cure Bubonic Plague • Wear human feces in a bag around the neck. • Bathe in and drink human urine. • Take long, deep breaths of the air in a public privy. • Apply dried toads or lizards to the boils to draw out the poison. • Pierce the testicles with sharp needles. • Smear fevered foreheads with the blood of freshly killed puppies and pigeons. • Slice open the boils and insert red-hot pokers. • Put down bowls of fresh milk to absorb the poisons in the air in rooms where patients have died from the plague. This can also be done with large, peeled onions. Be sure the onions are buried in a deep hole later.

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• Self-flagellate to atone for sins. • Search the community for any persons guilty of licentious and voluptuous behavior and put them to death. What was St. Vitus’s Dance? A bizarre spinoff of the Black Death was St. Vitus’s Dance, one of the more unusual “cures” for the plague. In this extreme form of penance, people climbed onto platforms erected in town squares and danced wildly until they collapsed from exhaustion. Many danced themselves to death or were trampled to death by other dancers. In Strasbourg, France, on July 14, 1518, one woman began to dance. According to accounts, after she danced for four to six days, she was sent to the Chapel of St. Vitus at Hohlenstein. Soon other people began to dance until more than a hundred were doing so at one time. Within four weeks there were upwards of 400 people dancing at a time. The town council forbade public gatherings and music and restricted the dancers to two guildhalls. Finally, the council packed all of the dancers off to the Chapel of St. Vitus. Hundreds of people literally danced themselves to death. Quickies Did you know … • that in the fourteenth century anti-Semitic feelings ran high and many people believed the Black Death was caused by Jews poisoning the wells of Christian communities? In Chillon, Switzerland, a Jewish physician was even tortured into confessing to such a crime. Enraged mobs murdered 24

Jewish men, women, and children in 350 separate massacres across Europe. What diseases were part of the Columbian Exchange? Columbian Exchange was the name given to the transfer of animals, plants, artifacts, ideas, et cetera, between the Old World and the New World after Christopher Columbus’s voyage of 1492. Among the worst things the Europeans carried to the Americas were diseases to which the Native populations had never before been exposed and against which they had no immunity. Smallpox was probably the most lethal. In return, the Natives passed on to the white men a disease that eventually reached epidemic proportions in Europe — syphilis. Who was Typhoid Mary? Mary Mallon (1869–1938) was an Irish immigrant who worked as a cook in the New York area from 1900 to 1907. She was the first known “healthy carrier” of typhoid fever in the United States, that is, a person who carries typhoid without suffering from the symptoms. Mallon infected 47 people in homes and institutions where she worked as a cook. Three of them died. Even after health officials identified her as the source of the infections, Mallon refused to believe she was a carrier and even worked under a false name so she could continue cooking. She was finally sent into forced quarantine at a hospital on North Brother Island, where she died at the age of 69 from pneumonia, not typhoid. Why was the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 called the “Spanish flu”? 25

The First World War was raging when the influenza epidemic hit Europe in 1918. Governments of belligerent nations wouldn’t allow newspapers to report on the silent killer that was ravaging their populations. In neutral Spain, however, the government saw no need to censor the press. Because Spanish newspapers reported on the epidemic, the Royal College of Physicians in London found it convenient to label the disease the “Spanish flu”. The pandemic actually began in China and was carried along trade and military routes to the rest of Asia and to Europe. Infected soldiers returning from France unwittingly took the disease to North America. What causes influenza? Flu is caused by a virus. Over a period of time, virus strains can mutate, changing their chemical makeup. This can alter their behaviour and make their effect on the human body unpredictable. How did the Spanish flu pandemic differ from other influenza epidemics? In the early twentieth century, nobody knew anything about viruses, but people were familiar with the symptoms of the flu: fever, sore throat, cough, headache, muscular pain, and general weakness. Most victims were bedridden for a few days and then recovered. Usually, only the elderly and very young children were at risk of dying from the common flu. The Spanish flu was a particularly vicious strain of the virus that struck hardest at healthy adults in their late twenties and early thirties. In a three-generational family, children and grandparents stood a better chance of survival than young parents. Doctors often didn’t know what they were dealing 26

with and blamed deaths on cholera and pneumonia. Many victims often did develop pneumonia in the later stages of the disease. Estimates of the global death toll range from 22 million to 100 million. In Canada, about 50,000 people perished (out of a population of around 8 million), while it is estimated that as many as 675,000 died in the United States and about 28 percent of the American population of just over 103 million was affected by the virus. Quickies Did you know … • that before the name Spanish flu was applied, the British called the disease Flanders Grippe because of the soldiers who fell ill in Belgium and France? Other nations had their own names for the contagion: Germany — Blitz Katarrh (Lightning Cold); Japan — Wrestler’s Fever; China — Too Much Inside Sickness; Sri Lanka — Bombay Fever; Iran — Disease of the Wind; Hungary — Black Whip; Poland — Bolshevik Disease. What did people do to fight the Spanish flu? Doctors who believed that the sickness was caused by bacteria developed a vaccine that had to be painfully injected into deep muscle tissue. The treatment wasn’t effective. Other remedies and treatments included powdered aspirin, onion and mustard poultices, goose grease and garlic, skunk oil, camphor, salt herring, sulphur (placed in shoes), coffee mixed with mustard, cinnamon, tobacco smoke, and alcohol. Some HIV/AIDS Statistics by End of 2007 27

• Estimated number of people living with HIV/AIDS: between 33 and 36 million. • Estimated number of women living with HIV/AIDS: between 13 and 16 million. • Estimated number of children living with HIV/AIDS: between 2.2 and 2.6 million. • Number of people who have died of AIDS since 1981: more than 25 million. • Number of people newly infected with HIV in 2007: 2.5 million. What do the initials HIV and AIDS mean? Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the name of the organism that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). This deadly virus first became known to medical science in 1981, and its spread has now become pandemic. Although some Third World countries have been harder hit by the AIDS epidemic than other nations, no part of the world has escaped untouched. How does HIV spread among people? HIV is proliferated mostly through unprotected sexual contact and intravenous drug use. It can also be spread from mother to child. It cannot be spread by kissing (unless there are open sores in the mouth), shaking hands, or sharing eating utensils. Contrary to a persistent myth, AIDS can be transmitted from

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any human being to any other human being, regardless of sexual orientation, if the proper precautions aren’t taken.

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EXPLOSIONS What was the biggest man-made, non-nuclear explosion in history? On December 6, 1917, during the First World War, in the harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc, which was packed with almost 3,000 tonnes of explosive materials, including TNT and benzol (a high-octane gasoline), collided with the Norwegian freighter Imo. The

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Mont Blanc caught fire. Not quite 20 minutes later, the Mont Blanc exploded, sending a pillar of smoke and flame eight kilometres (five miles) into the sky and creating a gigantic mushroom cloud. Tremors from the explosion were felt hundreds of kilometres away, and the crew of an American naval ship 80 kilometres (50 miles) out at sea heard the blast. The explosion levelled five square kilometres (two square miles) of Halifax and killed 1,600 people outright. Over the next few days the death toll climbed to over 2,000. Why did the Halifax Explosion result in so many casualties? The Mont Blanc wasn’t flying a red flag, which would have warned people that the ship was carrying explosives. Hundreds of people, including children on their way to school, flocked to the waterfront to see the rare spectacle of a ship on fire in the harbour, or they watched from the windows of homes, schools, and places of business. Also, the blast wiped out the Halifax Fire Department, leaving no one to fight the many fires that broke out in the city. The captain of the Mont Blanc said he didn’t raise a red flag because he didn’t want any German spies to know his ship was carrying munitions. Quickies Did you know … • that Boston, Massachusetts, which Halifax has always had close connections with, was exceptionally generous in sending aid to the stricken city in 1917–1918? Every year 31

ever since, the people of Halifax give a giant Christmas tree to the citizens of Boston as a show of gratitude. What tragedy occurred at the Salang Tunnel? The Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan is almost three kilometres (1.7 miles) long, and is a crucial link between Kabul and the northern part of the country. On November 2, 1982, a Soviet military vehicle collided with a fuel truck in the tunnel, resulting in an explosion and fire. The flames caused the fuel tanks of more vehicles to explode. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians were killed in the blasts and the inferno. The Soviet army, thinking a mujahedeen ambush was taking place, blocked both ends of the tunnel with tanks, allowing no one to get out. Cars that were still running filled the tunnel with carbon monoxide, killing anyone in the tunnel who had survived the explosions. The exact number of dead isn’t known, but it is believed the fatalities numbered about 3,000. Why are underground coal mines so susceptible to explosions? Coal gives off a variety of flammable gases called “damp,” from the German word dampf, which means fog or vapour. Even after burning, these dangerous fumes leave yet another noxious fume called after-damp, which is lethal. Poor ventilation can leave pockets of these dangerous gases in mine shafts. A mistake with a blasting charge can cause an explosion that kills miners with cave-ins, fire, and deadly gas. Where did the world’s worst coal mine explosion occur?

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The Fushun Mines of Manchuria were about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Mukden. The mines were extensive and productive and employed thousands of miners. On February 12, 1931, an explosion ripped through the coal mine. The Japanese, who were just beginning their invasion and occupation of Manchuria, told the outside world that all 3,000 men who had been in the mine were safe. Chinese newspapers claimed all 3,000 miners were dead. Five Other Deadly Explosions • Lanchow, China, October 26, 1935: An arsenal in the middle of the city blows up, killing 2000. Sabotage is suspected but never proven. • Calí, Colombia, August 7, 1956: Seven truckloads of dynamite parked in the centre of the city explode, killing 1,200. Terrorists are suspected, but the guilty parties are never found. • Courrières, France, March 10, 1906: A small fire in a coal mine ignites combustible gases and sets off a massive explosion, killing 1,060. • Johanngeorgendstadt, East Germany, November 29, 1949: An explosion in a uranium mine kills at least 3,700 miners. Soviet authorities immediately seal off the area and impose strict secrecy. The explosion registers on seismographs in other European countries, and a Leipzig fire chief who escaped East Germany reports the blast in the West. He says that 80 German firemen, who were battling the blaze caused by the explosion, were arrested by Soviet security police and shot. 33

• Bombay, India, April 14, 1944: The ammunition ship Fort Stikine, moored at Victoria Dock in Bombay Harbour, catches fire and explodes, killing 1,376. The cause of the fire is never discovered. Where was the worst coal-mining accident in the United States? On December 6, 1907, at 10:28 a.m., two cars at the tail of a train of coal cars being taken to the surface of the Monogah Mine in West Virginia became uncoupled and began rolling down the steep slope to the mine. They smashed into a wall, cutting electric cables and sending up a shower of sparks. The sparks ignited gas, sending an enormous blast thundering through the mineshafts. Men who weren’t killed outright by the force and heat of the explosion were buried under tonnes of debris. Of the 366 men working in the mine, only four emerged alive. Ironically, one of the 362 dead was a salesman who had been trying to sell the miners life insurance policies. Where was the worst coal-mining disaster in Canadian history? On June 19, 1914, at Hillcrest, Alberta, a fall of rock is believed to have struck a spark, causing dust explosions that crippled ventilation fans and burned away half of the oxygen in the coal mine. A total of 189 men died, leaving 130 women and 400 children without husbands and fathers. Canada has had a long history of mining tragedies. Between 1881 and 1969, 424 people lost their lives in numerous explosions and cave-ins in Springhill, Nova Scotia. And between 1866 and 1987, 1,321 people were killed in the mines at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. 34

What little-known riverboat explosion took American lives than some Civil War battles?

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On April 27, 1865, just two and a half weeks after the Civil War ended, the steamboat Sultana was plowing up the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi, bound for Cairo, Illinois. Onboard were 80 crewmen, 75–100 civilian passengers, and 2,300–2,500 Union Army veterans who had been released from Confederate POW camps. The Sultana had a legal load limit of 376 passengers and crew members, but there were dark rumours about corruption through which individuals were lining their pockets by transporting the POWs home using any means possible. With all the extra weight on board, the steamboat’s engines had to work at full capacity to make headway against the powerful Mississippi current. Steam engines were cantankerous at the best of times, and running them full throttle was asking for trouble. The Sultana wasn’t long out of Memphis when three boilers exploded in rapid succession. The steamer was ripped apart and its decks collapsed, crushing people to death. Some passengers were blown into the river and survived. Many more were burned to death or drowned. The official death count was 1,547. Many of those involved in rescue operations believed it was likely closer to 2,000. Six Legacies of Chernobyl • Huge tracts of land in Ukraine and Belarus will be unsafe for agriculture or human habitation for centuries. • The Soviet government admitted to 31 deaths at the accident site and 255 deaths from radiation sickness. The real number is probably in the thousands. Officials withheld or falsified so 35

many documents that researchers find it extremely difficult to get reliable data. • Millions of people were exposed to radiation, resulting in an increase in cases of respiratory illnesses, leukemia, and other forms of cancer, as well as jaundice and anemia. • A high rate of impotency has occurred among young male adults who were boys at the time of the accident. • There has been an increase in birth defects and stillbirths. Only 3 percent of babies born to women exposed to Chernobyl radiation are without abnormalities. • According to Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, at least 3 million children in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia require medical treatment. “Not until 2016 at the earliest will we know the full number of those likely to develop serious medical conditions,” he has said. What happened at Chernobyl? On April 26, 1986, in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant at Pripyat in the Soviet Union (now in the independent Ukraine), a series of human errors caused a major explosion. Tonnes of radioactive steam and gas were spewed into the atmosphere. Winds carried this dangerous material all over Europe, and eventually around the world. Even while firemen futilely battled the blaze and the 40,000 people of Pripyat (who had already been exposed to severe radiation) were being evacuated, the Soviet government refused to tell the world what had happened. Not until April 28 when Swedish

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scientists detected unusual levels of radiation in winds blowing from the Soviet Union did Soviet officials reluctantly admit there had been an accident. They downplayed the danger and lied that everything was under control. Radioactive contaminants continued to leak from Chernobyl until the ruined reactor was encased in a concrete shell.

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VOLCANOES How is a volcano connected with the legend of Atlantis? During the Bronze Age, the Aegean island of Thera, 112 kilometres (70 miles) north of Crete, supported a thriving civilization. Thera was about 16 kilometres (10 miles) in diameter and rose to a height of about one and a half kilometres (almost a mile). Evidence shows that it was a jewel of the Minoan world. Then, in the summer of 1470 BC,

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the island exploded in what may have been the biggest volcanic eruption to occur in human history. Thera disappeared, leaving behind remnants in the form of a little archipelago called Santorini. Not much in the way of documentation regarding Thera’s destruction has ever been found, though scientists have been able to reconstruct the events to a certain degree. However, it is believed that clues to the disaster can be found in the Bible (Noah’s flood, for example) and ancient mythologies. Some scientists and historians have speculated that Thera could have been the legendary city of Atlantis. What happened to the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum? Pompeii was a major commercial and agricultural centre on the Bay of Naples. Herculaneum was a wealthy resort town 12.8 kilometres (8 miles) to the northwest. Both communities lay in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, which the Romans didn’t realize was a volcano. On the afternoon of August 24, AD 79, Vesuvius erupted with a cataclysmic force that sent fire, ash, and pumice rocketing 19 kilometres (12 miles) into the atmosphere. The western wall of the mountain exploded. Hot pumice stones and ash rained down on Pompeii, followed by a cloud of steam and deadly gas that swept down on the city at speeds of up to 193 kilometres (120 miles) an hour. Residents died in the streets and in the homes in which they had sought refuge. Within a matter of hours, Pompeii was buried. Most of Herculaneum’s residents evacuated their town. The following day, many of them returned, thinking the worst of the phenomenon was over. They were wrong. The lightning-laced cloud that had towered over Vesuvius suddenly collapsed, engulfing Herculaneum in 39

superheated air and gas. Then the town was inundated with ash, steam, and rocks. Pompeii and Herculaneum were annihilated. What famous ancient Roman was killed by Mount Vesuvius’s eruption? Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), was a Roman scholar and officer who had been appointed by Emperor Titus to command the naval base at Misenum, about 32 kilometres (20 miles) across the Bay of Naples from Herculaneum. When he saw the black cloud rising above Vesuvius, he set out with a fleet of galleys to take a closer look and to rescue residents of Herculaneum, whose only escape route was by sea. This noble action cost him his life. Pliny the Elder either suffered a heart attack or was overcome by poisonous volcanic gas. His last heroic hours were recorded by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, whose chronicle provides us with a detailed account of the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Quickies Did you know … • that Titus had been the Roman emperor barely two months when Vesuvius erupted? Because of his extravagant lifestyle, people had been afraid that Titus might be another Nero. However, he showed great efficiency and compassion in rushing aid to the stricken region, even donating large sums of his own money and visiting the disaster area personally. These actions went a long way toward earning Titus the love of the Roman people. 40

Why have the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum been called “the greatest historical museum in the world”? Two communities that existed at the height of the Roman Empire were wiped out almost in a flash, but the very volcanic material that seemingly erased them from the face of the earth also preserved them. Excavations have given us a dramatic look into a long-lost world. Homes, places of business, even bakeries with bread still in the ovens, were buried for centuries and have emerged from archaeological digs just as they were when the disaster struck. Most dramatic and moving are the plaster casts of victims made from cavities in the volcanic material that buried them. What was the largest volcanic eruption ever recorded? During August 26–27, 1883, Krakatoa, a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, exploded with the loudest noise ever heard by human ears. People more than 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) away heard the blast. The explosive force is estimated to have been equal to that of one million Hiroshima atomic bombs. Twenty cubic kilometres (five cubic miles) of rock and ash were hurled into the very outer reaches of the stratosphere. Seismic shock waves went around the globe seven times. Giant tsunamis crashed into the coasts of Sumatra and Java, wiping out hundreds of villages. The death toll exceeded 200,000. What Caribbean city was wiped out by a volcanic eruption? St. Pierre, on the French island of Martinique, was called the Paris of the Caribbean. The beautiful little city lay in the 41

shadow of Mount Pelee, a 1,350-metre (4,429-foot) volcano. Everyone knew that Pelee wasn’t dormant, but expected that they could easily keep out of the way of any lava flows or mudslides. But when Pelee exploded on May 8, 1902, something totally unexpected happened. Instead of the volcano blowing its top, the side of Pelee blew out. A huge cloud of superhot, poisonous gas, known ever since as a nuée ardente (glowing or burning cloud), spilled out of the bowels of the mountain and rolled down on helpless St. Pierre. There was no escape. More than 35,000 people died within minutes. Who was Auguste Ciparis? Auguste Ciparis was the sole survivor in St. Pierre. At the time of Pelee’s eruption he had been locked in solitary confinement in the St. Pierre jail, and the thick walls of his prison protected him from the hot ash and intense heat. Contrary to popular stories, Ciparis was in jail for public drunkenness and assault, not for murder. His terrifying story of having witnessed the deaths of some nuns and schoolgirls as they tried to escape from a convent was a total fabrication. Nonetheless, Ciparis became a star attraction in the Barnum & Bailey Circus. How was the eruption of Mount St. Helens unique among volcanic explosions? The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, in Washington State wasn’t among the biggest of volcanic explosions in human history, nor was it among the most disastrous, though 68 people did die. Mount St. Helens was unique for two reasons. Aside from an eruption that took place in a remote part of Alaska in 1912, it was the biggest 42

one known to have happened in the United States. Also, because scientists knew the eruption was coming, it was the first one to be totally documented on film. Seven Facts About Krakatoa • In central Australia, 4,022 kilometres (2,500 miles) away, Krakatoa’s explosions sounded like rifle shots and stampeding sheep. • Hot pumice rocks, some of them 2.4 metres (8 feet) across, rained down over an area larger than France. • In the town of Merak, Java, people sought refuge from the tsunamis at the top of a hill 41 metres (135 feet) above sea level. The water swept them away. Out of a population of 3,000, only two survived. • More than 6,500 ships and boats sank or were swamped. • A tsunami picked up the steamship Berouw from its moorings in the harbour of Telok Betong, Sumatra, and carried it three kilometres (almost two miles) inland. • Ash and dust from the eruption went into the stratosphere and encircled the globe, colouring the sky and affecting the weather for years. The phenomenon enabled scientists on the ground to see the jet stream. • Krakatoa’s highest point was 823 metres (2,700 feet) above sea level. After the eruption, all that remained of the island was an undersea caldera 6.4 kilometres (4 miles) across and

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274 metres (900 feet) deep. Since then a new volcano, Anak Krakatoa (Krakatoa’s Child), has risen above the sea. Twelve Very Active Volcanoes • Arenal, Costa Rica • Karymsky, Kamchatka, Russia • Kilauea, Hawaii • Rabaul, Papua New Guinea • Sangay, Ecuador • Soufrière Hills, Montserrat, West Indies • Mount St. Helens, United States • Mount Etna, Sicily, Italy • Fuego, Guatemala • Popocatépetl, Mexico • Suwanose-Jima, Ryukyu Islands, Japan • Stromboli, Italy

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SHIPWRECKS Where is the “Graveyard of the Atlantic”? More than one stretch of deadly water has been called “the Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Cape Hatteras has laid claim to the title. Indeed, it has been said that the whole North Carolina coast is a maritime graveyard. But the granddaddy of them all is Sable Island. This 42-kilometre (26-mile) strip of sand 160 kilometres (100 miles) off the coast of mainland

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Nova Scotia had its first documented wreck in 1583 when Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s ship, Delight, ran aground there. Between that time and 1947, when the freighter Manhasset became Sable Island’s last major victim (not including the yacht Merrimac, in 1999), 350 vessels came to grief in the waters around Sable — and those are only the recorded wrecks. No doubt many a ship written off as “lost” met its fate in these notorious waters. Why was the Titanic said to be unsinkable? The Titanic was the most majestic ship of its time; 11 storeys tall and as long as four city blocks. Her interior was divided into 16 watertight compartments that could be separated by emergency doors activated by the flick of an electrical switch on the bridge. The Titanic’s owners and officers knew that if more than five of the watertight compartments were breached, the ship would sink. But the odds against such an occurrence were astronomical. What happened to the Titanic at 11:40 p.m.? At that time Seaman Frederick Fleet, on lookout duty in the crow’s nest, signalled to the bridge that an iceberg was dead ahead. First Officer William Murdock ordered a hard turn to starboard, pulled the engine room telegraph to full-speed astern, and hit the switch to close all the watertight doors. But it was too late. Thirty-seven seconds after Fleet gave his signal, the Titanic brushed against a submerged protrusion of the iceberg. Steel plates on the liner’s starboard side buckled like cardboard as the ice slashed a gash below the waterline, long enough to flood

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six of the vessel’s compartments, including the number five and number six boiler rooms. The Titanic was doomed. How did the German government justify its attack on the Lusitania? On May 7, 1915, a German submarine sunk the passenger liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. Among the 1,198 dead were 128 Americans. Of the 39 infants taken aboard the ship in New York City, only four were among the 761 survivors. The German government claimed, correctly, that the Lusitania was carrying munitions to Britain. The German embassy in Washington had issued a warning that all vessels flying the British flag were subject to attack and that people travelled on them at their own risk. Although everywhere else in the world the deed was condemned as an atrocity, the German government stamped a medal commemorating the sinking of the Lusitania. The attack on the Lusitania was a major factor in the American decision to enter the First World War on the Allied side. Five Reasons for the Great Loss of Life on the Titanic • There were 1,028 too few spaces available in the Titanic’s lifeboats to accommodate all of the people onboard. • The launching of the available lifeboats was badly handled, with none of the boats being assigned a full capacity of people. There had been no lifeboat or life jacket drill. • Few of the people in lifeboats did anything to help people struggling in the water. 47

• The nearest ship, the Californian, only 32 kilometres (20 miles) away, was unaware of the Titanic’s situation. People on the Californian thought the Titanic’s distress flares were celebratory fireworks. • The North Atlantic water was freezing cold, and even people wearing life jackets could survive in it for only a few minutes. When the ship Carpathia arrived to search for survivors, its crew picked up 705 people in lifeboats. No survivors were plucked from the sea. There is some doubt about the exact number of people who perished. The Americans peg the death toll at 1,517; the British estimate it to be 1,490. What was the worst freshwater ship disaster in Canada? On the afternoon of May 28, 1914, the liner Empress of Ireland left Quebec City, downward bound on the St. Lawrence River for a routine transatlantic crossing to Liverpool, England. The ship, carrying 1,057 passengers and with a crew of 420, had been in operation since 1906 and had a sterling record for safety. Early on the morning of May 29, a thick fog rolled over the St. Lawrence. As the Empress steamed downstream through zero visibility, the Norwegian freighter Storstad, loaded with 11,500 tonnes of coal, was plowing upstream. Captain Henry Kendall of the Empress and Captain Thomas Anderson of the Storstad were each aware of the other ship’s presence. Both ordered blasts on their ships’ whistles and took action to avoid a collision. Mistakes made by both captains resulted in disaster. The bow of the Storstad sliced into the Empress amidships. The big liner immediately began to fill with water. Captain Kendall tried to run his ship to shore, but the Empress 48

didn’t make it. It sank in 14 minutes, with a loss of 1,012 lives, 840 of whom were passengers, a slightly greater loss than the number of passengers who perished on the Titanic. Only four children out of 134 survived the Empress sinking. Five Strange Facts About the Empress of Ireland • The Empress of Ireland was originally called the Empress of Austria, but the name was changed. Many mariners considered it bad luck to change a ship’s name. • Four years before the Empress of Ireland disaster, Captain Kendall had been the skipper on the Canadian Pacific steamer Montrose, on which Dr. Hawley Crippen was trying to make his escape from England after murdering his wife. Kendall recognized the fugitive and had him arrested when the ship reached Canada. Dr. Crippen, who was eventually hanged, supposedly put a curse on Captain Kendall. • Just before the Empress sailed from Quebec City on its fatal voyage, the ship’s mascot, a cat named Emmy, jumped onto the dock and couldn’t be induced to return to the ship, even though she had kittens on board. • Among the passengers on the Empress were 200 members of the Salvation Army, travelling to a convention in London. As the ship pulled away from the dock, their band was playing “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.” One hundred sixty-seven of the Salvationists perished, the single greatest tragedy in the Army’s history. • At the moment the Storstad collided with the Empress, down in second class some of the liner’s passengers were 49

playing a game called Dead Man. At the same time, in the first-class dining salon, the ship’s five-piece orchestra was playing “The Funeral March of a Marionette.” Ten Major Maritime Disasters • August 29, 1792, Spithead, England: The battleship Royal George was in port undergoing routine repairs when a sudden squall blew up and water poured in through the ship’s open gun ports. The ship sank with 1,300 men on board. More than 900 drowned. • March 17, 1800, Leghorn, Italy: A fire started aboard the British frigate Queen Charlotte. The ship sank, with a loss of 700 lives. • December 24, 1811, Wingo Sound, Nova Scotia: Two British warships, St. George and Defence, went down in a storm, killing 2,000. • April 1902 (precise date not available), Madras, India: The British/Indian steamer Camorta went down in a cyclone, resulting in the deaths of 739 people. • June 15, 1904, New York City: The excursion steamer General Slocum was overloaded and the ship’s owners and operators were in violation of a long list of safety regulations when a fire broke out during a Sunday School day trip. Most of the 1,031 who died were children. • July 24, 1915, Chicago, Illinois: The excursion steamer Eastland was in port and overcrowded with picnickers when it suddenly capsized, drowning 852 people.

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• August 29, 1916, Chusan Islands, China: The cruisers Hsin-Yu and Hai-Yung collided, and the Hsin-Yu sank, resulting in 1,000 deaths. • January 30, 1945, Baltic Sea: An unidentified Russian submarine torpedoed the German passenger liner Wilhelm Gustloff, killing 5,328. Some accounts say more than 7,000 died. • September 26, 1954, Taugaru Strait, Japan: The passenger ferry Toyo Maru capsized in a typhoon, ending the lives of 794 people. • December 20, 1987, Tablas Strait, Philippines: The passenger ferry Dona Paz collided with the tanker Victor. Both vessels caught fire and at least 3,000 people were killed. Where is the “Graveyard of the Great Lakes”? Each of the Great Lakes — Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario — has one or more “graveyards.” The most notorious of them is Long Point. This slim peninsula jutting 32 kilometres (20 miles) from the Canadian shore of Lake Erie is surrounded by treacherous shoals. The deep channel between Long Point’s shoals and the American shore is very narrow, which, in the nineteenth century, made collisions a major danger. One such accident in August 1852 resulted in the sinking of the passenger steamer Atlantic, with a loss of 350 lives.

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TSUNAMIS How does a tsunami occur? The phenomenon we now call a tsunami was once incorrectly called a tidal wave. Actually, the tide has absolutely nothing to do with tsunamis, which can also be called seismic sea waves. Tsunamis are usually caused by earthquakes with epicentres at the bottom of the ocean. Less frequently, they can be caused by submarine landslides or submarine volcanic 52

activity. The shock wave generated by a sea-floor quake races through the water at speeds of 128 kilometres (80 miles) an hour. Tsunamis have been known to travel from one side of the Pacific Ocean to another in a day. In deep water, a tsunami passes beneath a ship with barely any notice. But when this mass of energy hits shallow water, it builds up into one of nature’s most powerful forces, sending walls of water smashing against coastal areas. What is the origin of the word tsunami? The word comes from the Japanese for harbour (tsu) and wave (nami). It translates literally as “harbour wave,” which is an accurate description, since usually the monster smashes into a harbour before people even know it is coming. What was the largest tsunami ever recorded? After the Great Krakatoa Volcanic Eruption of 1883, coastal villages were erased by waves that towered over 30 metres (125 feet) above sea level. Nearly 300 villages were destroyed or damaged and at least 36,000 people died. The tsunamis affected the tides in the English Channel on the other side of the world. There is a story that in 1737 an earthquake that shook Japan caused a tsunami that reached a height of 64 metres (210 feet), but there is little documentation to support the claim. Where have tsunamis struck twice within one generation? On June 15, 1896, a monstrous tsunami hit the Sankiru District of the Japanese island of Honshu. Waves 160 metres 53

(100 feet) high crashed ashore at an estimated speed of 804 kilometres (500 miles) an hour. The churning water swept away 10,617 houses and killed 27,122 people. In 1933 another tsunami struck Sankiru, killing an estimated 3,000 people. When was a city on the Mediterranean inundated by a tsunami? On the morning of December 28, 1908, an earthquake measuring 7.5 shook Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula. Its epicentre was at the bottom of the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and the toe of Italy. The city of Messina on Sicily was hardest hit. First it was violently shaken by the quake. Then, before the survivors could recover their senses, a tsunami eight metres (26 feet) high swept across the city, washing an unknown number of victims out to sea. Fatalities on the island and the mainland together were estimated at 120,000. What British territory in North America was struck by a tsunami in 1929? On November 18, 1929, an earthquake registering 7.2, with its epicentre at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean about 560 kilometres (350 miles) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, shook the Dominion of Newfoundland. Earthquakes are very rare in that part of the world, and most people didn’t know what to make of the “Big Thump.” Two hours later a tsunami slammed into the island’s Burin Peninsula. Three waves shattered coastal communities such as Lord’s Cove and Port au Bras. Fishing boats were picked up and deposited far

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inland. Frame houses — and their occupants — were carried out to sea. Almost half of the 27 people killed were children. How did a tsunami connect Alaska and Hawaii? At 1:30 a.m. on April 1, 1946, violent seismic activity on the floor of the Pacific Ocean 144 kilometres (90 miles) southeast of Unimak, one of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, triggered a monstrous tsunami. Only 21 minutes later the Scotch Cap lighthouse on Unimak was erased from the face of the planet. Four and a half hours after that, a series of colossal waves, travelling at an astonishing 788 kilometres (490 miles) per hour, swept down on the Hawaiian Islands. It was the most destructive tsunami to strike Hawaii since 1819, the first year that records were kept. The April Fool’s Day tsunami wrecked 1,400 homes, severely damaged the sugar cane fields, and killed 159 Hawaiian residents. What actions were taken following the April Fool’s Day tsunami? A tsunami warning system was put into operation after the Hawaiian tragedy on April Fool’s Day in 1946. It consisted of five seismic stations around the Pacific Rim, and an oceanwide network of tidal gauges. All came under the authority of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Honolulu. Thanks to the PTWC, no one was killed by the tsunami that struck Hawaii in 1957. In 1961, however, 61 people in the town of Hilo died when they failed to respond to a tsunami warning. Why was the Southeast Asian tsunami of 2004 so devastating? 55

At about 7:00 a.m. on December 26, 2004, the floor of the Indian Ocean shook with an earthquake so massive that it caused the Earth to wobble in its rotation. Unbelievably powerful shock waves raced through the sea at velocities faster than a jet. Scientists in Australia and Hawaii saw the readings on their instruments and warned of a tsunami developing in the Indian Ocean. Their alert wasn’t heeded, however, because the Indian Ocean rarely experiences tsunamis. The coastal areas of Southeast Asia and East Africa were therefore completely unprepared.

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FIRE What is wildfire? Wildfire refers to anything that moves quickly or is out of control. A disease can spread like wildfire; scandalous news can move through a community like wildfire; a pop star’s latest hit recording can sell like wildfire. One other thing that can spread like wildfire is … fire! In the summer and autumn of 2007, wildfires swept through southern California, 57

destroying homes and forests, forcing the evacuation of entire communities, and turning a large part of the state into a disaster area. Why does legend say that “Nero fiddled while Rome burned”? There were no fiddles in Nero’s time, but the mad emperor did consider himself an accomplished musician on the lyre. He allegedly played and sang verses from The Fall of Troy as he watched from a hilltop while Rome burned. The Great Fire of Rome began near the Circus Maximus on July 19, AD 64, and raged for nine days. No one knows how many Romans were killed, but thousands were left homeless, and only four of the city’s 14 districts were untouched. Some historians defend Nero’s efforts to fight the fire, aid the victims, and rebuild the city. Others accuse the emperor of starting the fire so he could rebuild Rome as a monument to himself. Nero blamed the conflagration on Christians, many of whom had been outspoken in their denunciations of Rome. Quickies Did you know … • that a fire in New Brunswick’s Miramichi Valley in October 1825 destroyed 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of forest, one-fifth of the province’s trees, and killed about 160 people? This fire ranks as one of the three worst forest conflagrations ever recorded in North America. The other two were the Great Fire of 1910 in Idaho and Montana, which consumed roughly the same amount of territory as the Miramichi fire and took the lives of 86 people, and the 58

Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin in 1871, which destroyed 486,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) and took the lives of an estimated 1,200–2,500 people. Quickies Did you know … • that Nero’s rebuilding program included a magnificent palace and a gigantic bronze statue of himself called the Colossus? The statue probably wasn’t finished by the time Nero was overthrown and committed suicide in 68 AD. The statue was rededicated to the sun god Helios and was moved to a new location. The place where it had stood eventually became the site of a huge arena known as the Coliseum. What was the worst fire in history? In terms of loss of life, the worst recorded fire was the one that destroyed nearly 10,000 homes in Chungking, China, on September 2, 1949. The death toll was 1,700. Thousands more were injured. Chungking was one of the last Nationalist holdouts in the civil war with the Communists. The fire was certainly the work of an arsonist, but it has never been determined if the culprit was a Communist or a Nationalist. When was the first fire insurance company founded? In 1667, Dr. Nicholas Barton began building houses in parts of London that had been gutted in the Great Fire of 1666. Dr. Barton established the Fire Company, which had engines and a force of uniformed men. He also sold policies that guaranteed to replace any of his houses that were destroyed

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by fire. Dr. Barton’s business eventually became known as the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company. How did Philadelphia benefit from the Great Fire of London? From September 2 to 6,1666, a fire that began in a bakery on Pudding Lane raged through London, England, reducing 80 percent of the great city to ashes. One of those involved in fighting the conflagration was William Penn. Stopping the fire from spreading was almost impossible, though, because much of London was a jumble of narrow streets with wooden buildings stacked one against the other. Flames raced through the streets faster than firefighters could pull down buildings to make firebreaks. Sixteen years later, William Penn the Younger, who had witnessed the Great Fire of London as a child, founded Philadelphia. He made sure his new community had wide streets so it wouldn’t become the fire trap that Old London had been. What tragic fire in a Canadian movie theatre took the lives of 78 children? On January 9, 1927, fire broke out in the Laurier Palace Theatre in Montreal during an afternoon matinee. The theatre was overcrowded and in violation of a long list of fire safety regulations. In their panic to get out, 78 children were overcome by smoke or crushed to death in a pileup in a narrow stairway. The movie being shown that afternoon wasn’t Mary Pickford’s Swallows, as is often mistakenly reported, but a comedy ominously titled Get ’Em Young. After this terrible fire, a law was passed in Quebec banning

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children under the age of 16 from the province’s theatres. The law was in effect until 1961. What did the late comic actor Charles Nelson Reilly have to do with one of the worst fires in U.S. history? On July 6, 1944, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus staged one of their shows in Hartford, Connecticut, which was attended by more than 8,000 people. While the famed trapeze artists the Great Wallendas performed in the big top, a fire broke out. In the panicked rush to escape, 168 people were killed, some by the flames themselves, and many others due to trampling. More than 60 of the dead were children. One child who survived was the comedian Charles Nelson Reilly (1931–2007). The ordeal affected him for the rest of his life. He admitted in 1997 that he rarely attended theatre as an audience member because the sounds of crowds reminded him of that terrible day in the summer of 1944. Reilly dramatized his experience in the fire in a much-acclaimed one-man show, Save It for the Stage, which he filmed in 2006 as The Life of Reilly. To this day the origin of the Hartford fire is unknown, though Ringling Brothers, because of obvious safety violations made by the circus, was initially held responsible for the disaster. Several of the company’s officials were convicted of manslaughter but never served time in prison. A few years after the fire, a circus roustabout named Robert Segee confessed to setting the fire, and though he was eventually convicted of unrelated arson charges elsewhere and was sentenced to 40 years in prison, the reality of his guilt is still questioned. Nine More Horrific Fires 61

• December 8, 1881, Vienna, Austria: Ring Theatre Fire, 850 dead. • May 25, 1887, Paris, France: Paris Opera Comique Fire, 200 dead. • September 4, 1887, Exeter, England: Exeter Theatre Fire, 200 dead. • November 28, 1942, Boston, Massachusetts: Cocoanut Grove Fire, 491 dead. • July 14, 1960, Guatemala City, Guatemala: Guatemala City Insane Asylum Fire, 225 dead. • December 17, 1961, Nitorio, Brazil: Gran Circo Norte Americano Fire, 323 dead. • May 22, 1967, Brussels, Belgium: L’Innovation Department Store Fire, 322 dead. • February 1, 1974, São Paulo, Brazil: Joelmo Building Fire, 220 dead. • August 20, 1978, Abadan, Iran: Cinema Rex Fire, 422 dead. What really caused the Great Chicago fire? There has never been any doubt that one of the worst urban fires in American history began on October 8, 1871, in a barn behind the home of Patrick and Katie O’Leary at 137 DeKoven Street. However, just what started the blaze that took 200 to 300 lives, caused $222 million in damage (a third

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of the city’s valuation), and made 90,000 people homeless (nearly a third of the city’s population) has never been satisfactorily determined. Bone-dry weather conditions and substandard firefighting equipment allowed the conflagration to burn out of control quickly. After all, in that same week, one of the worst forest fires in U.S. history, the Peshtigo Fire in nearby Wisconsin, killed as many as 2,500 people. Out-of-control fires also raged that terrible week across the lake from Chicago, in Michigan. Some of the possible scenarios as to how fire broke out in Mrs. O’Leary’s fabled barn are: • Mrs. O’Leary went to the barn to examine a sick cow. When she returned to the house for some salt, the cow kicked over a kerosene lantern she had left on the straw-strewn floor. • Mrs. O’Leary went to the barn to get some milk for her neighbour Patrick McLaughlin. It wasn’t the usual milking time, and the restless cow kicked over the lantern. • Patrick McLaughlin sneaked into the barn himself to pilfer some milk, and the cow kicked over the lantern. • Dennis “Peg Leg” Sullivan, a boarder in the O’Leary house, went out to the barn for a nip of whiskey and a smoke, habits of which Mrs. O’Leary disapproved. He accidentally started the fire while lighting his pipe. • The ground on which the O’Leary barn stood was highly combustible due to a concentration in the soil of elements left by a comet strike thousands of years earlier.

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Another tragic fire struck Chicago in the early twentieth century. On December 30, 1903, 602 people, including more than 200 children, perished in a blaze in the Iroquois Theatre during a comedy called Mr. Bluebeard, featuring Eddie Foy. The death toll in this incident still ranks as the greatest number of fatalities in a single-structure fire in the United States.

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FALLING BRIDGES Whose ghost is said to haunt the burial site of the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster victims? On December 29, 1876, during a blizzard, a passenger train pulled by two locomotives was crossing the railway bridge that spanned Ashtabula Creek at the edge of the little town of Ashtabula, Ohio. The span suddenly collapsed, and all but the lead engine plummeted into the frozen-over creek. Fires that

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had been burning in the coaches for the comfort of the passengers ignited the wrecked cars. People who weren’t killed in the fall or drowned in the creek were roasted alive. Ninety-four people died and 63 were injured. An examination of the wrecked bridge revealed stress-related problems that inspector Charles Collins had missed when he examined the bridge ten days before the disaster. The remorseful Collins shot himself in the head. His tomb in nearby Chestnut Grove Cemetery is very close to the burial site of 19 train-wreck victims who were burned beyond recognition. It has been said that his ghost appears there, weeping and begging the dead for forgiveness. The bridge’s designer, Amasa Stone, also committed suicide. Who was the engineer, knighted by Queen Victoria, whose greatest accomplishment gave way to one of Britain’s worst tragedies? The Tay River Bridge, across the Firth of Tay in Scotland, was designed by Thomas Bouch and was considered an engineering marvel when it was completed in 1877. At nearly three kilometres (two miles) in length, it was the longest bridge in the world. Queen Victoria knighted Bouch for his grand work. Less than 19 months after the bridge opened, however, disaster struck. On December 28, 1879, just after 6:15 p.m., a passenger train from Edinburgh to Dundee was crossing the bridge during a violent storm when the structure collapsed. The train plunged into the water and sank to the bottom of the firth. All 75 people on board died. An inquiry placed most of the blame for the accident on Sir Thomas Bouch.

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What Canadian tragedy destroyed the career of the American bridge-building icon Theodore Cooper? By 1897 Theodore Cooper was the most admired bridge-builder in the United States. His books on bridge-building were considered Bibles of the trade. He was the logical man to be given the challenge of constructing a bridge across the St. Lawrence River at a site 9.6 kilometres (6 miles) downstream from Quebec City. To Cooper, this would be his crowning achievement. Construction didn’t begin until 1905. The bridge wasn’t finished yet when, on August 29, 1907, at 5:32 p.m., it suddenly collapsed into the St. Lawrence River. Down with the tangle of girders went 86 men. Only 11 of them survived. The cause of the disaster was traced to a flaw in Cooper’s original plan. Theodore Cooper never built another bridge. Why do Canadian engineers wear iron rings? Contrary to popular belief, the Iron Ring has nothing to do with the Quebec Bridge Disaster of 1907. It is a symbol of professionalism that began with a group of Montreal engineers in 1922. They instituted the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer as a means of directing young engineers toward a conscientious understanding of the significance of the profession and of reminding older engineers of their responsibilities in welcoming and supporting their young colleagues. The ceremonial ritual, which isn’t obligatory, was composed by Rudyard Kipling. The ring is worn on the pinky finger of the working hand, and today is more likely to be made of stainless steel rather than iron.

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What bridge in Vancouver serves as a memorial to those who died during its construction? On June 17, 1958, while constructing a bridge that would link North Vancouver to the City of Vancouver, 18 men were killed when the structure collapsed into Burrard Inlet 70 metres (200 feet) below. One diver died trying to recover bodies. After completion, the bridge was named The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing as a tribute to the victims of the disaster. Quickies Did you know … • that construction began on another bridge over the St. Lawrence River in 1913? On September 11, 1916, the central span of this bridge collapsed, killing 13 men. There were rumours that the bridge was cursed. It was finally completed in September 1917 and formally opened by the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VIII). Where did the Silver Bridge Disaster occur? The Silver Bridge, built in 1928, connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Kanauga, Ohio. It was a suspension bridge with “eyebars” chained together instead of the usual cables. The eyebars were connected with giant pins. At 5:00 p.m. on December 15, 1967, under the heavy weight of Christmas season traffic, one of the eyebars fractured and the pin broke. Within a minute, a large part of the bridge plunged into the Ohio River. The accident killed 46 people and injured nine more. 68

What was Australia’s worst bridge disaster? On October 15, 1970, at 11:50 a.m., the West Gate Bridge over the Yarra River in Australia’s state of Victoria went crashing down while still under construction. Thirty-five men were killed and many others were injured. The casualty list might have been higher, but many of the workers were on their morning break. An investigation found faults with the bridge’s design, as well as “mistakes, miscalculations, errors of judgment, failure of communication, and sheer inefficiency.” What bridge disaster involved an ocean freighter? On May 9, 1980, the freighter SS Summit Venture collided with a support column of Florida’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Over 366 metres (1,200 feet) of the bridge fell into Tampa Bay, taking along six cars and a Greyhound bus. Thirty-five people were killed. One man survived because his truck landed on the deck of the Summit Venture. Why did three lanes of a viaduct overpass in Laval, Quebec, collapse onto a highway? On the afternoon of Saturday, September 30, 2006, five people in two cars were crushed to death and six other people were injured when a huge section of the overpass they were driving under suddenly fell on them. Engineers believed that the bonding between the concrete and the steel bars running through it had failed, possibly because of corrosion, leaving the span unable to support its own weight.

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FAMINES What was the earliest famine on record? Ancient Egyptian records tell of a famine that occurred in the third millennium BC. The Nile River failed to flood, crops were poor, and Egyptians starved. Scholars believe the Great Famine described in the Book of Genesis lasted from 1708 to 1701 BC. Where was the worst famine in history? 70

In China, from 1876 to 1878, between 9 and 13 million people are believed to have died from starvation and violence. In northern and central China the famine was caused by drought. In southern regions crops were wiped out by floods. As famine gripped the land, bandit gangs murdered people for their horses, mules, and dogs. There were numerous reports of cannibalism and even of children being sold for food. The Manchu dynasty attempted to keep the outside world ignorant of the disaster by forbidding foreigners to enter the afflicted areas. Thus, aid that might have gone to the victims was delayed for two years. What caused the Irish Famine? From 1845 to 1850 a blight called Phytophthora infestans ravaged the potato crop in Ireland, which had become the staple food of the population. The situation worsened through the mismanagement, greed, and indifference of absentee English landlords. While the Irish starved, shiploads of grain and livestock left Irish ports for England. Farmers unable to pay rents and taxes were evicted from their homes. The people of a once-thriving agrarian nation were reduced to eating grass. With wholesale malnutrition came epidemics of scurvy, typhoid, and cholera. Over a million people died of starvation and disease. Close to 2 million immigrated to Canada and the United States. The Great Potato Famine cost Ireland almost a third of its population. Why did 3 million people starve in China in 1942–1943? Honan Province had already been ravaged by war and was largely occupied by Japanese troops when a drought caused a crop failure in 1942. Fighting between the Chinese 71

Nationalists and the Communists compounded the problem. When the central government finally released funds for famine relief, little if any of the money reached the starving poor. It disappeared into the twin maws of corruption and official incompetence. In the neighbouring province of Shensi, harvests had been good, but ancient distrust and the chaotic situation involving the government and the invaders prevented much food from crossing the provincial border. When did famine stalk England? In 1069, just three years after the Norman Conquest, there was widespread famine in the northern counties of England. The cause remains a mystery. People were reduced to eating dogs, cats, and rats, and there were reports of cannibalism. More than 50,000 people died. Thousands more sold themselves into slavery. How did the First World War contribute to famine in the American Midwest in the 1930s? The First World War created a huge demand for grain to feed the Allied armies in Europe. Midwestern American farmers, tempted by high grain prices, were encouraged to plough up pasture land and plant wheat. When the war ended, the demand for grain dropped and the enlarged wheat fields were turned back to pasture. However, the ground wasn’t properly prepared for this transition. Ploughs had destroyed the layers of grass roots that had held the soil in place. Dry weather and strong winds combined to strip the American “Breadbasket” of its topsoil and turn it into a great Dust Bowl. By 1934, with the world in the grip of the Great Depression, thousands of farmers in agricultural states such as Kansas and Oklahoma 72

were destitute. Banks foreclosed on mortgages, forcing families onto the road in a desperate search for food, shelter, and employment. Thousands died of hunger and disease. What was the Holomodore? The Holomodore is to Ukrainians what the Holocaust is to Jews. Roughly translated, the word means “hunger plague.” It refers to a series of genocidal policies, particularly in 1932–1933, inflicted upon the Ukrainian population by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet government to force collectivization upon them. An artificially created famine, accompanied by mass executions, resulted in the deaths of more than 14 million Ukrainians. Soviet troops prevented food from entering the region, while Ukrainian men, women, and children starved to death. How did the Nazis bring about a famine in Holland? When the Nazis occupied Holland in 1940, they immediately confiscated all stockpiles of food for their own armies. In the first years of the occupation, 60 percent of all food produced in Holland was taken by the Nazis. In September 1944, in retaliation for Allied bombing raids and in an attempt to break a Dutch railway strike, the Reichkommissar of Holland put a stop to all transportation of food from the agricultural part of the country in the east. All stores of food in warehouses and on ships were seized. In Holland’s urban and industrial areas, starvation set in and people began to die. Because of the weakened condition of the people, there were epidemics of diseases such as diphtheria, dysentery, and scarlet fever. Some 10,000 civilians died before the liberation of Holland brought relief to a population on the verge of annihilation. 73

How did the Japanese occupation of Burma in the Second World War cause famine in India? In 1942 the Japanese captured Singapore and then Burma. Thousands of refugees poured into India, where there was already hunger due to a poor rice harvest. Expecting a Japanese invasion of Bengal at any moment, Indian authorities had vast quantities of rice collected and shipped to other parts of the country so it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. This left the population of Bengal with no supplies. Indian authorities also removed boats to deprive the Japanese of transport, which meant Bengal fishermen had no way of bringing in the daily catch. From 1942 until the war ended in 1945, starvation plagued Bengal. The suffering was compounded by profiteers who seized control of whatever food supplies were available. The official death count from the famine was 1.5 million, but that is considered a conservative estimate. The dead may well have numbered as high as 3–4 million. Why did a drought in the Soviet Union cause famine in developing countries? A drought swept across the Soviet Union from the spring of 1975 right through the harvest time, depriving the nation of most of its grain crops. Very few Soviet citizens went hungry, because their government bought millions of tonnes of surplus wheat from Canada, the United States, and Argentina. This action drove up the price of bread globally, resulting in starvation in developing countries.

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TERRORISM AND MASS MURDER What is the origin of the word terror? Terror derives from the French word terreur and came into English usage in the Middle Ages as a word meaning a state of being very afraid. The words terrorism and terrorist date

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back to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror when the Jacobins ruled by a system of coercive intimidation. What is the difference between a mass murderer and a serial killer? A mass murderer commits multiple murders in a single outburst of violence in a relatively short period of time. Marc Lépine, who slaughtered 14 women at the École Polytechnique of the Université de Montréal on December 6, 1989, was a mass murderer. A serial killer commits multiple murders over a prolonged period of time. John Wayne Gacy, who murdered 33 boys and young men in Chicago between 1972 and 1978, was a serial killer. How do terrorists differ from mass murderers and serial killers? Terrorists have been known to commit series of murders as well as mass murders. They differ from other mass murderers and serial killers in that they have set goals — usually of a political or religious nature — and believe their actions are a legitimate means to a specific end. Who were the anarchists? In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the anarchists were disciples of the philosophy that society didn’t require coercive states. They dismissed monarchies and other forms of government as corrupt and oppressive. Some, though not all, anarchists carried out assassinations and other forms of violence, claiming there was no such thing as an “innocent victim” among capitalists and what they considered 76

the “bourgeoisie.” Anarchists who set off bombs in public places were also called “Dynamitards.” What was Kristallnacht? On November 7, 1938, a 17-year-old Jewish student assassinated a Nazi official in Paris. Hitler used this incident as an excuse to unleash Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) on the Jews of Germany and other areas under Nazi control. During the night of November 9–10, Nazi thugs rampaged through the cities and towns, smashing the windows of Jewish homes and businesses. Police stood and watched as Jews were beaten in the streets, many of them murdered. Fire departments did nothing as synagogues were burned down. This state-sanctioned and well-coordinated outburst of violence and destruction was but a prologue to the disaster that would be known as the Holocaust. Ten Acts of Terror Committed by Anarchists • March 13, 1881, St. Petersburg, Russia: Assassination (by bomb) of Tsar Alexander II. • May 4, 1886, Chicago, Illinois: Bombing in Haymarket Square, 12 people killed. • June 24, 1894, Lyon, France: Assassination (by stabbing) of French President Marie François Sadi Carnot. • August 8, 1897, Mondragen, France: Assassination (by shooting) of Spanish President Antonio Cánovas del Castillo.

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• September 10, 1898, Geneva, Switzerland: Assassination (by stabbing) of Empress Elizabeth of Austria. • July 29, 1900, Monza, Italy: Assassination (by shooting) of King Umberto I of Italy. • September 6, 1901, Buffalo, New York: Assassination (by shooting) of American President William McKinley. • June 28, 1914, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Assassination (by shooting) of Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand of Austria. • September 16, 1920, New York City: Bombing on Wall Street, 38 people killed. • March 23, 1921, Milan, Italy: Bombing of Teatro Diana, 31 people killed. Who was the Unabomber? Theodore John Kaczynski (born 1942) is an American terrorist whose deadly campaign against modern technology earned him the nickname “Unabomber.” The moniker derived from “Unabomb” (university and airline bomber). Starting in May 1978 and continuing intermittently for almost 18 years, Kaczynski mailed a total of 16 bombs. His devices killed three people and injured another 23. In April 1996, FBI agents, acting on a tip from Kaczynski’s brother, David, arrested the Unabomber in a shack in rural Montana. He is now serving life imprisonment with no possibility for parole. What happened on “Bloody Sunday” in Munich, Germany?

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On September 5, 1972, eight members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist organization, penetrated the Israeli compound of the Olympic Village in Munich. They murdered two Israeli athletes and took nine more hostage. Later, at a nearby airfield, German police attempted to rescue the Israelis. The terrorists killed all nine hostages. In the ensuing gun battle, five terrorists and one German policeman were killed. The other three terrorists were arrested. .

What was mass murderer Timothy McVeigh referring to as “an awful lot of collateral damage”? Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) was responsible for the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and wounded 500 others. The “collateral damage” to which McVeigh so coldly referred were the 19 children among the dead. What was the worst mass murder of children in North American history? Tragically, mass murders in schools have become all too common, and the events of recent rampages at Columbine High School in Colorado on April 20, 1999, and at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, have been seared into our collective memory. However, as horrible as the seemingly endless atrocities committed in today’s schools are, the worst mass murder in North America perpetrated on a school occurred on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan. Andrew Kehoe, a school board member and farmer in that township, was angry about a property tax that was levied to help pay for the construction of a new school. Kehoe was having financial problems and was threatened with 79

foreclosure on his farm. After killing his wife and blowing up the buildings on his farm, the deranged farmer detonated dynamite and pyrotol he had secreted at the Bath Consolidated School. Only half of the school was destroyed, so when Kehoe pulled up in his explosives-packed truck at the scene of the disaster where rescuers were frantically trying to pull children from the wreckage, he set off the dynamite in his vehicle, killing himself, three adults, and an eight-year-old survivor of the first blast. Kehoe slaughtered a total of 45 people and injured 58. Thirty-eight of his victims were children. What actually happened on September 11, 2001? At about 8:15 a.m. a group of five terrorists led by Mohammed Atta seized control of American Airlines Flight 11, which had just taken off from Logan International Airport in Boston. The hijackers turned the plane toward New York City, and at 8:45 they flew it straight into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. At about 8:42 a.m. a second terrorist team, led by Marwan al-Shehhi, took over United Airlines Flight 175, also out of Logan. At 9:03 they slammed the plane into the World Trade Center’s South Tower. The twin towers soon collapsed, causing the deaths of almost 3,000 people. Meanwhile a third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77 out of Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport, which had been commandeered by Hani Hanjour and four henchmen, crashed into the southwest side of the Pentagon, killing 125 Department of Defense workers. A fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark International Airport, was seized by a four-man terrorist team led by Ziad Jarrah. It is believed this group’s intended target was either the White House 80

or the U.S. Capitol. Evidently, the passengers fought with the hijackers. The plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. There were no survivors on any of the planes. Eight Facts About 9/11 • It was the largest act of mass murder in American history. • None of the terrorists entered the United States from Canada. • The terrorists who flew the hijacked planes had all taken flying lessons in the United States. • The victims in the Twin Towers were from 80 different countries. • Three hundred and forty-three firefighters died. Up to that point, 778 New York firefighters had died in the line of duty since the department was founded in 1865. • Family members of victims gave hair samples so that badly mutilated bodies could be identified by DNA. • Berry Berenson, widow of actor Anthony Perkins and mother of singer Elvis Perkins, was on Flight 11. • Brian Sweeney, a passenger on Flight 175, used his cellphone to call his wife, Julie, when he realized the plane was being hijacked. He got the answering machine and left a message for her to “have some fun in your life and live your life the best you can.”

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Five Terror-Related Disasters Since 9/11 • October 12, 2002, Bali, Indonesia: A car bomb in a crowded club district killed at least 180 people and injured more than 300, many of them Australian tourists. Suspicion fell on two Islamic terrorist organizations, Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf. • October 23–26, 2002, Moscow, Russia: Chechen rebels seized a theatre and held 700 people hostage. Russian security forces stormed the theatre. At least 50 rebels and 128 hostages were killed. • December 27, 2002, Grozny, Chechnya: A bomb attack on a government building killed 80 and injured many more. Chechen rebels were believed responsible. • March 11, 2004, Madrid, Spain: A series of coordinated bomb attacks on the Cernacias (Madrid’s commuter train system) killed 191 and injured 2,000. After 20 months of investigation, Islamic terrorists were held responsible. • July 7, 2005, London, England: Three bombs exploded in the London Underground and another on a double-decker transit bus, killing 56 and wounding hundreds. The four bombers, believed to be Islamic terrorists, were among the dead.

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COSMIC CATACLYSMS What is the “giant impact” hypothesis? This hypothesis, sometimes called the “big whack” or the “big splash,” is based on the theory that collisions between the Earth and other celestial bodies have occurred in the past and could do so again. The theory speculates that 4.5 billion years ago, the young Earth collided with a smaller twin planet 83

called Theia. The Earth’s moon was formed from the wreckage of Theia. Scientists once thought that the Pacific Ocean occupied the “scar” left by Theia’s impact, but that theory has been disproven. How did an asteroid wipe out the dinosaurs? Many scientists believe the great age of the dinosaurs came to an abrupt end about 65 million years ago when a huge asteroid collided with the Earth. This dramatic event would have been followed by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and a sudden and severe rise in atmospheric temperatures. A cloud of dust and other debris would then have enveloped the Earth, shutting out the sunlight and causing a global “winter.” The cold temperatures and the subsequent loss of plant life resulted in the extinction of the giant reptiles. What evidence is there of objects from space striking large celestial bodies? The surfaces of Mars, Mercury, and numerous moons in the solar system, including the Earth’s moon, are pocked with craters — clear evidence of direct hits by meteors, asteroids, and comets. Small meteorites strike the Earth’s atmosphere constantly. They burn up, and observers on the ground see them as “shooting stars.” Evidence of impact from larger objects can be seen in many places around the world. What extraterrestrial force shook Siberia in 1908? On June 30, 1908, an unidentified object suddenly flashed

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across the skies of Siberia and then exploded, levelling about 65 square kilometres (25 square miles) of forest. Fully mature trees were snapped like matchsticks. There were no known human casualties. Scientists know that the explosion was caused by something from outer space, but they don’t know exactly what. Theories have included a meteor, an asteroid, a black hole, antimatter, and even a nuclear device on an alien spaceship. Six Impact Craters on Earth • The Chicxulub Crater is in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula. It is 1.6 kilometres (one mile) deep and 193 kilometres (120 miles) wide. Scientists believe the asteroid that caused this 65-million-year-old crater could have been responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs. • The Shiva Crater is in the Arabian Sea, off the coast of India. Its shape has been altered by the shifting of the sea floor, but originally it was 11 kilometres (seven miles) deep and 595 kilometres (370 miles) wide. It might even be part of a larger crater that was formed by an asteroid 65 million years ago. This asteroid has also been considered a possible culprit in the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs. • The Barringer Meteor Crater, Arizona. This 50,000-year-old hole in the Arizona desert is 174 metres (570 feet) deep and almost a kilometre (over half a mile) wide. It was the first crater on Earth to be scientifically identified as an impact crater. • The Manicouagan Reservoir, a circular lake around René-Levasseur Island in Quebec, is clearly visible from 85

space and has been called the “Eye of Quebec.” The crater is 100 kilometres (62 miles) wide and was made by an asteroid 212 million years ago. • The Roter Kamm Crater is in the Namibia Desert in Africa. It is 5 million years old and has a diameter of a little more than a mile and a half. The crater is 122 metres (400 feet) deep, but the floor is covered by 92 metres (300 feet) of sand. • The Chesapeake Bay Crater, off the east coast of the United States, is 35.5 million years old and is considered to be one of the best-preserved marine impact craters on Earth. It is more than 37 kilometres (23 miles) wide and is almost as deep as the Grand Canyon. What are the chances of the Earth being hit by a large object in the near future? There are over a hundred known impact craters on the surface of the Earth, so it is quite likely that at some time our planet will be hit again. Right now, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the chances of the Earth being hit by an object large enough to cause significant damage are less than one in 250,000. On June 14, 2002, an asteroid the size of a soccer field passed within 75,000 miles of the Earth. In space that is considered a “near miss.” If an object that size slammed into the Earth, there would be catastrophic damage equal to that of a nuclear explosion. The nearest threat to the Earth is an asteroid 1.9 kilometres (1.2 miles) wide that could possibly be on a collision course with us in 2019. However, scientists say the chances of that happening are very slim.

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Now You Know Extreme Weather

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PREFACE Weather has been surprising us with its violence, intensity, and beauty since humans first walked the planet. These pages are chock full of examples of weather events that have tested us to our limits and beyond. Questions about changes to long-term weather — the global climate — are addressed as well, because it may be gearing up to take us on a ride into extremes of weather we never dreamed of before. Many enticing bits of information have been packed into the answers to these questions. I hope they will entertain, intrigue, and motivate you as they have done me.

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COLD What was happening when the highest air pressure record was set? Tonsontsengel, Mongolia, was in the grip of -40°F (-40°C) temperatures when it dethroned Agata, Siberia, with a barometric reading of 1085.7 millibars, or 32.06 inches (81.4 centimetres) of mercury, on December 19, 2001. Agata’s reading of 1083 millibars was also set in bitter cold. What is the coldest temperature ever recorded in Canada once windchill was taken into account? This controversial measurement, first developed in 1939, gave Pelly Bay, Nunavut, a reading of -133.6°F (-92°C) on January 13, 1975, when -60°F (-51°C) temperatures

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combined with 35-mile-per-hour (56-kilometre-per-hour) winds. Recent changes to how windchill is calculated raise this temperature considerably, to -106.6°F (-77°C). The most extreme windchill readings are found in Antarctica. Where was the world’s fastest temperature drop recorded? In Rapid City, South Dakota, the temperature fell from 62°F (16.5°C) to -13°F (-25°C) in two hours on January 10, 1911. How does altitude make a difference? Flagstaff, Arizona, gateway to the Grand Canyon, and only 146 miles (234 kilometres) from the almost snow-free desert city of Phoenix (it received a dusting in 1990), can accumulate more than 200 inches (508 centimetres) of snow in a season because it is 7,000 feet (2,130 metres) above sea level. What was the world’s coldest year? In 1600, a 16,000-foot (4,850-metre) Peruvian mountain erupted with great force. Called Huaynaputina, meaning “new volcano” in Quechua, an Incan language, the volcano spewed dust for hundreds of miles and mudflows travelled 75 miles (120 kilometres) to the Pacific Ocean. Ash made it into the stratosphere and spread across the northern hemisphere, helping to make 1601 the coldest year ever measured. The next coldest year was also caused by a volcano. In 1815, Mount Tambora, a volcano in the seismically active

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Indonesian island chain, registered the largest eruption in more than 1,600 years and brought on 1816’s year without a summer. The eruption was said to have killed 92,000 people near the volcano. An estimated 100,000 people died in Europe because the unseasonably cold weather killed crops, bringing on famine. How much of the Mississippi River has ever frozen in wintertime? In 1784, the Mississippi froze its full length, right past New Orleans, and ice made it to the Gulf of Mexico. Ice chunks reached New Orleans in 1899, though the freeze stopped at Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi and doubles its volume. The long, cold winter of 1784 followed an eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland in 1783. Where is the world’s coldest place? The lowest temperature ever recorded in the world was -128.6°F (-89.2°C) at Vostok, Antarctica, in 1983. The Russian research station, located at the southern geomagnetic pole and near the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility — which is as far away from anywhere else as you can possibly get — has thirty inhabitants during the summer, and half that in the winter. Vostok had its warmest summer day a year earlier, when temperatures soared to a bone-chilling -2.2°F (-19°C). Average winter temperatures hover in the -85°F (-65°C) range. In the summer they rise to -22°F (-30°C). 92

Vostok is colder than the South Pole, 600 miles (965 kilometres) away, because it is at a higher altitude — 11,220 feet (3,420 metres) instead of 9,000 feet (2,743 metres). Where was the coldest temperature in Canada recorded? A temperature so low it exceeded the range of the thermometers on hand was registered at Snag, Yukon, on February 3, 1947. That day the temperature fell to at least -81.4°F (-63°C). Snag was established during the Second World War as a site for an emergency airstrip used when aircraft were being ferried to Siberia to help the Soviet Union in its war against Hitler’s Germany. The base closed in 1968, but a Native settlement remains nearby. Where is the “Pole of Cold”? The Arctic is not all that cold. Temperatures at the North Pole average -24°F (-31°C) in the wintertime and get up to 32°F (0°C) during the summer. The real cold spot north of the equator is Russia’s “Pole of Cold,” south of the Arctic Circle in Siberia. Two towns in this area fight to be considered the world’s coldest permanently inhabited communities. Verkhoyansk, population 1,500, has official recognition with a temperature of -93.6°F (-69.8°C). Oymyakon, a town of 800, created by the Soviet government to encourage nomadic reindeer herders in northern Siberia to modernize, claims a reading of -96.2°F (-71.2°C), using methods that did not meet official standards. How do people deal with extreme cold? 93

Bitterly cold temperatures for half the year give Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon problems rarely faced anywhere else. For instance, diesel fuel freezes at -58°F (-50°C), and lubricating grease freezes as well, so engines that sit in extreme cold must be kept warm with fires and axle grease needs to be heated with blowtorches. If the power fails, pipes freeze within hours. Where is the world’s toughest dog sled race? In temperatures that can be as cold as -58°F (-50°C), a race of at least 1,049 miles is run between Anchorage and Nome, Alaska. The Iditarod (the name comes from the Athabascan language) was held for the first time in 1973. Martyn Buser recorded the best time when he won the race in 8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes, and 2 seconds in 2002. Which pole has the most ice? Ninety percent of the world’s ice is locked up in the Antarctic ice sheet, which is about a mile thick in most places. Arctic ice is like a thin skin over the 13,000-foot (4,000-metre) deep Arctic Ocean. The Arctic ice cap is 6 to 10 feet (1.8 to 3 metres) thick, and half of it naturally melts or freezes with the seasons. Lately, climatologists have been expressing concern that things are changing at both poles. In the Antarctic chunks of ice as big as the state of Rhode Island have recently broken away from the continent. In the Arctic, the ice cap is shrinking and getting thinner every year.

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HEAT Which American state would you think has the highest recorded temperature, Hawaii or Alaska? If you thought Hawaii, you would be wrong. For almost sixteen years, starting in June 1915, Fort Yukon in Alaska held the record for the highest temperature in the two states, at 100°F (38°C). On April 27, 1931, Pahala, Hawaii, tied Fort Yukon, and the records still stand. Where was Canada’s highest temperature recorded? On July 5, 1937, Yellow Grass and Midale, two towns in southern Saskatchewan, recorded temperatures of 114°F (46°C). This dry area of flat prairie endures severe temperature

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fluctuations. During the summer, the mercury often exceeds 100°F (38°C), plunging to -22°F (-30°C) in the winter months. Where is the hottest place in the world? El Azizia in Libya has held the record as the world’s hottest place since 1922, when a temperature of 136°F (58°C) was recorded. Not surprisingly, Death Valley, California, registered the highest temperature ever recorded in North America at 134°F (57°C). Extreme as these temperatures are, they are recorded in the shade in an enclosure that is about 5 feet (1.5 metres) off the ground and open to whatever breeze may be present. Temperatures on the ground in the sun would be much hotter. Which place holds the world record for the most consecutive days with temperatures of 100°F (38°C) or more? Temperatures at Marble Bar, in northwest Australia, exceeded 100°F (38°C) for 162 consecutive days in 1923–24. Death Valley, California, had at least forty days with temperatures above 120°F (49°C) in 1996. What is the highest Humidex reading ever recorded? A Canadian invention from 1965, the Humidex aims to help us understand how heat and moisture in the air work together to make us feel hotter. It compares to the U.S. Heat Index, though it renders higher temperature equivalents. The highest Humidex reading ever recorded in Canada, was 126°F (52°C) in Windsor, Ontario. 96

How hot does it get at the North and South poles? At the geographic North Pole, where your location can change because you are sitting on a floating ice sheet, surface summer temperatures, particularly in July, hover around the freezing mark or slightly above. At Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station the temperature has struggled up to 7°F (-14°C), still pretty darned cold. Another North Pole, a town near Fairbanks, Alaska, enjoys 80°F (27°C) temperatures in the summer. Every year, millions of letters to Santa are sent there. What was unsettling about the winter of 2006-07? During the period from December 2006 to February 2007, worldwide temperatures were warmer than at any time since record keeping began. However, the effects were far from uniform. For instance, while North America experienced numerous hotspots in this period, it was cold or seasonal in other areas, so overall temperatures for the continent were about normal.

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DROUGHT What is the world’s largest desert? Antarctica has a desert that covers 5.3 million square miles (14 million square kilometres). In comparison, the world’s largest non-polar desert is the Sahara at 3.5 million square miles (9 million square kilometres). A region qualifies as a desert if it receives less than ten inches (sixteen centimetres) of precipitation in a year. Deserts can be warm, cold, or temperate. Where are you least likely to need a raincoat? Sheltered from moist ocean air by a west coast mountain range and flanked by the Andes to the east, the world’s driest desert sits on a plateau about 8,000 feet (2,400 metres) above sea level in the northern part of Chile. The Atacama is

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thought to have gone without rain for four hundred years at one stretch, from 1571 until 1971. Parts of it have been compared to Mars. Quickies Did you know … That the Sahara is at least three times bigger than its nearest non-polar rival? Some of the other great deserts include: • Arabian in the Arabian Peninsula: 900,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometres) • Gobi in Mongolia-China: 500,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometres) • Palagonian in Argentina: 260,000 square miles (675,000 square kilometres) • Great Victoria in Australia: 250,000 square miles (650,000 square kilometres) • Kalahari in southern Africa: 225,000 square miles (580,000 square kilometres) • Great Basin in Nevada, U.S.: 190,000 square miles (490,000 square kilometres) • Great Sandy in Australia: 150,000 square miles (390,000 square kilometres) What is the Sahel?

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This band of arid grassland stretches across Africa, on the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert, in so-called sub-Saharan Africa. It relies heavily on the African monsoons for six to twenty inches (fifteen to forty-five centimetres) of water annually, and suffers frequent, lengthy droughts when the monsoons do not come. In 1984, the eastern Sahel, gripped in drought, began to suffer famine as well. Reports of the famine reached the West, generating massive public support for a relief effort. Famously, pop stars led by Bob Geldof came together to produce a fundraising song called “We Are the World.” How does drought affect Canada? Like the United States, Canada’s Prairies suffered through the Dust Bowl of the dirty thirties and lesser events in the 1890s and early 1980s. In 2001-02, drought affected all of Canada again. The Prairies were hit particularly hard, especially in a number of areas that had already been putting up with several years of dry weather, and the Great Lakes registered record low lake levels. The cost of the drought in 2002 is estimated at $5 billion. What is the longest period a mammal can go without drinking water? The kangaroo rat gets its water from the seeds it eats and by recycling its waste products, and it doesn’t need to ever take a drink. Just as well, because it lives in Death Valley. Humans, on the other hand, would be lucky to last three days there without water. Significant Droughts 100

• In 2005, the Amazon experienced its worst drought in a century. Suggested causes included deforestation and ocean warming induced by climate change. • In 2003, dry weather and heat overwhelmed Europe and Great Britain. About 35,000 people are estimated to have died, almost 15,000 in France alone. Britain experienced its first day with temperatures above 100°F (38°C). • In the 1930s, drought in the United States and the Canadian Prairies led to massive crop losses and farm foreclosures, and deepened the Depression started by the 1929 stock market crash. At its peak in 1934, the “Dust Bowl” stretched from New York to California. Why are China’s deserts growing? In China’s northwest desertification is taking place at an alarming rate. The pressure to feed 1.3 billion people is great. Consequently, China’s government has encouraged intensive agricultural practices. That, combined with several years of drought, has turned the area into a dust bowl. Recently, dust from the region carried all the way across the Pacific Ocean, finally coming down in western North America, where it is a growing pollution issue. Chinese cities like Beijing are regularly blanketed by this dust, as are parts of North and South Korea and Japan. Why was Central Asia hit by an unusually severe drought near the millennium?

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Countries along the route of the legendary Silk Road through Central Asia suffered through more than three years of drought from 1999 to 2002. Afghanistan and northern Iran were particularly hard hit, as were Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, two countries formed following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Climate change theory anticipates that droughts will become more frequent and longer in this region as it warms up, so this drought was not really a surprise. However, the drought also coincided with a prolonged La Niña, which has led to drier conditions in the area in the past, illustrating why natural climate variability makes it difficult to conclusively associate climate change with a specific weather event.

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FLOODS Where was the world’s most disastrous flood? Flooding on an almost unimaginable scale took place in July and August 1931, along China’s Yangtze River. Almost 4 million people lost their lives in this disaster, and nearly 50 million were displaced. This flood and others helped provide justification for the huge and controversial Three Gorges Dam project, which has also displaced many people and possibly led to the extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin. Why do floods cause so much death in Bangladesh? Sandwiched between India and Myanmar (formerly Burma), Bangladesh is a low-lying country on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. Disastrous floods are common there because huge storms are a feature of its monsoon season and much of 103

the country is at sea level, but one that followed the Bhola cyclone on November 12-13, 1970, was almost too much to bear. Estimates of the death toll range from 200,000 to more than 500,000. The number of people displaced was estimated at 50 million, more than a third of the country’s population. About 1 million cattle were also destroyed. What happened after the Bhola cyclone? In spite of the clear message sent by the 1970 storm and several of its predecessors, getting the country’s poor out of flood-prone areas appears almost impossible. Another large cyclone struck on April 29-30, 1991, bringing death to another 150,000 people and displacing 10 million. Strategies now in place to reduce future death tolls include elevated shelters and an army of emergency workers. What was North America’s biggest flood? Rainfall as much as two to three times normal during the first half of 1993 and heavy downpours that couldn’t soak in to already saturated soil led to the Mississippi River and many of its tributaries, including the Missouri, being above flood stage for 144 days from April to the end of September. Over $20 billion worth of damage was done and fifty people lost their lives. Who gets Canada’s worst floods? Manitoba’s Red River Valley gets some sort of flood almost every spring, and in 1997 it got a doozy. The flooding was really North American as it started where the Red River separates Grand Forks, North Dakota, from Grand Forks, 104

Minnesota. Those states experienced $2 billion in damage when flood waters overwhelmed 49-foot (15-metre) dikes and levies with 54-foot (16.5-metre) peak levels. In Canada, the river peaked at almost 22 feet (7 metres), but defences held in all but the town of St. Agathe, keeping the cost of the flood to about $800 million. For a time, however, the Red River was dubbed the “Red Sea” as it spread out to cover over 900 square miles (2,330 square kilometres). Canada’s costliest flood was in Quebec’s Saguenay River Valley, from July 18 to 21, 1996. Damage was estimated at about $1 billion. Which country has been keeping flood data for the longest time? China has seven major rivers and experiences monsoons and other intense storms. Half of the country’s population lives in flood-prone areas. Floods are important there, which is why accurate record keeping stretches back more than two thousand years.

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RAIN Where is the world’s wettest place? The Indian state of Meghalaya, meaning “home of the clouds” in Hindi, boasts the town of Cherrapunji, which was soaked by 905 inches (2,299 centimetres) of rain during a twelve-month period beginning in August 1860 and ending in July 1861. This town of about ten thousand people also holds the record for the wettest month. In July 1861, 366 inches (930 centimetres) of rain were measured, enough water to completely cover a two-storey house. The nearby town of Mawslynram vies with Hawaii’s Mt. Waialeale for an average annual rainfall record that exceeds 460 inches (1,168 centimetres). For seventy-four consecutive years, Cherrapunji experienced 450 inches (1,143 centimetres) per year.

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The Kekaha coastal region is just fifteen miles (twenty-five kilometres) from Mt. Waialeale, but it sits in a rain shadow and gets only 20 inches (32 centimetres) of rain annually. Why is Cherrapunji so wet? Cherrapunji sits on the side of a mountain at an altitude of about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres). The Bay of Bengal, where summer monsoons form, is to the south. As the warm, moist air from the monsoons comes up against the mountainside, it gives up rain in great quantities. In recent years, this pattern seems to be changing. Rainfall has dropped to about a third of historic levels, and the town is often forced to import water to meet its needs. Climate change and rapid deforestation are cited as possible culprits. Henderson Lake on the southwest of Vancouver Island is the wettest place in Canada, with an average rainfall of 262 inches (665.5 centimetres). Quickies Did you know … • that most snow falls at a leisurely walking pace of 1 to 4 miles per hour (1.5 to 6 kilometres per hour), but winds can whip it into a frenzy? • that drizzle jogs to earth at 6 to 10 miles per hour (10 to 15 kilometres per hour)?

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• that rain gallops to the ground at 12 to 15 miles per hour (20 to 25 kilometres per hour)? • that the heavy rain pelting you during a downpour bursts from the clouds at more than 20 miles per hour (30 kilometres per hour)? • that big hailstones can hit you at speeds greater than 105 miles per hour (170 kilometres per hour), faster than the hardest pitch thrown by a major-league-baseball fastballer? Where was the most rain ever recorded from a cyclone? As big as Rhode Island, and a little more than half the size of Prince Edward Island, a small volcanic dot in the middle of the Indian Ocean called Reunion holds three world records for rain from a cyclone. During Tropical Cyclone Hyacinthe in January 1980, one part of the island was soaked by 223.5 inches (567.7 centimetres) of rain in ten days, while another received 127.6 inches (324.1 centimetres) in just seventy-two hours, and a third was drenched by 46 inches (117 centimetres) in just twelve hours. In 1966, it set a record for rain in a twenty-four-hour span of 72 inches (183 centimetres). Reunion was uninhabited when the Portuguese discovered it in 1513. Today more than 750,000 people live there. It is governed by France. What are monsoons? Monsoons are rainy periods that regularly, though not always predictably, soak parts of every continent except Europe and

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Antarctica. There are monsoons in the summer and in the winter. Summer monsoons develop as cool ocean air is drawn onto very hot land, giving up moisture as it rises against obstacles like the Himalayas. The winter monsoons, triggered by air flowing from land to sea, are drier. Between monsoons, there is usually very little rain, making water storage a high priority. Cherrapunji got the vast majority of its world record rainfall during a three-month period. Monsoon comes from the Arabic word mausim, which translates as “season.” Quickies Did you know … • that monsoons don’t just occur in India and Africa — we have them here in North America, too? The North American or Mexican monsoon affects parts of Mexico and the American Southwest from June to September. Desert areas in the region get most of their precipitation from it. Where was the most intense rainstorm ever measured? It took just forty-two minutes for a storm to dump a foot of rain on the town of Holt, Missouri, on June 22, 1947. Its consequences were far-reaching even though only a small area was affected by the event. Local flooding followed the rainstorm, and the water poured into the Missouri River, which was already running high, contributing to record-breaking floods in St. Louis.

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Other Monsoon Systems • Southwest (Indian Ocean) summer monsoon — mainly affects India (June to August) • Northeast winter (retreating) monsoon — affects India and Australia (December to March) • African (Sahelian) monsoons — affect equatorial Africa to 10° north (May to August) • South American monsoon — affects Brazil and Bolivia (summer)

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WIND How are winds classified? Although ways of classifying wind conditions had been around for centuries, the man whose system finally gained widespread acceptance was Sir Francis Beaufort, a British naval officer. He first used his scale in his personal journals in 1806, while commander of HMS Woolwich. The British Navy adopted the scale in 1838, following its use on HMS Beagle, the ship that took Charles Darwin on his epic journey to the Galapagos. Beaufort’s original scale helped a ship’s captain set the appropriate amount of sail for the weather conditions. Over the next 150 years, it underwent many revisions. In 1906, a version for land, based on the behaviour of trees, was

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developed, and the nautical version was revised. Towards the end of the Second World War, a version that is still used in parts of Asia expanded the scale from the original 0 to 12 (dead calm to hurricane force) to 0 to 17. The numbers 13 to 17 describe conditions in a typhoon. What’s in a name? Most people think of chinooks as warm prairie winds, but that is not how the name started out. Originally, a chinook wind was a moist wind blowing off the Pacific, so named by settlers because it seemed to come from the land of the Chinookian Indians. The name travelled to the prairies with French voyageurs. Why are prairie chinooks warm? The Pacific westerlies come ashore with lots of moisture and deposit huge quantities of rain and snow on Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. When they come up against the Rockies they cool and the last bits of moisture are wrung out of them through condensation. Once they cross the Rocky Mountains, they descend to the American and Canadian plains. As the winds sweep down the mountain slopes, they warm up as much as 36°F (20°C) through compression of the air caused by increased pressure at lower altitudes. What is the dark side of chinooks? Chinooks happen all year round, and they can cause serious problems, especially in summer. They are moisture starved, so they quickly soak up any water they come across. They can 112

turn a forest into a tinderbox and make a farmer’s field an arid desert. They have been known to melt snow so fast that puddles do not even form, which is why some Native tribes called them “snow-eaters.” How did chinooks threaten the 1988 Calgary Olympics? Normally Calgary, Alberta, is reliably cold during the winter months. However, the possibility of a chinook is always there. During the sixteen days of the Calgary Winter Olympics, chinooks behaved like impetuous sprites, wreaking all kinds of havoc. Temperatures bounced from -22°F (-30°C) to 54°F (12°C) overnight, and winds topped 70 miles per hour (112 kilometres per hour). In the end, organizers were forced to reschedule thirty-three events. What is the mistral? These cold, dry winds come down the slopes of the Alps and the Massif Central in France, picking up speed as they funnel through the Rhone valley, and continue on to the Mediterranean. At one time, a defence of madness induced by the mistral was sometimes allowed to excuse crimes. How do Santa Ana winds bring fires to Los Angeles? The Santa Anas (Santanas) come into Los Angeles and San Diego, California, from the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains as hot, dry winds that can reach hurricane force. They dry out the chaparral scrub in the canyons and hills, creating ideal conditions for wildfires. The development of expensive homes on these hillsides has meant that in recent years the fires have caused millions of dollars in 113

damage and taken many lives. A version of these winds that strikes San Francisco is called the diablo. Quickies Did you know … • that chinooks, Santa Anas, diablos, mistrals, boros, and foehn winds are all katabatic winds because they flow down mountainsides? Katabatic is from the Greek katabatikos, meaning “go down.” Where are the world’s strongest katabatic winds? The French Antarctic station of Dumont d’Urville, on Petral Island near the coast of Adelie Land in Antarctica has recorded katabatic wind gusts of 200 miles per hour (320 kilometres per hour). What are valley breezes? Valley breezes are the opposite of katabatic winds. Called anabatic winds, they happen when air is drawn up mountain slopes that have warmed in the sun. These winds are an important source of lift for gliders. Where are foehn winds? A foehn wind is a warm wind that blows down the north side of the Alps, towards Germany. They often raise avalanche fears because they warm and destabilize snow on the mountain slopes.

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What is a haboob? Haboobs are sand or dust storms that occur in the more arid regions of the Sahara (such as the Sudan) and in Texas and Arizona in the United States. The storms form at the end of thunderstorms. The fiercest examples move as fast as 50 miles per hour (80 kilometres per hour). When was the jet stream discovered? One of the most important, but least recognized, influences on North American climate is the jet stream. Until the end of the Second World War, no one even knew jet stream winds existed, although people who flew suspected something was going on. Jet streams are rivers of air that flow from west to east at altitudes of 20,000 to 50,000 feet (6,000 to 15,000 metres) and speeds of 30 to 400 miles per hour (48 to 640 kilometres per hour). Airline pilots jump onto them save fuel and shave time off west-to-east flights. The jet stream in North America forms where arctic air masses collide with warm air from the south. Its position is a good predictor of stormy weather. Where are the world’s strongest winds? An observatory on the side of 6,288-foot (1,916-metre) Mount Washington in New Hampshire recorded a 231-mile-per-hour (370-kilometre-per-hour) wind gust on April 12, 1934, during a major storm that led to wind speeds unusual even for that windy location. In 1997, Typhoon Paka was reported to have had gusts of 236 miles per hour (380 kilometres per hour) when it made landfall on Guam, but the measuring device was later deemed unreliable. 115

SNOW What is the world’s snowiest place? Snow depth is difficult to measure because snowdrifts melt and settle. The most reliable measurements are obtained by placing a white board on the ground next to a stake and measuring the snow that accumulates there. The Cascade mountain range in Washington State appears to be the world’s snowiest place. Paradise, a small town on the southern slope of Mount Rainier, one of several active volcanoes in the Cascade range, had the twelve snowiest months ever recorded between February 19, 1971, and February 18, 1972, when 1,224.5 inches (3,110 centimetres) of snow was said to have fallen. Mount Baker, also in the Cascades and easily seen from Vancouver, British Columbia, had 1,140 inches (2,895 centimetres) in 1998-99. That is the record officially accepted by the United States National Weather Service. 116

Why do the Cascades get so much snow? The same moist air off the Pacific that sustains the great rain forests of northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia is the reason these mountains are so snowy. As the moisture is forced up the mountainsides, it freezes at about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres) and falls as snow because the thinning air cannot hold it. Where was the world’s biggest one-day snowfall? Silver Lake, Colorado, had almost 76 inches (193 centimetres) of snow on April 14 and 15, 1921. The Canadian record of 57 inches (145 centimetres) was set on February 11, 1999, at Tahtsa Lake in the Whitesail range of the Coast Mountains on the Nechako River, a major tributary of the Fraser River. Where are you likely to find huge accumulations of drifting snow? Mountain passes can pose huge challenges to railway-men trying to keep freight moving in the wintertime. As if storms bringing snowfalls in excess of 100 inches (250 centimetres) are not bad enough, drifting can increase the depth of snow accumulated on the line to more than five times that much. When the Central Pacific Railroad was being constructed through the Sierra Nevadas, snowdrifts as deep as 60 feet (18 metres) had to be dealt with. Workers often blasted their way through, as if going through solid rock. What is lake effect snow? 117

They do not set world records, but lake effect snowstorms can certainly deliver a punch. An unusually warm December 2006 and January 2007 stopped ice formation on Lake Ontario, then dry February winds crossed the open water picking up moisture. When the winds came ashore on the southeast end of the lake in Oswego County, New York, they dumped up to 141 inches (358 centimetres) of snow on the ground over a ten-day period. At one stage, the U.S. National Weather Service reported accumulations of as much as 5 inches (12.7 centimetres) an hour. Where is the most snow at sea level? Huge snowfalls generally happen at altitude, on mountainsides or plateaus. The port city of Valdez, Alaska, elevation zero, is an exception: it gets about 300 inches (762 centimetres) annually. How much salt is used on Canadian roads? The United States uses an estimated 10 million tons (9 million tonnes) of salt each year to melt ice on the roads. Europe uses about 4 million tons (3.6 million tonnes) a year. Canada comes in at about 5 million tons (4.5 million tonnes). These numbers fluctuate wildly depending upon the severity of the winter. What is being done to make road salt better for the environment? Road salt is thought to be toxic to many plants that grow alongside roadways and can make the water in wells near

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roadways unpalatable, but it is not thought to be dangerous to human health. To reduce the amount of salt used, many strategies are being explored. One is pre-de-icing, which entails sending out the salt trucks before the storm hits. The idea is that salting in advance will prevent ice formation, reducing the total amount of salt that is required. Another strategy is better application control, and a third involves using instruments planted in the roadbed to provide advance warning of conditions that lead to icing.

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HAIL Why do hailstones have rings? Like tree rings, hailstone rings are growth records. Hailstones form in a cloud as they are tossed from higher to lower to higher altitudes by updrafts and downdrafts until they become too heavy and fall to the ground. As they move through the cloud, water droplets freeze on them either quickly, catching air bubbles and giving them a milky ring, or slowly, forming a clear ring. What is the largest hailstone ever measured? In 2003, a hailstone found in Aurora, Nebraska, measured 7 inches (17.8 centimetres) across and 18.75 inches (47.6 centimetres) around its widest point, weighed in at 1.7 pounds (0.8 kilograms). In Bangladesh, a hailstone found in 1986 120

officially weighed in at 2.25 pounds (1 kilogram), but was not measured. Unofficially, an 11-pound (5-kilogram) hailstone was claimed in China in 1986. How dangerous are hailstones? Hailstones have killed people, sometimes in great numbers. On April 14, 1986, ninety-two people died in the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh following a hailstorm with stones weighing more than a kilogram. Hailstorms in North America have taken human life occasionally, but never in such horrific numbers. Animals have also suffered grievously. In one storm in Montana, more than two hundred sheep are said to have died. A storm in southern Alberta took the lives of more than 36,000 ducks in 1953. What are the property losses from hailstorms? Storm chasers in the southwestern United States, in the area known as Tornado Alley, frequently have their vehicles dented and even wrecked by hail. When big hailstones hit big cities like St. Louis, Dallas, and Denver, insured losses can exceed $1 billion. Routinely, hailstorms cause crop losses in the millions of dollars and end many dreams of a comfortable retirement. Where is the hailiest place in the world? A region shared by India, Bangladesh, and Nepal gets 10 to 13 days a year. Second-place Kenya, in eastern Africa, averages 10 or 11 hail days a year, but boasts the hailest town. Kericho, notable for tea plantations, endures hail an average of 132 days a year. 121

FOG Where is the world’s foggiest place? Cape Race, Newfoundland, experiences more than 158 fog days each year, more than any place else in the world. London, England, historically well known for pea soup fogs caused by pollution from coal furnaces, remains foggy today, but with only thirty days per year does not set any records. What happened in London, England, between December 5 and December 9, 1952? Cold weather and a mixture of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and other pollutants from coal and industry combined to create a sooty, dirty, yellow-green fog. Called the “Great Smog,” it is thought to have killed or contributed to the deaths of up to 16,000 people. 122

Disasters Influenced by Fog … • September 3, 1999: A 145-vehicle pileup killed 8 people and injured 150 on Highway 401 near Windsor, Ontario, when fog from Lake St. Clair suddenly reduced visibility. • March 20, 1995: A 193-vehicle pileup on the Mobile Bay highway in Mobile, Alabama, killed one and sent ninety-one others to hospital. • March 27, 1977: In fog, KLM Flight 4805 sliced away some of the fuselage and tail from Pan Am Flight 1736 during takeoff from Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. Five hundred and eighty-three people were killed on the two flights. Miraculously, sixty-one of the Pan Am passengers survived. The planes were among several diverted from the main island because of a terrorist attack. • April 20, 1914: The ocean liner Empress of Ireland collided with the coal carrier Störstad in the St. Lawrence River, north of Quebec City, and 1,167 lives were lost. How are cloud forests formed? The unusual environment created by Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest, and others like it, provides a home for plants and animals found nowhere else. Warm trade winds, full of moisture from the Caribbean Sea, cool as they go up the slopes of the Tilaran mountains. At about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres), where the forests are, moisture from the winds is surrendered as heavy mist and water droplets, which many plants, including hundreds of varieties of orchids, rely on in place of groundwater. 123

Why are climate scientists watching cloud forests? In recent years, the mists of cloud forests have been thinning or moving up the mountains, leaving the forests dry. Some amphibians have disappeared, and bird ranges are changing. Many blame deforestation and ocean warming. Twenty years ago, the golden tree frog disappeared from Monteverde, an event that climate watchers point to as the first extinction attributable to global warming.

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STORMS What is the lowest air pressure ever recorded during a storm? At its most intense, a 1979 tropical storm called Super Typhoon Tip became a Category 5 cyclone with a sea level barometric pressure reading of 870 millibars, or 25.7 inches (65.3 centimetres) of mercury. A normal reading at sea level is 1013.2 millibars, or 29.92 inches (75.9 centimetres). The scale on most aneroid barometers does not go much below 28 inches (71.1 centimetres). What are derechos? A physics professor named Dr. Gustavus Hinrichs coined the word from Spanish in 1888 to describe powerful storms

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that featured straight-line winds, rather than the turning winds associated with tornadoes. Derechos are lines or bands of fast-moving thunderstorms that pack winds over 100 miles per hour (160 kilometres per hour). On July 4 and 5, 1999, a derecho moved from Ontario through southern Quebec to Maine, pulling up trees, damaging houses, and killing one person. What is a nor’easter? Nor’easters are born when a low-pressure system in the Gulf Stream collides with a high-pressure system from the Arctic. The storm is named for the northeasterly winds of the Arctic system, which force the storm up the coast of the United States and Canada until it heads off into the North Atlantic. A nor’easter off the Grand Banks took 249 fishermen from Gloucester, Massachusetts, to their graves in 1879. In 2006, a nor’easter brought 26.9 inches (68.3 centimetres) of snow to New York City’s Central Park, more than ever before recorded there. Another storm in 1979 shut down Washington, D.C., while the Blizzard of ’93 caused more than $1 billion in damage across North America. What are “blue northers”? Blue northers — the name originated among Texas cowboys — develop when a cold arctic air mass is pushed south quickly by the jet stream. These fast-moving storms are notable for blue-black clouds, rapid temperature drops of more than 50°F (28°C), and the cold, deep blue skies they leave behind. They can bring blizzards, but often do not. They 126

frequently catch people and livestock in the open, where they freeze to death. These systems are also called blue darters, blue whistlers, and Texas northers. Where was the “Storm of the Century”? At its height, this nor’easter, also called the Blizzard of ’93, stretched from Nova Scotia to Central America. It brought unseasonably cold weather, snow that accumulated to depths of up to 5 feet (1.5 metres), thunderstorms, and a serial derecho that contained supercell thunderstorms, which spawned ten tornadoes in Florida. Another storm was called the “Storm of the Century” before this one. That was the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. It hit the Florida Keys and would have caused little damage except that a large number of First World War veterans had been put to work there building a highway. They and their relatives were caught by the storm, and hundreds were killed while boarding the train sent to evacuate them. Where was the world’s greatest storm surge? When powerful winds, such as those in a hurricane, blow towards shore, they can generate huge waves called storm surges. In 1899, the Mahina cyclone crossed Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and entered Bathurst Bay, pushing a wall of water forty-three feet (thirteen metres) high.

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During the November 12-13, 1970, Bhola cyclone in Bangladesh, unverified reports of storm surges as high as forty-nine feet (fifteen metres) were received. A thirty-foot (nine-metre) storm surge overwhelmed the defences of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Saffir-Simpson scale, which categorizes hurricane intensity on a scale of one to five, rates storms with a surge over eighteen feet (five and a half metres) as catastrophic. What made Sebastian Junger’s Perfect Storm perfect? When a nor’easter off the southeast coast of Nova Scotia coast jostled with a low pressure system running along the U.S.-Canadian border and then combined with the considerable energy still present in a dying hurricane called Grace, conditions for a perfect storm were born. Around Halloween 1991, the huge system packed 60-mile-per-hour (100-kilometre-per-hour) winds and peak waves of 39 feet (11.8 metres). Some witnesses claimed some waves were as high as 100 feet (30.5 metres), and one of those is thought to have sunk a swordfish boat called the Andrea Gail, with six men on board. The boat and its fate became the focal point of Junger’s book and the movie that followed. How could the loss of the Andrea Gail have been averted? The Andrea Gail carried an EPIRB (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon), which, had its signal been received, might have led rescuers to the boat and saved the lives of the crew. In a sad postscript to the tragedy, the 128

Canadian Coast Guard found the device on Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia and quickly discovered why there was no signal: it was not turned on. Weather forecasters learned a lot about storms from this experience. Storm warnings are now issued as much as four days in advance, giving ships like the Andrea Gail a reasonable amount of time to get out of the way. Why do thunderstorms mostly occur in the late afternoon? As the day unfolds, the sun warms the ground, encouraging evaporation that provides fuel for a storm at the end of the day. If warm low-level winds are also present, the storm may carry on into the evening. The orange hue that often accompanies thunderstorms is caused by the same atmospheric conditions that bring us beautiful sunsets. Who has survived falling through a thunderstorm? At least two people have fallen through thunderstorms and lived to talk about it. Probably the most famous is Lt. Col. William H. Rankin, a Marine Corps pilot whose jet suffered a malfunction, forcing him to eject. For forty-five minutes, he was supported in the thunderstorm by updrafts, and carried several thousand feet higher than when he had bailed out, before he was finally able to float safely to earth. In January 2007, Ewa Wisnierska, a paraglider, was carried from 2,500 feet (760 metres) to over 32,000 feet (10,000 metres). She did not regain consciousness until she reached 1,600 feet (500 metres), which fortunately left her enough 129

time to land. Another paraglider, caught in the same storm, was not so lucky. Why do thunderclouds have an anvil shape? The cumulonimbus clouds that bring thunderstorms build to great altitudes of as much as 70,000 feet (21,000 metres). There they encounter jet stream winds that slash through their tops, flattening them and stretching them out. What makes supercells so dangerous? Most violent tornadoes are spawned from supercells. These massive storms are also a source of large hail, flash flood-causing rains, and powerful lightning. Huge and slow moving, supercells can persist for hours in one location, causing a great deal of damage. How bad is freezing rain? From January 5 to 10, 1998, freezing drizzle fell on southern Quebec, central Ontario, New York, and Maine. Ice built up to more than 3 inches (7.5 centimetres) in some places. The weight of the ice pulled down tens of thousands of utility poles and countless trees, as well as 130 giant high-voltage transmission towers. Over 1.6 million people lost power, often for days. A factor in the development of this unusual storm was an extremely strong El Niño (climate change, perhaps?) in 1997 and 1998, which influenced the course of the jet stream so it moved through the southern United States picking up

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moisture and then turned north to deposit it in the northern U.S. and Canada. Damage in Canada due to the storm totalled about $4.2 billion. In Maine, the total was $340 million. Where was the world’s strongest cyclone? Cyclone Monica formed on the Coral Sea off the northeast tip of Australia. On April 19, 2006, it crossed the Cape York Peninsula and intensified to Category 5 status in the Gulf of Carpentaria. A barometric pressure reading of 905 millibars was obtained on April 23 as it tracked slightly north of Australia’s coast. Wind gusts reached 215 miles per hour (350 kilometres per hour). Although intense, Monica was a small cyclone, just 60 miles (95 kilometres) across. Fortunately, it passed through lightly populated areas, causing little damage and no deaths. Other Major Freezing Rain Events … • December 9, 2002: Ice and 100-mile-per-hour (160-kilometre-per-hour) winds sank a patrol boat and exploration vessel in Novorosisk, a port in southern Russia on the Black Sea. • November 6-13, 1969: Thirty transmission towers being constructed to bring power to Quebec City from power dams on the Manicouogan River were toppled in a huge ice storm. • October 11, 1967: Freezing rain fell for eleven hours at Schefferville, Quebec.

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• January 1-3, 1961: An ice storm in northern Idaho deposited as much as eight inches (twenty centimetres) of ice.

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HURRICANES How does the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale work? For a tropical storm to get on this scale and be considered a Category 1 hurricane, maximum winds must exceed 74 miles per hour (119 kilometres per hour). Such a storm will likely do superficial damage to trees and create storm surges that are 4 to 5 feet (1.2 to 1.5 metres) high. Category 5 hurricanes at the top end of the scale will generate winds of more than 155 miles per hour (249 kilometres per hour) and storm surges of 18 feet (5.5 metres) or more. If these storms, or even the much weaker Category 3s and Category 4s, hit populated areas, damage will be extensive to catastrophic. For example, Hurricane Katrina was only Category 3 when it came ashore, and look what it did.

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What is the most hurricanes ever recorded in a single year? In the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, twenty-seven named storms were tracked, fifteen of which were hurricanes, three more than the previous record. Four of the hurricanes reached Category 5 status, two more than ever before — and all four caused a great deal of destruction. They were Emily, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. The last three all struck parts of the United States. Emily confined its damage to Grenada, the Yucatan Peninsula, and Mexico. The fewest hurricanes recorded in a single year was one, in 1890. What’s the most damage ever done by a hurricane? Hurricane Katrina in 2005 will probably be the most expensive hurricane in history, with damage, insured and uninsured, thought to exceed $125 billion. But even hurricanes that don’t make landfall are expensive. Hurricane warnings, typically issued when the storm is still 300 miles (480 kilometres) off the coast, cost an estimated $50 million for work interruptions and storm-proofing of buildings, even if the storm misses. Naturally, many people are trying to reduce the need for both types of expenditures by tracking storms more accurately. Why was Hurricane Katrina so destructive? Katrina struck the large city of New Orleans and overwhelmed its defences. First, it roared past a natural barrier of wetlands, already largely destroyed by human 134

interference. Second, the so-called Barrier Islands were easily overcome by the storm surge. Third, the surge also breached and weakened levees, leaving the city to fill up with water like a cereal bowl (because much of it is below sea level). New Orleans had not faced the full brunt of a major hurricane since Betsy in 1965. Before the disaster, critics felt the city’s defensive preparations were inadequate to meet a challenge that was already overdue. How many Category 5 hurricanes have hit the United States? Before Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane that came ashore as a Category 3, the most expensive hurricane in American history was a Category 5 storm called Andrew in 1993 that hit Miami, Florida, and cost $26.5 billion. It is one of only three hurricanes that were still Category 5 when they made landfall. The others were Camille in 1969 and the Labor Day hurricane that struck the Florida Keys in 1935, before hurricanes were given names. Which was the deadliest hurricane on record? Hurricane Mitch ranks as the deadliest in the past two centuries. It formed in the Caribbean in October 1998 and slowly moved through Central America, causing widespread flooding and up to 11,000 deaths before reaching Florida as a tropical storm. In 1900, Galveston, Texas, was struck by a Category 4 hurricane that swept over parts of the city that had been, in an act of hubris, built on a barrier island; it killed 8,000 people. A hurricane in 1780 is considered the most devastating of all, killing an estimated 22,000 people and 135

decimating the Caribbean navies of Britain, France, and several other European countries during the American Revolution. What was the most damaging hurricane to Canada? Between October 15 and 17, 1954, Toronto, Ontario, suffered through the powerful last blasts of Hurricane Hazel. The storm had already caused devastation and death in Haiti, where up to a thousand people died, and in the United States, where one hundred lives were lost. In Toronto, it killed another eighty-three people and caused damage and flooding never seen in the city before or since. What was the strongest hurricane to hit Canada? Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula received the brunt of a Category 3 hurricane called Luis in September 1995. The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 was in the area at the time, and it reported waves up to 100 feet (30 metres) high, as did a Canadian Nomad data collection buoy. The only other tropical storm to be rated as a hurricane when it made landfall in Canada hit Nova Scotia, south of Halifax, in 1893. How often do hurricanes hit Canada? About 40 percent of the tropical storms, including hurricanes, that form in the Atlantic each year make it to Canada. However, the trip north almost always saps their strength, reducing them to tropical storms or depressions by the time they cross the border. Over the past decade or so, an average of five storms made the journey each year. This compares to a hundred-year average of 3.3 storms, and reflects the increase 136

in the number of storms being generated each year. Many scientists point to this increase as further proof of climate change due to warming oceans. How often has Brazil been hit by hurricanes? Could it be climate change? Up until March 2004, the South Atlantic was considered a hurricane-free zone because the ocean was too cold to sustain such large storms. Then Catarina came ashore in Brazil, in the province of the same name, leaving 38 people dead and 2,000 homeless. Catarina was a Category 1 hurricane with winds of about 85 miles per hour (140 kilometres per hour). Where do hurricanes form? Hurricanes need water temperatures of about 80°F (27°C) to develop. The hurricanes that affect eastern North America usually form in the eastern Atlantic, in tropical latitudes, north of the equator. Hurricanes also form north and south of the equator in the Pacific, affecting Australia and parts of Asia, and south of the equator in the Indian Ocean, affecting Africa. Mexico’s west coast also gets hit by Pacific hurricanes. A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when its winds exceed 74 miles per hour (119 kilometres per hour). Where are hurricane winds most dangerous? The right side of a hurricane is expected to be the most dangerous part of the storm. There the hurricane winds combine with steering winds, increasing the storm’s intensity. The strongest and most unpredictable winds are in the

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eyewall, the ring of dark clouds surrounding the eye, where speeds can top 200 miles per hour (320 kilometres per hour).

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TORNADOES How does the Fujita tornado scale work? The smallest tornado, Category 0, called an F0 on the scale, needs a wind of at least 40 miles per hour (64 kilometres per hour); otherwise, it will be considered a dust devil, whirlwind, sand auger, etc. Tornadoes of this intensity are likely to knock down a few trees and do minor property damage. At the other end of the scale, F5 storms can pack winds of 318 miles per hour (512 kilometres per hour), stronger than anything else seen at ground level. F5 tornadoes can carry houses and cars for hundreds of feet. Where was Canada’s worst tornado? On June 30, 1912, Regina, Saskatchewan, faced a tornado that left twenty-eight dead and hundreds injured. The worst 139

tornado in recent memory struck Edmonton, Alberta, on July 31, 1987. It cut a swath through parts of the city and through Strathcona County that was 25 miles (40 kilometres) long and up to 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometres) wide. The storm killed 27 people and injured 253. Rain and hail the size of softballs caused flooding and further damage. Another well-remembered tornado event struck Barrie, Ontario, on May 31, 1985. That day, tornadoes took 8 lives, injured 155, and caused over $100 million in damage. How do tornadoes form? Although we send people to the moon and robots to Mars, tornadoes still have mysteries. What we do know is that they develop in several ways. The strongest occur when horizontal winds from several directions are drawn into the rotating updrafts of supercell thunderstorms. North of the equator, tornadoes rotate in a counter-clockwise direction. In the southern hemisphere the rotation is clockwise. On the rare occasions that tornadoes rotate in the opposite direction, they are called anti-cyclones. Where are you most likely to get a tornado? Tornadoes happen all over the world, but are most common in the United States. Surprisingly, Britain gets the most tornadoes per square mile. In 2004, the United States experienced a record 1,819 tornadoes. Canada gets about eighty twisters each year. Which country suffers the most from tornadoes?

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In terms of lives lost, Bangladesh has suffered the most. One storm in 1989 cost 1,300 lives, injured 12,000, and left tens of thousands homeless. Another in May 1996 killed more than 1,000, injured 34,000, and put 100,000 out of their homes. In North America, a tornado touched down for 219 miles in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, taking the lives of 695 people and injuring more than 2,000. The last tornadoes to take more than a hundred lives in North America were in 1953 in Flint, Michigan, and Waco, Texas. The costliest tornado ever was a Category 5 monster that struck Oklahoma City and a number of other Oklahoma towns in May 1999, causing over $1 billion in damage. What is the connection between waterspouts and tornadoes? Most waterspouts are tornadoes on water. While they are usually weak, they have been known to sink ships. Not long ago, in September 1970, a steam yacht was lost in the Gulf of Venice, near Italy, along with thirty-six passengers. Four centuries earlier, in the 1550s, ships in harbour on the island of Malta were destroyed and six hundred people died. In both these instances, the waterspouts later came ashore as tornadoes or landspouts and took more lives. Waterspouts have also been accused of contributing to the Tay Bridge collapse in Britain in December 1879. Claims have been made that two or three were sighted during a howling gale near the two-mile-long bridge shortly before a train reached the middle and fell into the river with a loss of seventy-five passengers. 141

What is the most tornadoes in a single storm system? The “Super Tornado Outbreak” of April 3–4, 1974, consisted of 148 tornadoes. Six were Category 5, and twenty-four were Category 4, the most ever. The toll was 330 people killed and more than 5,000 injured in eleven American states and in Windsor, Ontario. Where was the world’s highest tornado? Rockwell Pass in California’s Sequoia National Park was hit by a tornado that touched down at 12,000 feet (3,660 metres) on July 7, 2004. Tornadoes have also been observed crossing the Teton Range at 11,000 feet (3,350 metres). Where was a luminous tornado photographed? Only one photograph has ever been accepted as a genuine image of a luminous tornado. That was taken of a Category 4 tornado that swept through Toledo, Ohio, killing sixteen people, on April 11, 1965. Quickies Did you know … • that during 2003 and 2004, Oklahoma, in the heart of America’s Tornado Alley, went a record 292 days without a tornado? • that on one day, October 4, 1998, Oklahoma had twenty-seven tornados touch down?

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• that six months after Hurricane Katrina, on February 2, 2006, two tornadoes struck New Orleans? • that on April 5, 1936, an F5 tornado killed 233 people in Tupelo, Mississippi, but spared a very young Elvis Presley? • that balls of fire preceded a 1971 tornado in Wray, Colorado? • that in 2006, Idaho got only its second October tornado? Wizard of Oz, anyone? In 2006, two events, four days and half a world apart, showed that it is possible to be swept up by a tornado and live to tell the tale. On March 8 in South Canterbury, New Zealand, a tornado picked up a pig and dropped it into another pen, and on March 12 in Fordland, Missouri, a teenager was pulled out of his grandmother’s mobile home and thrown more than 1,300 feet (400 metres). What is the longest period that the United States has gone without a tornado? Between December 12, 1985, and February 1, 1986, the country enjoyed a record fifty-two tornado-free days. Where was the world’s biggest waterspout? A mining engineer equipped with a surveyor’s theodolite was present when a cumulonimbus cloud produced a series of huge waterspouts off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, in 1898. He calculated that the second

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one was 5,014 feet (1,528 metres) high. In 1919, a sextant was used to measure a waterspout from the deck of the SS War Hermit near Cape Comorin, India. That waterspout was 4,600 feet (1,402 metres) high, as was another seen from the SS Dallas Star in 1950. Quickies Did you know … • that tornadoes are also called twisters, ropes, funnel clouds (before they touch the ground), whirlwinds, wedges, windhoses, or cyclones? Smaller cyclonic events include dust devils, gustna-dos, and willy-willies. Have people survived being hit by a waterspout? Waterspouts are often weak. A man who sailed through one said the winds inside were not more than thirty knots. In 1949, a pilot flew through a 1,200-foot (370-metre) waterspout at about 600 feet (180 metres) and only got his plane wet.

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LIGHTNING Where are you most likely to get hit by lightning? Kifuka, a village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa, gets more lightning than anywhere else in the world (Uganda gets the most thunderstorms), according to imagery from NASA satellites. The North and South Poles almost never get lightning, and it is rare in the open ocean. Florida gets the most lightning in North America. In Canada, lightning is most common near the U.S. border where Manitoba and Saskatchewan meet, in the foothills of the Rockies near Edmonton, Alberta, and in southwestern Ontario. Who is at the greatest risk are from lightning?

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Men are struck by lightning five times as often as women are, and it is not just because more men than women play golf (in the United States, only 5 percent of fatalities from lightning strikes are linked to golf). The people most likely to be struck by lightning are those enjoying other outdoor pursuits like hiking and camping. The people in greatest danger inside a house are those who try to use a landline phone. Where is the most dangerous place to be in a thunderstorm? If you are in a boat on open water, under an isolated tree or a large tree in a forest, or in the middle of a large open area like a golf course or soccer field, you are a prime candidate to be struck by lightning or injured by a falling tree. Should you feel your hair stand on end, get a tingling sensation on your skin, or hear a crackling sound, a lightning strike may be imminent. Your best bet then is to squat and make yourself into a ball in the hopes that the lightning will go around you and not damage internal organs. Are planes in danger from lightning? Two major crashes, and many smaller ones, especially in the early days of flight, have been attributed to lightning strikes. In 1971, a plane bound for Lima, Peru, flew into a thunderstorm. Lightning struck the right wing, setting it on fire, and the plane fell into the jungle. Ninety-two people were on board, and ninety-one died, seventy-seven in the crash and fourteen before they could be rescued. The lone survivor hiked along a stream for ten days until she reached a logging camp. Another crash in 1983 killed all eighty-one passengers and crew. 146

Nowadays, aircraft try to give thunderstorms a wide berth because their behaviour is just too unpredictable. How many people die from lightning strikes? In Canada, six to ten people die every year. In recent years, the United States has suffered an average of sixty-seven fatalities annually. Florida is the most lightning-prone area in the United States. Over a thirty-five-year period from 1959 to 1994, when 3,329 Americans died from lightning, the National Weather Service noted 350 deaths in that state, more than 10 percent of the total, and far more than North Carolina, which was second with 160 deaths. Why is lightning so common in Florida? The state is a long peninsula separating the Atlantic Ocean from the Gulf of Mexico. East winds blow inland from the Atlantic and west winds blow in from the Gulf, forcing the warm air of the state’s interior upward to create thunderstorms and strong updrafts that provide conditions ideal for lightning formation. Who survived the most lightning strikes? A one-time park ranger in Virginia named Roy C. Sullivan endured seven lightning strikes. After the first four, he began to believe something was out to get him. The fifth time he was struck while trying to outrun a cloud that seemed to be chasing him. He was hit for the seventh time in 1977. He died tragically in 1983 when, at age seventy-one, he took his own life.

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Quickies Did you know … • that tall structures are designed to absorb frequent lightning strikes? Toronto’s CN Tower gets clobbered a whopping seventy-five limes a year. • that most people are hit by lightning in the thirty minutes before or thirty minutes after a thunderstorm? • that lightning bolts strike the Earth more than 3 billion times annually? Eighty-five percent of those strikes are on land. • that lightning starts about 45 percent of Canadian forest fires and burns more than 80 percent of the timber lost? What are the different types of lightning? Lightning can occur between clouds, inside clouds, and from clouds to ground. The most common type is forked lightning, which we call sheet lightning when it is far away and the forks become indistinguishable from each other. Ball lightning is seen as a ball of light that moves slowly and sometimes ends with an explosion. Satellites, space shuttles, and high-flying aircraft have observed two other types of lightning on top of thunderheads: red sprites are weak discharges that shoot up above the cloud, and blue jets are cone-like emissions that travel up from the core of the thunderstorm to altitudes of twenty-five or thirty miles (forty or fifty kilometres).

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The light we see from lightning occurs after it strikes the ground and is on its way back up to the cloud. The heat generated during the electrical discharge causes it.

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BEAUTY How do multiple rainbows happen? You cannot touch a rainbow. They are optical phenomena that depend upon lighting conditions, moisture in the air, and the position of the viewer. Multiple rainbows are likely to be found at the foot of a waterfall. When fine mist is being thrown into the air and the sun is bright enough to create a strong primary rainbow, reflections off the water droplets create a mirror image of the original rainbow, which in turn creates a mirror image of itself, and so on until they become too faint to see. What is a fire rainbow? Fire rainbows are not true rainbows. On rare occasions they appear on wispy cirrus clouds at high altitudes. The clouds 150

must be made up of hexagonal ice crystals that are parallel to the ground and bathed in light from a sun that is at least 58° above the horizon. What are rainbow spokes? Sometimes a rainbow looks like part of a wagon wheel with one or more spokes. The scattering of sunlight within the rainbow arc causes these spokes. Can rainbows happen at night? Lunar rainbows, known as moonbows, can and do happen if the moon is bright enough and no more than 42° above the horizon. Rain or a waterfall must be opposite to the moon for the moonbow to form. They are sometimes called white rainbows, because colour is very rarely seen. When do you get fogbows? Fogbows appear in the fog, which is not surprising because they would be rainbows if the fog were replaced by rain. The secret to a fogbow is the minute size of the water droplets. The light is diffused, and it appears white because only pale yellow, white, and pale violet colours are emitted. When do green rays appear? Green rays are a magic moment in a sunset over the water. As the sun sinks below the horizon, it shines brightly red, and

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then, at last moment, just before it disappears altogether, an observer may catch a sudden flash of brilliant green. When will you see a Brocken spectre? This ghostly apparition got its name from a mountain in Germany, where it is seen frequently. Climbers are often surprised by them when they top a ridge and look down. Brocken spectres look like the indistinct images of large men, but they are actually the shadows of the climbers themselves. They are created by sunlight shining behind the climbers and projecting their shadows on the clouds, mist, or fog below. How do sundogs form? The sun’s dogs, as northern people call them, are the mock suns that sometimes appear to the right and left of the sun, often along with a halo. Perfect sundogs form when sunlight shines through flat, hexagonal ice crystals and is bent 22°. When the angles are not optimal or some of the crystals are misshapen, colourful variations can occur. What is a Fata Morgana? A Fata Morgana (the name comes from the Italian for “Morgan le Fay,” magical sister of King Arthur) is a superior mirage, the kind that appears above the object that it represents. These phenomena are formed when light is bent while moving through layers of cold and warm air. This mirage is the type that inspires notions of fairy castles in the air. They are common in the Arctic and in the Antarctic, as well as in parts of the Mediterranean.

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An inferior mirage is seen below the object it is representing. We often see these mirages as shimmering puddles on the highway on hot days. Why do auroras form at the poles? Aristotle was awestruck by auroral displays. Pierre Gas sendi, a seventeenth-century French chemist, called them auroras after the Greek goddess of dawn. These shimmering, glimmering curtains of light occur because the Earth’s magnetic field captures charged particles from the sun — the solar wind — and channels them to the North and South Poles, where they collide with the gases that make up our atmosphere, producing a wonderful display of colours. While auroras may appear to be close to us, they actually form at altitudes of sixty miles (ninety-five kilometres) or more in the thin air of the ionosphere. The northern aurora, the Northern Lights, is the Aurora Borealis; the southern version is Aurora Australis.

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CLIMATE CHANGE What is the difference between climate change and global warming? Global warming is a trigger for climate change. As the Earth’s average temperature rises, weather, as we know it, is changing. For instance, the Arctic is warmer and pack ice is melting. Winter comes later and spring comes earlier. Storms are stronger and longer. Scientists agree that the world is warming and human activity is contributing. They disagree on how much the climate will change as a result and what, if anything, we can or should do about it. What are climate models?

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Predicting weather is an extremely complex task, especially when we attempt to do it over many years over a vast area, as climate scientists are trying to do when they paint pictures of the world after global warming. Climate models are the tool they use. These computer programs are tested against known weather phenomena, then put to work forecasting the future. Scientists adjust them continually, as they learn more about climate and computers become more powerful. Quickies Did you know … • that global warming is extreme weather at a snail’s pace? • that all the years since 1998 have had temperatures well above historical averages? • that at Sand Point in Alaska’s Aleutian chain of islands, a very rare tornado was sighted on July 25, 2005? • that at Banks Island in Canada’s North, Inuit report thunder and lightning, rarely mentioned in their oral tradition? • that Lake Chad in Africa has shrunk from about 10,000 square miles (16,000 square kilometres) to just 500 square miles (800 square kilometres) since 1963? • that many glaciers are retreating and ice caps on some mountaintops are disappearing?

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• that permafrost is thawing, forcing some northern communities to relocate? • that sea levels are rising because warmer oceans take up more space? • that 2005 was a record hurricane season for both the power and number of storms? • that since 1970, the Arctic Oscillation has spent more time in a positive mode, which means warmer, shorter winters in temperate areas? • that the Gulf Stream has slowed down 30 percent in recent years? Quickies Did you know … • that fossil fuels are the source of 80 percent of the energy consumed worldwide? • that at present rates of consumption growth, energy use will double by mid-century? • that carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere more quickly as fossil fuel consumption grows? • that human fossil fuel use reduces the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere?

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• that cooking fires and fires set to clear forests for farming account for 30 percent of the carbon dioxide released by humans? • that carbon dioxide lets heat from the sun in but stops it radiating back to space, causing the “greenhouse effect,” which warms the planet much as plants are warmed in a greenhouse? What makes it difficult to communicate the climate change argument? The main difficulty is it is not just one storm. Climate change is all sorts of events happening over a long period a little bit differently from the way they did before. For instance, while rainfall has remained relatively constant across the United States over the past ninety years, heavy downpours are 20 percent more frequent. This translates into more flooding and erosion and less benefit for plants, animals, and water reservoirs. Trends like this are being noticed all over the world, a little bit here and a little bit there — not enough to make the front pages, but enough that in time we may all feel mighty uncomfortable. What is anthropogenic forcing? Anthropogenic is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days when talking about climate change and global warming. It means that humans did it. A forcing, in meteorological terms, is an external influence on climate. The carbon dioxide we release when we drive a car or generate electricity from coal are examples of anthropogenic forcings.

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How did we dodge a bullet with CFCs? Before global warming and climate change were in the public eye, the world had to confront another anthropogenic crisis called the ozone hole. Baby boomers and their parents had all grown up believing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were wonder chemicals that did no harm to anything, while keeping our food and ourselves cool. Suddenly, in the 1980s, we discovered CFCs were wolves in sheep’s clothing and if we did not act quickly to get rid of them, atmospheric ozone would be gone and the sun’s ultraviolet radiation would fricassee us. Most countries did act, and recent reports suggest that ozone levels are improving. Fortunately, CFCs were made with chlorine. Had bromine been used, the ozone layer would have been destroyed before we had the tools to detect the damage. How does “noise” complicate predictions of climate change? Before scientists can accurately forecast what anthropogenic contributions to greenhouse gas in the atmosphere will do, they must consider random weather events called “noise.” Noise might be an unusually strong storm, a warmer than average winter, or a cool summer brought on by the ash plume of a volcano. It might also be a huge weather pattern like El Niño. In 1998 and 2005, the world had its two warmest years on record. 1998 featured an unusually strong El Niño, while 2005 did not. If the noise of El Niño’s contribution of about

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0.35°F (0.2°C) is factored out of the 1998 results, then 2002 through 2005 are the four warmest years on record. What are aerosols? In the world of weather, aerosols are particles in the atmosphere. They might be soot from cooking fires, dust from sandstorms, or ash from volcanoes. They might also be living things, swept up in a storm or sneezed by an animal. In large quantities, they can have a dramatic cooling effect on the Earth. Aerosols emitted as smoke from industries and automobiles are suspected of putting off our realization that global warming was happening by keeping the planet cooler than expected from 1940 to 1970, even though we were filling the air with carbon dioxide. Since then, efforts to reduce pollution and acid rain have also reduced our output of aerosols, making the effects of global warming gases like carbon dioxide and methane more noticeable. Aerosols are extremely important in the development of clouds, rain, and snow because water vapour condenses on the particles. Why are ice shelves collapsing on the Antarctic Peninsula? Seven great chunks of ice, almost 7,000 square miles (11,300 square kilometres) in area and almost 700 feet (210 metres) thick, have broken off the Antarctic Peninsula since 1974. Climate scientists believe that temperature increases in the area of 4.5°F (2.5°C) during the last half-century are behind the breakup. The ice had been relatively stable in the area for the previous four hundred years. 159

According to climate change models, temperature changes of this magnitude at the poles are to be expected in response to overall global warming in the 1°F (0.6°C) range. What is happening to the Yellow River? Industrial pollution, losses to irrigation, masses of untreated sewage, and fish die-offs are only part of the problem for China’s second longest river. Much of the water for the 3,400-mile (5,500-kilometre) Yellow River comes from glaciers 15,000 feet (4,600 metres) above sea level on the Tibetan Plateau, and they are shrinking in the face of rising temperatures and a twenty-year drought. Is this climate change? The river is used so heavily that it often dries up before it gets to the sea. How is climate change affecting Mount Everest? Although its exact height has always been subject to debate, Chinese scientists recently claimed that in their view, Everest is about 4 feet (1.2 metres) shorter than it was in 1975. They attribute this to anthropogenic global warming, based on analysis of ice cores from the mountain that indicate snow melt rates increased during the past century. Khumbu Glacier, an important route up the mountain used by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay during their ascent in 1953, has retreated three miles (five kilometres) since then. How fast is Siberia’s permafrost thawing?

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Ground temperatures have risen by as much as 3°F (1.6°C) since the 1970s, and melt rates have accelerated to as much as eight inches (twenty centimetres) a year in some places. Across Siberia, thousands of lakes that once sat on permanently frozen ground are being absorbed into a swampy morass. In western Siberia, a huge 11,000-year-old peat bog is thawing, raising the possibility of a release of huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere, accelerating the buildup of greenhouse gases. What is the Ward Hunt shelf? At the northern end of Canada’s Ellesmere Island, the Arctic’s largest ice shelf split in 2002, three thousand years after it formed. The breakup followed a century of melting brought on by a warmer Arctic, which had seen the shelf lose almost 90 percent of its mass. When the ice split, a freshwater lake that sat on the denser saltwater of the Arctic Ocean drained away. Both the Ward Hunt shelf and the lake had provided habitat for specialized microscopic animals and plants. Quickies Did you know … • that in the north, global warming means snowmobile travel is more dangerous because the ice is unpredictable? • that northern ice roads are useful for fewer days in the year? • that melting permafrost causes roads to collapse?

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How is China contributing to global warming? China’s production of greenhouse gases is growing at an alarming rate. In 1999, the country produced roughly half as much greenhouse gas as the United States. In 2006, its emissions almost equalled those of the U.S. The country is in the midst of a plan to build an estimated 1,000 megawatts (MW) of new coal-fired electrical generation every week until 2011, and a further 500 MW a week from 2012 to 2030. Given current rates of growth, its carbon dioxide emissions are on track to be double those of the U.S. by 2020. Quickies Did you know … • that, desperate for food, some wolves are threatening sled dogs tied up in Inuit communities? • that western Hudson Bay polar bear populations have declined more than 20 percent since the early 1980s, because ice is breaking up earlier? • that Emperor and Adelaide penguin populations are down considerably? • that parasites, previously unknown in the far north, are killing reindeer? • that black bears and beavers are being sighted further north in Alaska than ever before?

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• that warming water in the Bering Sea is driving fish like pollock and pink salmon further north, and gray whales are following? • that several species of shellfish once found in Monterey Bay, California, have moved north? • that European butterfly populations, particularly those that specialize, are declining? What is the IPCC? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a group of 2,500 scientists who have so far issued four reports on the state of the world’s climate and projections of future changes. The panel’s findings are highly politicized, because many countries are involved, so the publications avoid the extreme views on both sides of the issue. Nonetheless, the IPCC’s first report in 1990 anticipated that a business as usual scenario would see a global temperature increase of about 5.4°F (3°C) by 2100. The fourth report in 2006 offered a worst-case scenario of 4.3°F to 11.5°F (2.4°C to 6.4°C) and a best-case of 2°F to 5.2°F (1.1°C to 2.9°C) by the end of this century. The fourth report received widespread acceptance by governments around the world, which are now scrambling to put policies in place that will make the best-case scenario more likely. Why are critics of global warming science falling silent?

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Weather stations around the globe have been measuring temperature for almost 150 years with an ever-increasing number of devices on land and sea and in the air. Satellites entered the picture in the late 1970s, and soon after, discrepancies began to show up between their measurements and those taken on the surface of the Earth. The satellite data showed that warming was taking place, but much more slowly than expected, if models were correct. Critics of climate change theory seized upon these findings and used them to argue against major changes in public policy that would combat global warming. However, in the past few years, errors were found in the way the satellite data was calculated. Once these errors were corrected, measurements from satellites correlated much more closely with surface readings, adding validity to the predictions of climate change models. Quickies Did you know … • that in 2007, China’s electrical generation capacity was about half that of the United States and its greenhouse gas production was about the same? • that in 2005, about 30 percent of U.S. electrical generation was from coal? • that in 2005, about 70 percent of China’s electrical generation was from coal?

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• that by 2011, coal will provide about 80 percent of China’s electrical generation, and its total generating capacity will equal the U.S.? • that China is on track to be producing more greenhouse gas by 2030 than Europe, North America, and Japan combined? • that the Kyoto protocol does not put pressure on China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because it is a developing nation? • that India’s greenhouse gas production is rising quickly as well? What is happening to glaciers in Canada’s Rockies? The Athabasca Glacier, the best known glacier in North America, has retreated almost 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) in the last 125 years and has thinned and narrowed as well. It is one of six glaciers in the Columbia Icefield between Jasper and Banff, Alberta, and all are melting. South of Banff, Glacier National Park in Montana is expected to soon be glacier free.

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WEATHER MISCELLANY What is the difference between El Niño and La Niña? El Niño, “the boy” or “Christ child,” is characterized by a warming of the western Pacific, which is most intense off the coast of Peru, and a cooling of the eastern Pacific off Indonesia. La Niña, “the girl,” is just the opposite. They are the extreme ends of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a naturally occurring cycle two to seven years long that varies in strength and has global consequences. El Niño events normally last about a year. La Niña can last three years. What are extreme UV index readings? Effects of an El Niño Phase

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• Droughts and bush fires in Australia. • Mild winters in Central Canada. • Flooding and more avalanches in Western Canada. • Famine and drought in Indonesia. • Fewer, weaker hurricanes in the Atlantic. • More, stronger tornadoes in the southern United States. • Marine life and sea birds suffer around the Galapagos Islands, but life ashore is very good. • Monsoon wind patterns change in the Indian Ocean. • Drought in Austria. Effects of a La Niña Phase • Flooding in Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. • Extreme cold in Alaska. • Heavy rains, severe storms, and flooding in southern Africa. • Drought in Kenya and Tanzania. • Abnormal wetness in northern South America. • Thriving marine life in the waters around the Galapagos, but suffering on land.

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• Powerful storms battering California. If the Earth was not protected by an ozone layer, UV index readings would top four hundred, and we would not be around to talk about them. For us, UV concentrations become dangerous when they exceed eleven, which they frequently do in the tropics. Canada’s highest reading, 10.56, was taken in Toronto, in June 2005. At Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, altitude 11,135 feet, readings in the twenties have been observed. When did weather forecasting begin? To avoid disaster, people have been trying to predict the weather for thousands of years, perhaps since the dawn of humankind, but their efforts were mostly self-serving until the telegraph came along and opened up the possibility of transmitting information across great distances nearly instantaneously. So it was not until the mid-1800s that attempts were made to start a weather service by Sir Francis Beaufort, creator of the Beaufort scale, and Robert Fitzroy, captain of the HMS Beagle, the ship that took Charles Darwin on the voyage that led to his famous book, The Origin of Species. Fitzroy made the first British weather forecast on August 1, 1861. In the United States, limited weather forecasting began around 1860. When did Canada start forecasting weather? Canada began developing a weather service in 1871, and the first forecast took place in 1876. Statistical data started to 168

appear at the end of the nineteenth century. Storm warnings were first issued in 1872. Do You Know These Weather Rhymes? • Mackerel sky, mackerel sky — never long wet, never long dry. • Mare’s tails; storms and gales. • When clouds appear like rocks and towers, the Earth’s refreshed with frequent showers. • A little rain stills a great wind. • If it’s foggy in the morning then it’ll be a sunny day. • Rain before seven, clear by eleven. • When dew is on the grass, no rain will come to pass. • When halo rings the moon or sun, rain’s approaching on the run. • If the moon holds water it will be dry. If water from it can leak rain is nigh. • When the glass falls low, stand by for a blow. • Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.

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Crime

PREFACE We live in a country that has chosen to assume that a person accused of a crime is innocent until guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Most of us agree that this is honourable and right, but it does place a huge responsibility upon police and forensic investigators involved in the investigation of a crime. To achieve the high standard of proof required for a conviction, these men and women must always remember that

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their actions on the job have to withstand critical examination in a court of law. This book answers questions about crime scene investigation, provides some historical context, and offers accounts of various crimes to illustrate how good investigative techniques have worked in practice. Research has gone into every question with the aim of entertaining readers of all ages. I learned a great deal while working on this book. I hope you will, too.

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CRIME SCENE RESPONSE How did 911 get started? Canada began to provide 911 services in 1972. AT&T introduced the service in the United States in 1968. Britain was well ahead. They began a 999 service in 1937 following a terrible fire in London in 1935 that led to the deaths of five people.

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What happens when you call 911? Dispatch asks whether you need police, fire department, ambulance, or all the above. They try to get your location, particularly if you are on a cellphone and your location can’t be pinpointed automatically. You will have to describe the problem, say who is hurt, and how badly. If it is safe for you to keep talking, more questions will seek to calm you or help the emergency workers prepare for their arrival at the scene. What is the responding officer’s responsibility at the crime scene? A preliminary investigation begins when police officers are dispatched on a call. On the way, they plan their response. At the crime scene, they start by helping the injured, chasing suspects, gathering witnesses, trying to determine if a crime was actually committed, and requesting appropriate backup from headquarters. As soon as possible, they secure the crime scene and locate or collect evidence. They take good notes throughout. Although the reality of most crime scenes makes achieving all these objectives difficult, the better this work is done, the better the chance the criminals will be caught and convicted. What is a crime scene? The preliminary investigating officer makes the first attempt at defining the crime scene by running tape around its perimeter to stop people removing or contaminating evidence. Crime scenes may be as small as the room of

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a house or as large as a park, and some crimes may have several crime scenes. As more is learned about the crime, the crime scene may be enlarged or reduced. Do the police draw chalk lines around a body? Lines, tape, paint, and ropes have all been used to mark the location of a body, especially if it was going to be moved. However, the practice is risky because of the chance of evidence contamination. Often the coordinates of the body are established by measuring to it from known fixed points and by taking photographs. What are solvability factors? Police resources are spread thin, so many crimes get little attention, and some get almost none at all. One factor used to determine whether police will spend time on a case is its solvability as determined by the preliminary investigating officer, the one who responded to the call. Crimes become solvable when there are witnesses, good information about the suspect, good physical evidence, and identifiable property. If these factors are not present, the case will probably be closed or suspended. Why is it important for investigators to take notes? Memories are unreliable, more and more so as time passes. That is why courts prefer physical evidence or testimony supported by notes. Good note taking can save constables and detectives embarrassment in court. As well as containing names of victims, witnesses, and suspects, good notes describe important details of the crime scene, such as bullet 176

holes or broken lamps, the locations of key pieces of evidence, and the things people say and their behaviour in the heat of the moment. What goes into a preliminary investigation report? These reports are usually largely checklists. They contain information like the case number; the officer’s badge number; time, date, and location of the crime; limited personal information about victims, suspects, and witnesses; weather conditions; lighting; vehicle descriptions; crime scene description (building, car, outdoor location); means of access; and the criminal’s objective. When does the press get to know what is going on? With good contacts within police departments, some journalists used to get the scoop quickly, feeding sensationalistic tabloid newspapers a steady stream of lurid crime drama before authorities were ready to make the details public. In recent years, getting the scoop has become more difficult. Police forces now train some staff to speak to the media and limit what anyone else can say. Police argue that privacy considerations, the suspect’s right to a fair trial, and the need to preserve evidence integrity at a crime scene make restrictions on media access necessary. Who cleans a crime site after the removal of a body? Perhaps the most emotionally taxing job at the crime scene is that of the trauma cleanup crews, sometimes called “death cleaners.” When someone dies, bodily fluids escape, and

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depending on the circumstances, other human remains may be left behind. After the body is taken to the morgue, private companies are called to clean up the mess. These specialists are often former medical staff and often know something about construction as well. They enter the premises in haz-mat biohazard suits and collect the remains and anything touched by the victim, which can include walls, carpets, furniture, and more.

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SIGNS OF CRIMES What was the name given to the first device used to test drivers for alcohol? As Prohibition ended in the United States, Dr. Rolla Harger, a biochemistry professor, invented the “Drunkometer.” Patented in 1936, the device collected a suspect’s breath in a balloon and fed it through a chemical solution. In 1954, the “Breathalyzer” was invented. Harger worked on that, too, and efforts continue to make it more accurate. Both devices have

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routinely faced challenge in court on grounds of unreliability and poor calibration. Why are marijuana grow ops such a big problem? The occurrence of frequent brownouts or power surges in a neighbourhood is an indication that a grow op may be operating there, because grow ops need large amounts of electricity to run lights and equipment. Grow up operators often hide this excess electricity consumption by illegally bypassing the meter; when they do not, electric bills can be important evidence. However, police often have difficulty getting access to the electricity bill for a suspect house because the utility has an obligation to protect the privacy of its customers. Often police must find other evidence to convince a judge that a house is probably being used to grow marijuana before the information will be released to them. This makes prosecuting grow ops much more difficult. Neither police nor utilities are happy with this state of affairs. Police would like information on suspicious electricity use to be proactively released to them by utilities, and utilities would like to recover the millions of dollars they are losing to electricity theft. With those objectives in mind, they are developing new ways of working together, and technology, such as metering from the street, is offering ways to counter tactics used by the criminals. Quickies Did you know …

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• that signs a house may be a grow op include heavy use of electricity and water, condensation on the windows, lots of vents on the roof, skunky odours, windows papered over, unusual noises, kids’ toys but no kids, and nobody bringing groceries to the home? How do you tell a gunshot from a car backfire? Car backfires are not that common these days, so the need to make the distinction is probably not as important as it used to be, which is just as well because the task is difficult. Some closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras have software to detect the difference. How are crooks identified using surveillance cameras? With surveillance cameras becoming increasingly common, new ways are being sought to reliably match their images with criminal mug shots. For instance, anthropometric (human measuring) techniques are used to determine distances between facial features, like the eyes, mouth, and nose. The idea is that these measurements can be used to create a short list of potential criminals by comparing them to pictures in a mug shot database. The challenge for police is that people’s faces appear at all angles in a video, and getting a straight-on shot can be difficult or impossible. What is CompStat? The CompStat program, which was developed in the mid-1990s, tracks crime across the city of New York, identifying emerging crime hot spots such as a specific street corner so the local precinct can focus on it and bring the 181

illegal activity under control before it becomes a major problem. The data is updated constantly, allowing police to quickly analyze whether the latest strategy is working. Who was the most notorious mass murderer ever convicted? A man named Pedro Alonso Lopez claimed to have murdered more than three hundred girls (he showed Ecuadorian police the bodies of fifty-three of them) in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru between his release from prison in 1978 and his recapture in 1980. Dubbed the “Monster of the Andes,” he received a life sentence in Ecuador. By various accounts, he is thought to have died, been released at the border to Colombia, or escaped around 1998. As bad a Pedro was, a sixteenth-century Hungarian noblewoman in Transylvania named Erzebet Bathory, “The Blood Countess,” may have been worse. In 1611, she went to prison for torturing and murdering eighty girls, but a book she kept listed the names of more than six hundred.

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CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION What are typical motives for major crimes? A criminal can give all sorts of reasons for committing a capital crime, but generally it comes down to half a dozen possibilities: they want to kill someone, escape, hide another crime, obtain an insurance payout, put someone out of business, or get revenge. 183

Who were the world’s first detectives? In 1749, the Bow Street Runners were formed in London to detect and catch criminals. The noted author Henry Fielding, who worked as a magistrate for the city, and his half-brother, John, established them to send a message to criminals that crime would not go unpunished. The runners were drawn from a notorious group of men known as “thief-takers,” what we would call bounty hunters today. Where was the world’s first private detective agency? Eugène François Vidocq, who began his career as a soldier and criminal and went on to be a spy and informant for the French police, started a detective agency called Le bureau des renseignments (Office of Intelligence) in 1834. His life and his investigative techniques provided inspiration for works by many writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Victor Hugo. He is also credited with contributions to ballistics and criminology. Where was North America’s first private detective agency? Allan Pinkerton started the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago in 1850, after dissolving the North-Western Police Agency, which he had created with a partner. When a Pinkerton detective uncovered a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, the agency’s reputation grew enormously. Later, strike-breaking work for industrialists like Andrew Carnegie in the late 1800s made many people dislike the company. Inspiration for the term “private eye” came

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from Pinkerton’s logo, which featured an eye and the motto “We never sleep.” What does a detective write up? A detective’s paperwork is more free form than constable’s is. She uses short paragraphs to describe crime, the work of the investigating officers, investigation, the arrest, the interrogation, and supplementary reports.

the the the the

Who took the Mafia out of the trash-collecting business in New York? New York police detective Rick Cowan spent years undercover during the mid-1990s as Dan Benedetto, cousin of the owner of a recycling company. He planted listening devices and wore wires to gather evidence against Mafiosi who were controlling the industry in New York. His evidence and testimony led to seventy-two convictions. What should you wear to a crime scene? The well-turned-out crime scene investigator should prepare for the task much as a surgeon prepares for an operation. An undistinguished disposable jumpsuit should begin the ensemble, followed by disposable booties, surgical gloves, hat, and mask. The important thing is to avoid contaminating evidence. Properly done, this outfit, called personal protective equipment (PPE), not only protects evidence, but may protect the investigator from biohazards as well. How should the crime scene investigator accessorize?

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The fully accessorized investigator ought to carry a toolkit with scalpels, haemostats, mirrors, magnets, tape to lift fingerprints, brushes, assorted powders, magnifying glasses, tweezers, index cards, inkpad, evidence seals, labels, and a ruler. She also needs various bags and bottles for containing evidence, and evidence markers for use when taking photographs. Quickies Did you know … • that J. Edgar Hoover, who died in office forty-eight years after assuming the top job at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1924, denied the existence of the Mafia for most of his career? How does an investigator do a walk-through at a crime scene? During a walk-through, an investigator will make a first attempt to reconstruct the crime, document evidence that is going to be removed, and note ways into and out of the crime scene. She will also decide who needs to take part in the full investigation, assess the risks, and request special equipment. All the while, she will try not to disturb any areas that may contain evidence and keep her hands in her pockets or behind her back to avoid touching anything. How did poor evidence collection help the O.J. Simpson defence?

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No case in modern times has more resoundingly demonstrated the importance of good evidence handling at a crime scene. A long list of procedural errors, including several recorded on a police video of the search of Simpson’s property, suggested some evidence might be tainted. One error was particularly damaging to the prosecution: an investigator handled a vial of Simpson’s blood, and then bagged a leather glove found at the scene without changing his own surgical gloves, raising the possibility that cross-contamination could have occurred. The defence of course seized upon this. What is a chain of custody log? In the world of evidence handling, a chain of custody log is essential. Without it, there is a good chance that the evidence may be ruled inadmissible in court because no proof exists that tampering or contamination did not occur. This has become even more important in the world of computers, where it can be very easy to alter evidence, and very difficult or impossible to prove when and how changes were made. Good chain of custody procedures ensure that every time evidence is handled or moved, the people involved, the time, and the reason are recorded. What is bagging and tagging? Bagging and tagging is a slang phrase that describes evidence collection at a crime scene. It is the first step in the property management chain of custody process. After photography and documentation are complete, evidence should be put into clean containers — bags for dry stuff, tubes or bottles for liquids, sharps containers for hypodermic needles, paper and envelopes for pieces of hair or scrapings of blood, and 187

biohazard bags for human or animal remains — labelled, and bagged again. Why are film cameras still used when photographing crime scenes? Courts trust film cameras. In addition, photographs on film can often be enlarged further, revealing details that might not show up on a digital print. Techniques like watermarking and tamperproof storage media will eventually win digital images the approval of the courts, but even without that, the sheer convenience of digital cameras means they are widely used in police and forensic work. How is crime scene photography done? The general area and points of entry or exit are photographed as soon as possible, to provide documentation in case evidence is moved or removed. Individual pieces of evidence are labelled, scale indicators like rulers are placed alongside, and they are photographed. Each piece gets close-up, middle distance, and long shots. Film cameras are still widely used, and images are shot in black and white as well as in colour. Digital cameras are used as well but are not generally accepted in court as evidence because the images they produce can be easily altered in computer programs like Adobe Photoshop. Quickies Did you know …

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• that computers have opened up a world of opportunity for criminal activity, including forgery, fraud, hacking, piracy, email bombing, phishing, unauthorized access, infojacking, spying, copyright infringement, conspiracy, solicitation, backdating, keylogging, and much, much more? How do hackers crack passwords? Easily. The best passwords have at least eight characters, and the characters are a random mixture of digits, symbols, and upper- and lowercase type. People do not remember passwords like these, so they make simple ones out of birthdays, cat names, and so on. That opens the digital door of a home or company to the swarms of unwelcome intruders prowling the Internet for machines they can hijack for spamming, financial information they can steal, identities they can assume, and much, much more. What information can be collected to track someone on the Internet? The Internet is not private or anonymous. When you go online, your machine’s address can be logged, and every page you access can be recorded by the websites that you visit. Little files called cookies are deposited on the machine to allow websites to analyze your activity on their pages. Emails go to network servers before they go to a recipient’s machine and can be intercepted on the way or tracked down later. The reality that you are just one of many millions using the Internet affords you the kind of protection available to individuals in a school of fish under attack from barracudas — some will survive. Beyond that, the only mechanisms giving you any semblance of privacy are 189

standards of practice and laws that set limits on legitimate snooping by authorities.

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THE SEARCH What should an investigator remember when doing a crime scene search? “Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves will serve as a silent witness against him,” wrote Edmund Locard, a French criminologist, in 1920. This statement led to the motto of forensic science, which reads, “Every contact leaves a trace.” Called the Exchange Principle, this statement

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should be front and centre in the mind of any criminal investigator. What are crime scene investigators looking for? When conducting a search investigators are trying to recognize evidence and avoid everything else. Collecting too much evidence can be as bad as not collecting enough, because testing time may be wasted. When found, evidence is carefully packaged, documented, photographed, and analyzed on the spot or back at the lab. How are crime scenes searched? For smaller crime scenes, the most popular search technique is the inward spiral, where the investigator enters the room and carefully moves towards the centre in ever decreasing circles. This search can be conducted from the centre outwards, as well, in the event that the investigator has to go immediately to the heart of the scene to examine a victim or deal with key evidence. Other searches that are particularly useful for larger areas include the line abreast search, where everyone moves forward shoulder to shoulder, and the grid search, which involves searching an area in one direction, and then searching the same area at right angles to the original search. What did police learn from Britain’s Yorkshire Ripper case? Peter Sutcliffe, England’s Yorkshire Ripper, began his evil work in 1975, with the murder of a prostitute. After a heavily criticized five-year police investigation, he was finally caught 192

in 1980, while in the act of carrying out what would have been his fourteenth murder. Early on, wrong assumptions were made about the identity profile of the killer, which meant Sutcliffe was interviewed nine times but did not become a suspect. In addition, so much information was gathered about the case — 250,000 people were interviewed — that nobody could get a full appreciation of it, especially since it was not stored on computer. Crime scene searches have the following purposes: • provide evidence of the crime (corpus delicti); • show how the crime was done (modus operendi, or MO); • tell what and who was at the scene; • support or disprove witness and suspect statements; • provide leads for solving the crime; and • support or disprove investigative theories. How is a shooting scene searched? While a shooting scene will provide all kinds of evidence to consider, including blood and signs of struggle, the clues left behind by the weapon are central to solving the case. If police detained suspects, one of the first priorities is to check them for gunshot residue. At the scene, investigators collect cartridge cases and bullets and search for weapons. They also try to figure out how many shots were fired and where the shooter, or shooters, stood.

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What do investigators look for to determine whether a fire was arson? While the fire is burning, investigators will study and photograph the flames, because the colours can indicate temperature and identify what is burning — for instance, common accelerants such as gasoline create distinctive flames. Once the blaze is out, they will try to see if the place was broken into, if safety equipment like sprinklers was disabled, or if any of the odours suggest accelerants. Partially burned objects will be examined to see if they can point to where the fire began. Investigators will also want to see a reasonable quantity of valuables or stock to confirm that the place was not cleaned out before the fire started.

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CRIME SCENE FORENSICS Who is the evidence technician? In many communities, evidence technicians are the forensic team’s first responders. Their training in identifying, collecting, documenting, and storing the evidence found at a crime scene gives them the ability to limit the amount of evidence collected to that which will stand up in court and 195

help solve the case. That skill is important because too much evidence can be almost as bad as too little. An investigation can be overwhelmed by the evidence and go off in wrong directions, while costs of forensic tests soar. Why is it important to note the odours at a crime scene? Smells can be collected at a crime scene using sterile gauze or vacuum cleaner-like devices that pull them onto a pad. Odours collected this way have been presented to dogs like bloodhounds for hundreds of years. Recently, scent helped track down the sender of several letter bombs. In another instance, an odour matched shooters to cartridges found at crime scene. A controversial case in Irvine, California, was solved when a smell from a T-shirt that had been frozen several months earlier was obtained by an odour collection device and presented to a bloodhound that then identified the suspect. How many forensic specialists go to a crime scene? Dozens of forensic specialties exist that might be useful at a crime scene, but it is unlikely they will all be available in any police department, no matter how big. Besides, there are just too many crimes and too few crime scene investigators. Forensic specialists will of course be out in force at major crimes, but their numbers and levels of specialization quickly diminish with the reduced severity of the crime. Why are sketch artists still useful at the crime scene? Sketch artists can take a description provided by the victim of a crime and draw a picture of the suspect. They can also draw 196

pictures from descriptions of missing evidence and quickly sketch the crime scene in ways that are impossible to capture with a camera. How are bomb scenes investigated? On arriving at the scene, the first thing police have to do is assess the risks, call in backup, and attend to the victims, all the while being on the lookout for additional bombs. Next, a command post is set up and the area where shrapnel and debris exist is secured and measured. Investigators then do a shoulder-to-shoulder search collecting any evidence they find. Finally, using clean or sterile tools, they sweep the remaining debris into piles in the centre and sift through it. How do airbags help determine who was behind the wheel during an accident? When airbags deploy, they can pick up fibres, makeup, and hair from the people they protect, and leave behind bruises, lubricant, and burn marks from the hot propellant. Burn marks are particularly useful to investigators, because they appear in predictable spots on a person’s body depending on whether they were caused by a driver or passenger side airbag. What can an investigator learn from a computer? A hard drive can be a treasure trove for a forensic team. Temporary files and paging files are an obvious target, revealing recently edited documents, whether the file still exists or not. Original files do not disappear after deletion either, even if the recycle bin has been emptied. Index files 197

and logs are additional sources of evidence. In short, criminals need to think twice before using a computer because it can be a compelling witness for the prosecution. When governments and corporations destroy hard drives that contain sensitive data, they do not just clean them, they obliterate them. What is the first thing done to a body at the crime scene? If the death is thought to have occurred shortly before police arrived at the scene, the first step is to check for signs of life and attempt to resuscitate the victim. Otherwise, the body should be approached cautiously, avoiding and making note of any evidence seen on the way. Once beside the body, the death investigator looks at it without touching, trying to pinpoint evidence, locate wounds and injuries, and look for blood. She checks clothing, if it is present, to look for indications that the body has been moved. She also makes a sketch and takes pictures. How is the deceased removed from a crime scene? Requirements vary by jurisdiction, but generally, the death investigator, who will often also be a pathologist, medical examiner, or coroner, needs to confirm that death has occurred. Photographs are taken and the body’s location is marked before it is moved. The investigator also looks for signs that point to time of death; wounds, bruises, and broken bones; and physical evidence that may be useful to the investigation. As soon as possible, the body is sent to the morgue for an autopsy. 198

ELUSIVE TRUTH How do police handle witnesses? When police identify someone as a witness, they ask the person to step aside, avoid talking to anyone, and remain at the scene. As soon as they get a chance, they take a statement that includes contact information and a description of the incident. The witness may also be asked to go to the station

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for further questioning. Later the witness may have to appear in court. Being a witness can be stressful and may even bring threats from suspects, the accused, or their friends and families. To help witnesses cope with these realities, support groups are becoming more common. In extreme circumstances, witnesses may seek help from a range of witness protection programs. Why did Sicily crack down on the Mafia in the mid-1990s? Falcone-Borsellino Airport in Palermo, Sicily, is named after two Italian judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who bravely and aggressively went after the Mafia in the 1980s. They, Falcone’s wife, and many coworkers paid for the investigation with their lives in two savage bomb attacks. Public outrage following the bombings forced government to take action against organized crime. Who was the “canary who could sing but couldn’t fly”? Informers are an important part of police work, but turning on people you used to call friends can be a dangerous business. Abraham “Kid Twist” Reles was the most feared hit man in a predominantly Jewish gang of hit men called Murder Incorporated. They killed people that Italian mobsters like Al Capone wanted out the picture during the 1930s. Reles testified against his former gang and shortly thereafter died in police custody by falling out of a window. How are witnesses protected from intimidation? 200

It can take a lot of courage to be a witness at a major trial. Key witnesses in the Air India case complained of intimidation, and one prospective witness, Tara Singh Hayer, was the victim of a so far unsolved murder before he could give evidence. Recognizing the difficulties people face when they have to testify, the International Criminal Court has pushed for the establishment of “Victims and Witnesses Units” to provide counselling and support. Witness protection is a surprisingly new enterprise. The RCMP did not have a formal witness protection program until 1984, which, after numerous complaints, was revamped under the Witness Protection Program Act of 1996. Witnesses have to qualify to be part of this program. How good are eyewitnesses? The Harris-Adams case of 1976 drew a stark picture of the potential unreliability of eyewitnesses. David Harris was driving a stolen car and had picked up a drifter named Randall Dale Adams near Dallas, Texas. During a routine traffic stop, an officer approached the car and was shot and killed by the driver, who then sped off. The officer’s partner did not get a good look at the people in the car, but three eyewitnesses said the driver had long hair and a moustache. Initially, Harris was arrested for the crime, but the witnesses’ statements pointed to Adams, who was arrested instead. Harris’s testimony against Adams, combined with the testimony of the witnesses, who were never cross-examined, led to Adams’s conviction. Twelve years later, Adams was freed when Harris, on death row for another murder, finally admitted to the crime.

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How did lineups ruin a young man’s life? One of the first court decisions overturned by DNA evidence in the United States was a guilty verdict against a man named Ronald Cotton, who received life plus fifty-four years for raping two women in North Carolina. One victim had selected him from a photo lineup and a physical lineup and remained convinced he was the rapist until DNA tests cleared him in 1995. By then he had spent eleven years in jail. Meanwhile, the DNA of another man, in jail for other crimes, who had previously claimed he committed both rapes, was found to be a match. What are mug shots? The first mug shots appeared on “Wanted” posters pinned up by Pinkerton men in the late 1800s. Typically, mug shots are head-on and profile views of the subject, traditionally in black and white but nowadays in colour. In recent years, new technologies have appeared that make three-dimensional mug shots in seconds. Why can lineups and mug shots be worse than no information at all? Mug shot presentations, or lineups, can lead to misidentifications if not done properly, resulting in arrests and even convictions of innocent people. Critics argue that mug shots or lineup participants should be shown to the witness one at time, instead of all at once. They also argue that great care must be taken not to lead the witness. How do lie detectors work? 202

Lie detectors do not detect lies; they detect symptoms of lies. Their other name, polygraph, came about because their many (poly) sensors record their findings on graph paper. Lie detectors monitor breathing, pulse, blood pressure, and perspiration. John Larson, a medical student at the University of California, built the first one, which received widespread use, in 1921. Why is lie detector evidence not admissible in court? John Larson’s invention of a lie detector quickly prompted challenges to its ability to make a reliable assessment of a subject’s honesty. It was found that drugs, alcohol, hunger, pathological lying, and self-inflicted pain could all fool the machine, and incompetent operators messed things up as well. As a result, by 1923, American courts were not allowing lie detector evidence. Even with these problems, many suspects confess if they fail a test, making the detectors useful tools for the police. How are new technologies attempting to get around the lie detector’s shortcomings? The search for something to do a better job of identifying liars has been ongoing almost since the first polygraph. Lately some new technologies have been showing promise. Electroencephalograms look for specific brainwaves that change when the subject lies. Magnetic resonance imaging reveals a lie when certain parts of the brain become well oxygenated. Eye scans capitalize on the fact that extra blood flows to the eyes when extra thought (needed to formulate a lie) is required. Finally, technologies are monitoring facial

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movements, called microexpressions, in the same way poker players watch their opponents for “tells.”

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LAB FORENSICS Who wrote the first forensics textbook? A lost book written in the sixth century by a celebrated Chinese doctor named Hsu Chich-Ts’si is believed to have been the first to deal with the subject of forensics. An existing work, written by Sung Tzuh in 1247, is thought to be the second.

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Who gave the first lectures in forensics? In the 1640s, at the University of Leipzig, Germany, Johann David Michaelis gave lectures on forensic medicine. What did the inventor of the Bunsen burner do for forensics? Robert Bunsen’s burner, which everyone who has been to high school used at one time or another, was a product of one of the most important developments in forensic science. In 1859, Bunsen, a chemist, joined Gustav Kirchoff, a physicist, to demonstrate that the colour of the flame produced by a substance can tell you what it is. The pair went on to develop the first spectroscope, which captured light produced by the flame and used a prism to break it up into the component colours unique to the particular elements that produced it. The invention helped forensic investigators learn the composition of materials with small samples, so more could be preserved as evidence. Why is poison so rarely used as a murder weapon today? Poisoning has been around for as long as kings, queens, and rivals in love have been plotting against each other. In the nineteenth century, the practice enjoyed a surge in popularity as motive and opportunity collided when insurance policies appeared and household poisons for use in the garden or for controlling vermin became widely available. That prompted new laws designed to make poison more difficult to get, and better science to detect it so police could make arrests. Poisoning is not often chosen

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as a means of murder today because common poisons are easily detected during an autopsy. However, some poisoners are more inventive, using stimulants and muscle relaxants, or chemicals like ricin and polonium, to ensure that detection remains a challenge. Quickies Did you know … • that toxins used by poisoners include antimony, arsenic, belladonna, botulinum toxin, copper sulphate, cyanide, hyoscine, lodestone, mercury, muscle relaxants, polonium, ricin, stimulants, thallium, and many more? How was Alexander Litvinenko poisoned? A British resident, a former Soviet spy, and a critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, Alexander Litvinenko died in August 2006 in a very unusual way. He was poisoned with a radioactive material called polonium 210. The poison sent him to an unpleasant and lingering death, which no doubt pleased those responsible. It also had an unfortunate side effect: since his death, hundreds of people — hospital and restaurant workers, airline passengers, people suspected of carrying or administering the poison — became ill or tested positive for radiation exposure. What is trace evidence? This is the small, inconsequential stuff. Fibres from clothing, hair, paints and coatings, soil, and pollen are all examples of trace materials that have yielded important evidence.

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How can paint chips help police find a hit-and-run driver? Paint chips can go a long way to narrowing down the list of suspect cars following a hit-and-run accident. They can provide the car’s colour, make, model, and year. If police recover the car, investigators can examine it for signs that someone attempted to paint over the accident damage and compare paint chips from it with those found at the scene of the crime. What keeps some forensic specialists busy with a fibre diet? Fibres are a type of trace evidence collected at crime scenes. Alone, fibres are not likely to get a conviction, but they can be helpful in tying a suspect to a victim or place. Criminals are likely to leave fibres behind on anything they touch or brush against while committing their crimes. Forensic fibre specialists determine if fibres are synthetic or natural, identify their colour, and, perhaps, pinpoint the clothing, carpet, or piece of linen they came from. Specialists will also look at the number of fibres and how they were distributed around the crime scene to gain insight into the kind of struggle that might have taken place. When would Prince Charming be the right choice to investigate a crime scene? Footprints in the garden, a boot print in the snow, or bloody tread marks in the hallway can all go a long way towards tracking down a Cinderella gone wrong. He will make a plaster cast of the print in the garden, use a special spray to

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preserve the print in the snow, and lift the hall prints with gel, chemicals, or by dusting with powder, like fingerprints. What does SICAR have to do with footwear? SICAR (Shoeprint Image Capture and Retrieval) is computer software for storing information about shoes and car tires. It allows forensic investigators to compare evidence gathered at various crimes or crimes scenes, and can be tied into databases of shoe and tire brands and styles. A partial print from a running shoe played a large part in the conviction of David Scott Hall for the brutal murder of a Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, woman in 2000. Shoes and tires can incriminate in other ways. Forensic experts can often analyze telltale materials from the crime scene picked up by the treads. How did the Unabomber frustrate and mislead police? Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, knew investigative techniques very well, and used that knowledge to frustrate the FBI for many years. One of his tricks was to use untraceable recycled materials to build his pipe bombs, which led investigators to call him the “junkyard bomber” at one point during the manhunt. Another thing he did was wear shoes that had the soles of smaller shoes glued to the bottom, so police, analyzing his footprints, would waste time looking for a smaller man. Where do we find data recorders?

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Data recorders are well known on aircraft, and they are also found on trains and ships, but did you know that cars have them as well? In recent years, event data recorders, or EDRs, have become standard equipment on many vehicles. They control things like airbags and restraint systems. Crash investigators can look at them for information on speed, braking, and the severity of the crash. They can even determine if the driver was wearing a seatbelt. How do identity kits work? Hugh C. McDonald, a civilian working with the Los Angeles Police Department, developed the identity kit concept in 1940. The kits contained a selection of pieces that represent many variations on facial features such as eyes, ears, nose, and lips. Witnesses combine these to create a picture of the suspect. In recent years, many police forces have replaced them with computerized kits that offer a vast selection of facial features, often of photographic quality. Identity kits can save time and allow police to get a drawing of a suspect out even when sketch artists are unavailable. What does a forensic artist have to do besides draw well? Forensic artists have to conduct effective interviews with victims and witnesses who are upset, nervous, and scared to get the answers needed to produce a portrait of a suspect that is as accurate as possible. Their sketches may be hand-drawn, created from an identity kit, or developed on a computer. Profiling requires an investigator to consider all aspects of a crime. A profiler must: 210

• study the criminal’s actions; • look for patterns; • analyze behaviour for insights into the criminal’s character; and • provide a description of the suspect. Some forensic artists also do facial reconstruction work or sketches of a dead person’s face. Who invented criminal profiling? London police doctors Thomas Bond and George Phillips are credited with developing a psychological profile of a serial killer, based on a determination that the person responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders had to have had medical training. In another step forward, a psychoanalyst named Walter Langer developed a profile of Adolf Hitler in 1943. His profile rightly pointed out that Hitler would commit suicide if he was defeated. A further milestone in profiling was achieved by James Brussels, who correctly predicted the personality of “The Mad Bomber of New York” in 1947. Why did psychological profiling fail with the Washington Sniper? Profiling took a hit during the search for the Washington (also known as Beltway) Sniper in October 2002. Misleading eyewitness testimony and preconceptions about the characteristics of serial killers led the police to spend a lot of time searching for a white van driven by an angry or unstable

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middle-aged white man, when the killers were, in fact, a former Marine and a teenager, who were both African-Americans. Why does printing still trip up criminals? Two teenagers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, kidnapped and murdered Bobby Franks, the fourteen-year-old son of a Chicago millionaire, in 1924. They thought theirs was the perfect crime, but they were proven wrong when an investigator successfully tied a typed ransom note to some of Leopold’s schoolwork. Typewriters continued to betray criminals right up to the 1990s. Since then, they have pretty much slipped into oblivion, but the usefulness of the signature marks left by machines that turn out printed documents remains. On a laser printer, the giveaway might be a mark on the drum that repeats itself on every page. On inkjets, analysis of the ink can yield brand names and dates of manufacture, the latter being especially useful in identifying forged documents. If implemented, some new technologies could allow investigators to track any document back to the specific laser or inkjet printer that produced it.

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BIOMETRICS What was one of the first uses of fingerprints? William James Herschel, a colonial bureaucrat in India, is thought to be one of the first people to note the value of fingerprints when, in the late 1850s, he examined those of his own family. Some years later, he insisted pensioners in his jurisdiction provide them as proof of their right to their pensions.

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Where were fingerprints first used to identify a murderer? The first person convicted of a crime by fingerprint evidence was Francesca Rojas, an Argentine woman who murdered her two children in 1892. She left a thumbprint in blood on a door that matched perfectly with the one taken from her by a police researcher, Juan Vucetich. When confronted with the evidence, Rojas confessed and received a life sentence. How reliable are fingerprints? Like everything else in police work, fingerprints are not absolute, but providing they are collected and analyzed properly, they are very compelling pieces of evidence. Defence lawyers will usually attack them by criticizing the matching process. These days, the accuracy of fingerprint matching processes is coming under greater scrutiny because checks are done so routinely, for everything from terrorist watch lists to traffic stops to job applications. In addition, fingerprint collections are huge. The United States now has about 500 million prints on file, making misidentification a greater possibility, especially if only one finger is used. Why are prints often said to be latent? Latent means hidden and patent means obvious, although today latent is often used to refer to any print on a surface, invisible or not. True latent prints are found with special techniques like powders, chemicals, or lights that make them 214

visible. A third kind of fingerprint, plastic prints, are found on gelatinous materials like grease, soap, wax, or putty. How do investigators reduce the area that needs to be searched for fingerprints? Many fingerprints at a crime scene are likely to be latent prints, invisible to the naked eye, because of the type of surface that was touched or because of attempts made to clean up after the crime. Various types of light, including lasers and ultraviolet, can quickly reveal whether invisible fingerprints or other evidence exists, saving investigators a lot of time. Why do super cops use superglue for fingerprints? Superglue fuming is a technique used to make latent fingerprints visible to the naked eye. It works because a component of the glue called cyanoacrylate bonds with sweat residue. Fuseo Matsumur, a Japanese trace evidence examiner, received credit for discovering the technique in the late 1970s when he made a mistake while preparing a slide for examination under a microscope. What are the different fingerprint patterns? Fingerprints have three basic patterns: arches, whorls, and loops. Most people have arched ridges, about a third have whorls, and loops are uncommon. On their own these catagories are inadequate to make a positive match, so when comparing prints, the centre, called the “pattern area,” is examined for line types that further contribute to its uniqueness. Distinctive line types include spirals, bifurcations, and islands. Centre points of sweat glands, ridge 215

path deviation, and the exact end points of islands are examples of very small features, called “minutiae,” that also receive consideration. What piece of evidence freed one of the men arrested for the Great Train Robbery? In 1963 Britain, fifteen men, dubbed the “Hole in the Wall Gang,” pulled off one of the boldest robberies of all time. The Great Train Robbery netted them £2.3 million, close to $50 million today, but not before the train’s engineer was injured when he was clubbed over the head. Though the robbery succeeded, within a few weeks, police arrested thirteen suspects, and twelve got lengthy prison sentences, many mainly because of latent fingerprints on a Monopoly game, beer bottles, and a ketchup bottle left at the farmhouse that served as their hideout. Lawyers for the suspect who got off were able to convince the jury that his prints, which were only on the Monopoly game, could have been there before the game was brought to the farm. How have fingerprint databases evolved? Fingerprints used to be stored on index cards in cities, towns, and villages across North America, making them useful for catching local criminals, but not much else. In the early 1970s, the FBI decided a nationwide system was needed to catch a more mobile generation of thieves, so it devised the first fingerprint database. Called the Automated Fingerprint Information System (AFIS), this database has since been replaced in the United States by the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Information System (IAFIS). In Canada, the 216

RCMP is installing a system called Real Time Identification (RTID), which will share information with the American system. What human fingerprints?

characteristics

are

unique

besides

Fingerprints continue to be the most reliable way of determining a person’s identity, but many other body parts are receiving consideration as well. The front-runners are the retinas of the eyes, though irises are of value, too. Then there are voiceprints, hand size and shape, footprints (as unique as fingerprints), blood vessels in the wrist, and the distribution of prominent facial features like the eyes, nose, and mouth. This kind of biological information, along with fingerprints, is increasingly being stored on computers and imprinted on plastic cards or used in devices that scan anyone entering a growing number of countries, organizations, and events. It is the new world of biometric identification. How useful is voiceprint analysis? Ideally, voiceprints are unique to individuals, just like fingerprints. In practice, voiceprints have qualities such as pitch that change depending upon the person’s mood and circumstances, while fingerprint ridges are with the person for life. For these reasons, when a suspect’s voice is to be compared with a voice recording from a 911 call or an investigation, she will be asked to repeat the words several times so the analyst has a range of tones to compare to the

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evidence. Currently, debates rage in courtrooms on the validity of voiceprint samples because these uncertainties provide room for error.

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BLOOD How is blood evidence collected? Wet blood is wiped up with a sterile cloth, preferably gauze, dried, and then refrigerated. If blood has dried on clothing or a small object, the investigator wraps it in clean paper, places it in a paper bag, and puts it into a container. If objects are too big to go to the lab, the blood is scraped off onto a piece of paper, which is folded up and placed in an envelope. Samples

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need to reach the lab quickly; specimens more than forty-eight hours old are probably useless. How do you read blood spatter marks? Blood spatter can help reconstruct what happened at a murder scene, if it is read correctly. For instance, circular marks mean the blood dripped straight down or spurted straight out. A blood spurt suggests damage to an artery. Smeared blood means the person or object that made the mark is also bloody. Blood trails show movement. Blood pools show the victim was stationary for a while. High-speed spatter suggests a gunshot wound, medium speed suggests a knife, and low speed is typically a sign of blunt force. What made 1901 a big year for blood analysis? When two boys went missing on a small island off the coast of Germany, a carpenter, Ludwig Tessnow, became a prime suspect. He had been seen with them earlier and clothes found at his house were stained with what he said were wood dyes. An investigator remembered that Tessnow was questioned a few years earlier in relation to a murder with a similar MO that took the lives of two little girls. During that interview, Tessnow had used the same explanation for stains on his pants, and there was no way to disprove his story. By 1901, however, blood analysis had taken a huge step forward thanks to Paul Uhlenhuth, a biologist who had developed tests to distinguish primate blood from other substances. Uhlenhuth’s analysis of the stained clothing

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proved human blood was present. Tessnow’s execution took place a few years later. Quickies Did you know … • that in the 1930s a Scottish pathologist named John Glaister listed six ways to classify blood spatter: drops, splashes, pools, spurts, smears, and trails? How does blood type narrow down the suspect list? Karl Landsteiner, an Austrian pathologist, developed blood typing in 1901. He came up with four distinct types: A, B, O, and AB. Almost three-quarters of people are type O. A and B are each found in 10 percent of the population. Only 4 percent of people are AB. While knowing the blood type of a sample does not solve the crime, it does eliminate many potential suspects and is easy to do. How did blood spatter and handwriting evidence undo Graham Backhouse? A bizarre plot by an English farmer to cash in on an insurance policy he had placed on his wife ended with his neighbour dead, his wife maimed for life, and the farmer self-mutilated and under arrest. The blood spatter evidence that unravelled the plot showed that his neighbour could not have cut Backhouse in a struggle as he claimed, pointing instead to the conclusion that he had cut himself. The handwriting evidence against him was the impression of a doodle on a threatening note that had been stuck to the head

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of a sheep mounted on a fence. Forensics matched the impression to a drawing found on a writing pad in his house. What are luminol and fluorescein used for? These chemicals find blood even if the crime scene has been cleaned. Investigators spray them on areas where blood is suspected. If luminol is used, bloodstains glow in the dark. Fluorescein shows stains when UV light shines on the area. Both chemicals react with iron in the blood’s hemoglobin.

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BODIES When did medical evidence begin to gain acceptance at criminal trials? In 1850, a high-profile trial found John Webster, a professor at Harvard Medical School, guilty of killing and dismembering a wealthy Bostonian named George Parkman following an argument over an unpaid debt. Pieces of

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Parkman’s body were discovered in a toilet in Webster’s laboratory. Dental records helped establish his identity. Why do many words about killing end with -cide? Homicide, fratricide, suicide, regicide, infanticide — all these words (and more) get their get their murderous intent from the Latin suffix -cide, which means “kill.” Another word of recent origin, coined in 1944 to describe the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi concentration camps in the Second World War, was genocide, which adds the Greek prefix genos-, meaning “race” or “tribe”. Quickies Did you know … • that there are many ways to describe the act of murder, including iced, offed, clipped, burned, broke an egg, did a piece of work, hit, popped, bumped off, out out a contract on, whacked, dispatched, liquidated, took out, wasted, gave a one-way ticket, knocked off, finished, rubbed out, snuffed, chilled, cooled, and dusted off? What was Julius Caesar’s contribution to forensics? On March 15,44 B.C., Julius Caesar, emperor of Rome and a lover of Cleopatra before Mark Antony, died at the hands of Roman senators he trusted, including his friend Marcus Junius Brutus. In the world’s first recorded autopsy, a physician named Antistius examined his body and discovered twenty-three stab wounds, concluding that only one, through the heart, caused Caesar’s death.

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What evidence does the body provide of time of death? Many things happen to a body in the forty-eight hours after death. Muscles began to stiffen within thirty minutes, and a cloudy film develops over the eyeballs in three hours. The core temperature drops about 1.5°F (1°C) per hour. Blood pools at the body’s lowest points within about six hours. The body takes on a ghoulish greenish tint after two days. There is stuff to learn inside too. For instance, if the small intestine is empty, death was at least eight hours after the last meal. What is the difference between a medical examiner and a coroner? Medical examiners and coroners are found in both Canada and the United States. In the U.S., medical examiners are doctors or forensic pathologists; coroners, on the other hand, are elected and do not require any specific training. Four provinces — Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland — use medical examiners, who go out to the crime scene to investigate. Ontario’s coroners are appointed and must be licensed physicians. The remaining provinces also use appointed coroners. Unlike medical examiners, coroners do not go to the crime scene. They rely on reports from other death investigators. How does a pathologist know that a suspected drowning victim actually drowned? When a person drowns, they usually inhale water into their lungs. If water is absent, the pathologist will begin to suspect some other cause of death. One possibility is dry drowning, where a victim dies from a spasm of the larynx or cardiac 225

arrest before inhaling water. If dry drowning did not occur, the person was probably dead before they went into the water. Quickies Did you know … • that a coroner’s toolkit contains scalpel, bone cutters, scissors, forceps, handsaw, brain knife, chisel, and heavy needle to sew up the body? What can teeth say about a dead person? Forensic odontists provide surprising insights about the dead simply by looking at their teeth. By examining wear on the teeth from brushing, they may figure out whether the person was left- or right-handed. The quality of the dental work can identify the person as rich or poor. Teeth will also tell if the person smoked or did a certain type of work — playing certain musical instruments, for instance — that pulled teeth out of alignment. Another task for odontists is bite mark analysis. Bite marks can be distinctive because of teeth misalignment, damage, or absence. Matching a mark found on a victim or object at the crime scene with an impression of the suspect’s teeth has contributed to several high-profile convictions. How did dental work catch the woodchipper murderer? On November 19, 1986, in Newtown, Connecticut, Helle Crafts was supposed to pick up her sister-in-law. She did not

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show up. At first, her disappearance was treated as a missing person problem, but her husband Richard’s inconsistent stories about her and a report about some large holes in the couple’s living room carpet raised suspicions, even though Richard passed a lie detector test. Eventually police acquired a warrant and searched the house, finding some of Helle’s blood. Then police learned that Richard had purchased a woodchipping machine just before Helle disappeared, and a snowplough operator had seen him using it by the side of the road in the middle of a snowstorm on November 20. When police searched the roadside they found an intact letter addressed by Helle, as well as bits of bone, a couple of teeth, a fingertip, blonde hair, pieces of clothing, and five drops of blood. A cap on one of the teeth enabled forensics to match it to Helle’s dental records. Quickies Did you know … • that identity clues include scars, birthmarks, tattoos, implants, dental work, fingerprints, medical records, details of clothing and jewellery, bone fractures, DNA databases, criminal lists, documents like passports, and missing persons lists? What do skeletons tell forensic anthropologists? Dead men do tell tales, even when the flesh is gone. Bones can tell a person’s height, age, and gender. They reveal whether the person was healthy and what they ate. Bumps, nicks, and brittleness point to diseases, accidents, or the

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trauma of the crime, and the skull provides the foundation for very accurate reconstruction of the person’s face. What has to be done to fingerprint a dead person? Rigor mortis sets in quickly after someone dies, and one symptom is hand clenching, which makes fingerprints difficult to obtain. To get prints, the pathologist has to pry the hand open by pressing down on the knuckles or by making little cuts in the fingers. How did forensics experts play a role after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center? Following the biggest mass murder in U.S. history, a major challenge was naming the 2,749 people who died. Traditional forensic techniques for attaching an identity to human remains, such as fingerprints, dental records, and examination of skeletons proved useful in only a fraction of the cases. Less than three hundred complete bodies have ever been found. Generally, forensics teams have had to work with fragments of bone and pieces of flesh from one victim that were often closely intermingled with similar remains of other victims. Standard DNA analysis helped provide identification in about four hundred cases, but most of the time, the remains had been subjected to so much heat and crushing pressure that the DNA was unusable. To identify more victims, DNA amplification techniques were developed and other types of genetic testing were conducted. Even so, more than five years into the testing, barely 60 percent of the victims were

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identified, and the remains of many more wait for advances in the technology. When are flies good for crime solving? Forensic entomology is the craft of studying the insects that find a dead body a good place to live. Among the beetles, wasps, moths, ants, and flies, three in particular — blowfly, cheeseskipper, and lesser housefly — are useful in determining time of death, because they conveniently appear at different times during the body’s decomposition. Blowflies lay eggs within hours of death. Knowing where the flies are in their life cycle and the temperature of body, an entomologist can make a good prediction of the time of death.

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BULLETS How did ballistics get started? A French criminal anthropologist named Alexandre Lacassagne noted in 1889 that similarities existed between bullet markings and the rifling grooves cut into a gun barrel to cause the bullet to spin, improving its accuracy. Almost a decade later, in Germany, Paul Jesrich, a forensic chemist, used a microscope to compare two bullets, and in 1925, Philip

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Gravelle and Calvin Goddard invented the comparison microscope, which made matching much easier and faster. What is a ballistic fingerprint? Ballistic fingerprints are lines and indentations left on a bullet after it has travelled down the barrel of a gun. When a gun is found that might match a bullet from a crime scene, it is fired several times at gel designed to simulate human tissue or into a water tank. The crime scene bullet and the test bullets are then viewed under a comparison microscope to find similarities. Today, the bullets will also be scanned into a computer and stored in a database that automatically compares them to bullets found at other crime scenes. How did ballistics figure in the St. Valentines Day Massacre? The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, pulled off on February 14, 1929, by members of Al Capone’s gang in Chicago, clearly showed rival gangs that he meant business. Although no one was convicted of the crime, ballistics analysis of machine gun bullets and cartridges found at the scene was able to rule out police involvement, which had been suspected because three of the hit men wore police uniforms. Why can cartridges be more desirable than bullets for forensic purposes? Like bullets, cartridges are marked during the firing

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process. Unlike bullets, cartridges do not get flattened, squashed, bent, or broken, so they are easier to examine. Also, cartridges are not affected by a change in the gun barrel because the distinctive markings come from the firing pin and ejection mechanism. Many factors can make ballistic fingerprinting unhelpful in an investigation. Among the problems: • mass production means that new guns may be almost indistinguishable from one another, leading to lots of false positives; • older guns change over time as the barrels wear down and rifling grooves fill up with metal and powder deposits; • excessive heat can alter a gun’s fingerprint; • bullets may be too badly damaged or fragmented; and • the user can change the barrel, creating a new gun in the process. What was DRUGFIRE? The FBI’s DRUGFIRE database helped police identify guns used for multiple drug and gang crimes anywhere in the United States. Developed in the early 1990s, it enabled police to take a gun found at a crime scene, test it, and quickly compare images of its bullets and cartridges to others used in thousands of crimes across the country.

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Forensics Technology, a Canadian company, developed a competing spent ammunition database called IBIS (Integrated Ballistics Identification System) in 1996. Through the 1990s, Canadian police and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) used that system. Why were DRUGFIRE and IBIS replaced? DRUGFIRE and IBIS could not share data. In 2002, they were replaced in the United States by the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN), which solved the compatibility issues and updated the technology. NIBIN focuses on crime scenes, but some states have insisted that the results of test firings of privately owned guns be included as well. Canada has recently replaced its IBIS system with the Canadian Integrated Ballistics Identification Network (CIBIN). CIBIN will talk to NIBIN, so police forces in both countries can benefit from a larger storehouse of data. What is a powder burn? A powder burn may be left on a victim if the gun is fired at close range, for instance, in a suicide. There will be soot and there may be marks called “tattooing,” which are left when powder is embedded in the skin. Some burning will exist even if the gun is fired at a distance, caused by heat generated by the bullet while it rapidly spins through the skin. Chemists familiar with explosives analyze the powder residue to determine how it was manufactured and what the weapon was designed for.

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What is the connection between the Mafia and Superman? George Reeves, the actor who played Superman on TV in the 1950s, died from a gunshot wound to the head in 1959 that police said was suicide. Suspicion has lingered since that the case was not investigated thoroughly enough, and that Reeves had ties to organized crime that may have led to his demise. Allen Coulter, director of the Sopranos TV series, released a movie called Hollywoodland in 2006 that attempted to explore these accusations.

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DNA ANALYSIS Who developed the first DNA profiling test? Most of the DNA molecule is identical from human to human, but it was the little bit that wasn’t that led Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys to design the first DNA profiling test in 1984. The first person convicted by Jeffreys’ discovery was Colin Pitchfork. He received a life sentence in 1988 for murdering two teenaged girls in the United Kingdom.

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Who was Karen Price? The Karen Price investigation was a landmark case for both forensic reconstructors and DNA analysts. Karen’s body was discovered in 1989 under the patio of a home in Cardiff, Wales. She had been murdered nine years earlier. A reconstruction of her face was made from her skull. When it aired on a TV program called Crimewatch, a call came in saying the picture looked like Karen. Her parents were contacted to obtain a DNA sample that was tested against some extracted from the skeleton, yielding a positive match that police were able to use to justify a murder investigation. How long does it really take to analyze a DNA sample? Testing times have been getting shorter with improvement to techniques, and accuracy is better too. Nonetheless, analysis still takes at least a couple of weeks and can easily run into many months because of backlogs. How much DNA is needed for analysis? A very small amount of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, about one-forty-millionth of a drop, is needed to conduct analysis. Collecting that much is often easy for an investigator, as just a single hair (root included) or a spot of blood may be adequate. However, the tests are destructive, so the sample must be large enough to allow some to be kept aside for use in the court and by the defence should they want to conduct their own tests.

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How many people in Canada and the United States are free because of DNA? As much as DNA has been a boon for police, it has also provided tremendous benefits for many wrongly convicted people. One who stands out in Canada is David Milgaard, who gained his freedom because his DNA did not match evidence taken from the body of a raped and murdered woman named Gail Miller. Ultimately, Larry Fisher, who had already served time for several sexual assaults, was found guilty of the crime. Another whose case received a lot of attention was Guy Paul Morin. In the United States, DNA has helped clear about two hundred people. What is junk DNA? Very little of the strand that makes up a DNA molecule is actually used to give us our identifying characteristics. The rest is called junk DNA because it has no known purpose. Portions of the junk DNA are the parts of the molecule that get analyzed today. How is DNA evidence received in court? The DNA sample produced in court is not absolute. The test might say for example that the odds are a million to one that the accused committed the crime. While that is compelling, the defence is sure to point out that in a country like Canada, with 33 million people, that means the DNA in question could belong to at least thirty-two other people. So while DNA evidence is very helpful, additional evidence is needed to get a conviction.

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Under ideal conditions, where a sample is obtained voluntarily at a properly equipped medical facility, the results of DNA testing will be irrefutable. Not so if the sample comes from a crime scene. Samples collected this way are likely to be small, leaving little opportunity to redo tests, damaged through decomposition, or mixed with DNA from others.

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MISREPRESENTATION What makes a cheque legal? The days of writing a cheque on a scrap of paper are gone. Such cheques lack security features and banks will not want to see them. Midway through 2007, cheques used in Canada needed to be electronically readable, as well. How are handwriting impressions analyzed?

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Many would-be signature forgers have had their plots undone by a 1978 invention called the electrostatic detection apparatus (ESDA). When someone writes on a pad of paper, an impression, however faint, is created on the sheets below. The ESDA is used to make these impressions visible. A piece of plastic film is laid over the sheet of paper and a vacuum pulls everything tight. The film is electrostatically charged, and the charge changes where indentations exist on the underlying paper. Toner is then applied, and if all goes well, the handwriting appears. Finally, a sticky plastic film is placed over the image to protect it. Handwriting is analyzed by: • examination with the naked eye or a magnifying glass; • shining a light on a slant to look for pressure marks that indicate tracing; • shining light through the paper to expose eraser marks or correction fluid; and • comparing inks with a spectrograph or infrared microscope. What makes a currency attractive to counterfeiters? Paper money that lacks security features to thwart modern colour copiers is a magnet for counterfeiters. The machines easily make very visually convincing reproductions. The only way to combat them is to introduce a host of features they cannot reproduce, like ink that changes colour depending on the angle of the light, microprinting, letters created with ink

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that only appears when the money is copied, iridescent ink, and holograms. Why are American dollars the favoured currency for counterfeiters? Counterfeiters like currencies that people are not too familiar with but will accept anyway. American dollars are used all over the world, and people outside the United States may not know what to look for to ensure they are genuine. Credit cards are popular targets for fraud for the same reason. Thousands of companies offer credit cards, making it impossible for anyone to be sure that a card is real by appearance alone. Who was Elmer Irey? Working in the U.S. Treasury Department to recover unpaid taxes, Elmer Irey, the “silent investigator,” led investigations of tax dodgers and gangsters like Al Capone. From 1928 to 1931, his “T-men” figured out the difference between what Capone was making and what he was reporting to the U.S. government. They then put him in jail for the difference, something police had not been able to do for the crimes of murder, extortion, and bootlegging that he was alleged to have sanctioned. Irey also played a part in tracking down Bruno Hauptmann, who was convicted for kidnapping Charles Lindbergh’s son, Charles Augustus. He traced marked bills in the ransom.

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Over his career, Irey tracked down almost $500 million (equivalent to several billions in today’s dollars). What is a forensic audit? America’s multi-billion-dollar Enron case and Canada’s $100-million federal sponsorship scandal are examples of illegal activities brought to light by forensic auditors. These investigators search a company’s accounts for evidence as though it was a crime scene, looking for information to use in court. In the Enron case, forensic auditors found accounting irregularities that led to charges against Enron Corporation, the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, and some senior executives from both firms. The subsequent meltdown of Enron cost investors and former employees billions of dollars. Arthur Andersen continues as a pale shadow of its former self. Since Enron and a few other well-publicized cases, pre-emptive forensic auditing has become more common. These kinds of audits are not designed to find crime so much as to identify opportunities for crime before someone tries to take advantage of them. What is provenance? Provenance is the story behind a work of art or a collectible. It is information like where it was made and by whom, when it was bought and sold, and whether it was damaged or repaired. A work with good provenance, like evidence with a good chain of custody, is likely to be genuine. A work without provenance or with unverifiable provenance can easily be stolen property or a forgery. 242

Quickies Did you know … • that counterfeiters fake identification, credit cards, jewellery, computer games, music CDs, perfume, watches, and great works of art? Who was the first person prosecuted under RICO for racketeering? Made law in 1970, RICO (the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) was brought in to fight the Mafia. The first conviction, against Frank “Funzi” Tieri, a New York crime boss known as the “Old Man,” came ten years later. Other Mafiosi who fell afoul of RICO included Paul Castellano, who was being prosecuted under it in the 1980s but was killed before the verdict when he showed up for a meeting organized by another crime boss named John Gotti. Gotti was later convicted under the statute, as have been Wall Street traders, motorcycle gang leaders, rappers, terrorists, antiabortion activists, and email spammers. In 1999, Canada did not have an equivalent law, so the federal government relied on provisions of RICO to launch a lawsuit in the United States against several tobacco companies that it said were conspiring with other groups to smuggle cigarettes into Canada.

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LEGALESE When is evidence not accepted in court? Evidence that helps the search for truth will be admissible in court. Judges do not allow evidence that they think is irrelevant to the case, misleading, or unfairly obtained. What kinds of investigation?

paperwork

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are

generated

in

an

Paperwork is unavoidable for the police. Courts demand it and investigations are simplified by it. Apart from the investigative reports of the responding officers and detectives, victims need incident reports for their insurance companies, warrants need written requests, evidence has to be tracked with property reports, and lab tests have to be ordered. As an investigation proceeds, additional reports will justify continuing it or recommend closing or suspending it. Superiors may also add reviews and recommendations to what can become boxes upon boxes of paper. Why is a criminal record called a rap sheet? Rap sheets predate rap music and have nothing to do with it. The term has more to do with the original meaning of rap, as in “a knock,” which by the eighteenth century not only meant rap on something but rap on someone, as in “rap the knuckles.” This new sense of the word led to slang terms like bum rap and beat the rap. Although rap sheet was probably used much earlier, the phrase did not appear in print until the 1960s. What goes into the case file? The case file goes to court to help the prosecution, so it begins with pages that summarize the case and point to key parts of the file that can be used against the accused. The file will also contain testimony from interviews and interrogations, rap sheets, information gathered at the crime scene, and documentation showing how evidence was handled (chain of custody).

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What does a New York mayor who became a hero for his leadership in New York after 9/11 have to do with crime-fighting? During the 1980s, Rudy Giuliani, then a New York district attorney, gained fame for bringing down some organized crime figures and successfully prosecuting Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, two Wall Street moguls, for insider trading. He logged 4,152 convictions and only 25 reversals. As mayor, he worked against corruption in New York’s private garbage removal business and the Fulton Fish Market. What is the Civil Remedies Act? It is a law recently enacted in Ontario that allows the Attorney General’s office to freeze, seize, and take property used in the commission of crime or bought with the profits of crime. A house used as a marijuana grow op in Oshawa was the first item confiscated under this measure. How does cross-contamination happen? The frustration is palpable when a piece of evidence key to the prosecution’s argument is shown to have been improperly collected or stored. Hundreds of hours of police and legal work can go down the drain because an investigator left a boot print or fingerprint on latent evidence. To limit the possibility of cross-contamination it is important to define the scene, set up a command post to control who goes in and who comes out, decontaminate any equipment going in, and ensure investigators are wearing their disposable personal protective equipment, or PPE.

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What is the prosecutor’s fallacy? Forensic science rarely provides conclusive evidence of guilt, but results of tests are often presented that way in court, even though they really only eliminate segments (albeit large ones) of the population. In the extreme, a DNA test may result in an expert conclusion that only one in a billion people could match the profile. From the prosecution’s point of view, that appears to be slam-dunk proof of the suspect’s guilt. From the perspective of the defence, however, it is a prosecutor’s fallacy, a clear admission that, in a world of 6 billion, any one of six people, including the suspect, could have committed the crime, and without statements from the other five, the prosecution, lacking additional evidence, has no case. The true benefit of the test is that it shortens the suspect list so that police can focus resources more effectively. How did the most popular Great Train robber go back to jail? Several of the men involved in the Great Train Robbery of 1963 managed to escape, including Ronald Biggs, who became something of a folk hero in Britain in the 1970s. After escaping, Biggs went to Australia, where he was joined by his wife and children. After a few years, police tracked them to Melbourne, and he escaped to Brazil, leaving his wife behind. In Brazil, he had a child with a girlfriend and needed money, so he tried to sell his story to British newspapers. In 1974, the Daily Express offered him £35,000, but someone there also told Scotland Yard how to find him. Biggs was arrested but beat extradition back to Britain because of his Brazilian-born child. In 2001, several strokes caused him to ask Britain to let 247

him come home where he could get free medical care. His request was granted, but he had to resume serving his sentence. A judge can rule evidence inadmissable for a variety of reasons, including: • the statement is hearsay; • the claim lacks foundation; • the witness is speculating; • the statement is irrelevant; • the evidence is immaterial; or • the witness is not an expert. Where was the world’s longest criminal trial? A trial in Osaka, Japan, against Etsuko Yamada, a female teacher accused of murdering two mentally impaired children, began in 1978 and concluded in 1985 with a not guilty verdict. When the death of former Serb President Slobodan Milosevic on March 11, 2006, ended his war crimes trial four years after it began, it became the longest war crimes trial in history. The Nuremburg trials of Nazi war criminals lasted just ten months. Canada’s Air India trial ended with an acquittal after more than a year. The longest U.S. trial lasted twenty-nine months.

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What happens if the police know who did it but cannot prove it beyond a reasonable doubt? We have all heard of known criminals getting off on so-called technicalities, and it makes us wonder whether law enforcement and justice officials can adequately protect us. The simple answer is they cannot. Some guilty people will go free because we have committed to try to protect the innocent. Police usually comfort themselves on this point by remembering that criminals will continue to offend and will eventually be convicted. Of course, when murder or assault is involved, this is really no comfort at all. How is bail determined? When someone is arrested and held in Canada, they have a right to appear before a judge within twenty-four hours, unless released sooner, for a “show cause” hearing. At the hearing, the prosecution explains why the person should be held or, in special instances, the person explains why they should be released. The judge then determines how high bail should be set. How many countries insist on proof of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”? A formula put forward in the 1700s by William Blackstone, an English jurist, that says, “better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer,” has become the foundation of criminal law in English-speaking countries and has gained broad acceptance internationally. Nonetheless, many parts of the world still presume a defendant guilty unless he can prove his innocence. 249

In the face of threats from terrorists who, given a chance, will send suicide bombers to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of people, the idea of having the justice system wait until the event happens is unacceptable. Conversely, proactively jailing would-be terrorists for contemplating such deeds — for thought crime — is also repugnant in a free society. What is wrong with vigilante justice? Vigilantes operate alone or in groups to watch for threats to their community (“keep vigil”), seek revenge, or fill a hole they think exists in the justice system. They get in trouble with the law when their strikes against the individuals or groups they do not like are planned or premeditated rather than committed in self-defence. Even non-violent vigilantes like the Guardian Angels are viewed skeptically by many people who feel that vigilantism is a step down the slippery slope towards lawlessness. Who stops crimes against the environment? The more appropriate question might be who tries to stop crimes against the environment. Incidents of poaching, pollution, illegal logging, and animal trafficking are increasing in scale and number all around the world; the penalties continue to be weak; the “good guys” like customs agents, the Coast Guard, conservation officers, and special police detachments are stretched too thin; and the burden of proof is high. Who was Adolph Beck?

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Adolph Beck had a key role in bringing about an appeals system in Britain, but not in a way that gave him any comfort. In 1895, he was convicted of a crime he did not commit in a complete travesty of justice. Twenty-two women he was alleged to have taken money and valuables from identified him in a poorly constructed physical lineup in which he was the only grey-haired man. To make matters worse, the judge ignored or disallowed evidence that could have helped him, while allowing an unverified claim that he had committed similar crimes in 1877 under the name John Smith. Released in 1903, Beck was soon re-arrested when a woman complained that he had defrauded her. While he stewed in jail awaiting his next trial, police picked up another man for committing similar crimes. Ultimately, this man, who looked a lot like Beck, confessed to the current crime wave and to the crime waves in 1877 and 1895 that put Beck behind bars in the first place.

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Copyright Copyright © Dundurn Press Limited, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright. Cataloguing and Publication Information Available from Library and Archives Canada

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