Drury Lane, London; ca.1876
Second apartment on the right must be where the muffin man lives.
One of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl, ‘Black Sunday’ was said to have stripped the Earth of ~600,000,000 pounds of fertile Prairie topsoil; April 14, 1935.
And this is what lead to the Soil Conservation Act.
“People caught in their own yards grope for the doorstep. Cars come to a standstill, for no light in the world can penetrate that swirling murk…. The nightmare is deepest during the storms. But on the occasional bright day and the usual gray day we cannot shake from it. We live with the dust, eat it, sleep with it, watch it strip us of possessions and the hope of possessions” – Avis D. Carlson, The New Republic
Here’s a map of where the storms took place:
Soil ended up as far away as Washington, D.C.
Blue marble. The most famous picture of our planet, taken by the crew of the Apollo 17 on December 7, 1972.
Fun fact, the original picture was taken “upside-down.” They changed the orientation after.
Here’s the original orientation for comparison. Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and part of Antarctica are in the picture.
Terrain outside Anchorage, Alaska after the March 27, 1964 Earthquake (Magnitude 9.2)
It was the second most violent earthquake ever recorded—and these pictures are from 75 miles away from the epicenter. All told, nearly 100,000 square miles of land experienced “vertical displacement of up to 38 feet“. It was so powerful that it produced a tsunami that caused damage in Hawaii. And Japan.
This part of Alaska lies on what’s called a “subduction zone.” Tectonic faults like the San Andreas Fault have two plates sliding sideways, with one going north and the other going south. In a subduction zone, you have one tectonic plate sliding into—or under—another. Eventually so much pressure builds up that one of the plates buckles, and suddenly you have bits of land that are fifteen feet higher or lower than they used to be.
If you go out into Resurrection Bay there are small islands that dropped several feet deeper into the water. All the trees on those islands sucked sea water up into their roots and all the way up into the larger branches, killing the trees and preserving them as they were 50 years ago.
Full Album of selected Photographs
Youtube account from Woman (7 years old at the time) which I thought was fascinating.
An aerial view of the WWI Loos-Hulluch trench system in France. British trenches are situated on the left of the photo, and German trenches on the right – in the middle of the two is no man’s land. July 22, 1917
This is the location today.
Antarctica has rivers made from Powerade’s ‘Mountain Blast’ flavor
Antarctica is amazing.
You know what’s crazy? Antarctica used to be covered by (near) tropical rain forests. It’s the least-studied continent on earth, there’s probably all sorts of ancient species’ fossils underneath the ice that will blow our minds if/when we discover them.
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 
