✈Worldwide Wednesdays: Astounding Sinkholes From Around the World

Where shall we travel to today?....

Astounding Sinkholes From Around the World

Sinkholes - frightening yet fascinating.They are holes created by the chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks.  They are everywhere!  They can form slowly or instantly, making them all the more intriguing and intimidating.  

The Devil's Sinkhole. This was the original site for a limestone dig near Hawthorne, Florida.  The Devil's Hole (sometimes referred to as the "Devil's Toilet Bowl" by the locals) is a fun spot for an afternoon dip. There is a rope swing, and two stands to jump from.






Sinkholes, also known as a sinks, shake holes, swallow holes, swallets, dolines or cenotes are common where the rock below the land surface is limestone, carbonate rock, salt beds, or rocks that can naturally be dissolved by ground water circulating through them - otherwise known as the karst processes.. As the rock dissolves, spaces and caverns develop underground. Sinkholes are dramatic because the land usually stays intact for a while until the underground spaces just get too big. If there is not enough support for the land above the spaces then a sudden collapse of the land surface can occur. Sinkholes may vary in size from 1 to 600 meters (3.3 to 2,000 ft) both in diameter and depth, and vary in form from soil-lined bowls to bedrock-edged chasms. Sinkholes may be formed gradually or suddenly, and are found worldwide. The different terms for sinkholes are often used interchangeably. Sinkholes may capture surface drainage from running or standing water, but may also form in high and dry locations.

This is a sinkhole in a parking lot at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA, USA

⅏Did You Know: Louise Joy Brown - The First Test-Tube Baby

Did You Know...

On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first baby to be conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) was born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to parents Lesley and Peter Brown? The healthy baby was delivered shortly before midnight by caesarean section and weighed in at five pounds, 12 ounces.
Before giving birth to Louise, Lesley Brown had suffered years of infertility due to blocked fallopian tubes. In November 1977, she underwent the then-experimental IVF procedure. A mature egg was removed from one of her ovaries and combined in a laboratory dish with her husband’s sperm to form an embryo. The embryo then was implanted into her uterus a few days later. Her IVF doctors, British gynecologist Patrick Steptoe and scientist Robert Edwards, had begun their pioneering collaboration a decade earlier. Once the media learned of the pregnancy, the Browns faced intense public scrutiny.  Louise’s birth made headlines around the world and raised various legal and ethical questions:
Was this baby was going to be healthy?   Had being outside the womb, even for just a couple of days, harmed the egg? If the baby has medical problems, did the parents and doctors have a right to play with nature and thus bring it into the world?

• When does life begin? If human life begins at conception, are doctors killing potential humans when they discard fertilized eggs? (Doctors may remove several eggs from the woman and may discard some that have been fertilized.) 

The process had been a success!  Though some wondered if the success had been more luck than science, continued success with the process proved that Dr. Steptoe and Dr. Edwards had accomplished the first of many "test-tube" babies.

The Browns had a second daughter, Natalie, several years later, also through IVF.

First Test-tube Mother!

In another medical first, Louise's younger sister, Natalie, 27, was the first test-tube baby to have a child of her own in May 1999. Her daughter Casey is now 12, and her son Christopher is ten. Casey made medical history by ending fears that girls born through IVF treatment would not be able to have healthy children.

In December 2006, Louise Brown, the original "test tube baby," gave birth to a boy, Cameron John Mullinder, who also was conceived naturally.

She admits they lead an unremarkable life, yet because of the remarkable nature of her conception Louise will always be a part of the public consciousness. The world has followed her through every milestone of her life, from her first birthday through to her 21st, from her marriage to the birth of her first child. Cameron Joe Mullinder was due on January 2 but was actually born at 12.23pm on December 20 it was a particularly poignant moment. Interestingly when Louise went into labor at the hospital, the nursing staff were unaware of the significance of this experience. But the surgeon who administered the Cesarean section noticed her. She explains that when she had Cameron the surgeon who turned out to be an IVF specialist acknowledged the momentous nature of this incident. He came in the morning of the operation and expressed his excitement to Louise saying, "I can't believe that I'm now helping you deliver your own baby."

Today, IVF is considered a mainstream medical treatment for infertility. Hundreds of thousands of children around the world have been conceived through the procedure, in some cases with donor eggs and sperm.

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Did You Know for the month of

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July 25, 1917, Mata Hari was Sentenced to Death.  On this day, in Paris, France, the exotic dancer Mata Hari was sentenced to death by a French court for spying on Germany's behalf during World War I. 

Since 1903, Margueretha Gertruida Zelle, (07/08/1876 - 15/10/1917), born in a small town in northern Holland, Netherlands and formerly married to a captain in the Dutch army, had performed in Paris as a dancer.  Her exotic dances soon earned her fans all over Europe, where she packed dance halls from Moscow to Berlin to Madrid, largely because of her willingness to dance almost entirely naked in public.

Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body, she captivated her audiences and was an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet on 13 March 1905. She became the long-time mistress of the millionaire Lyon industrialist Emile Etienne Guimet, who had founded the Musée. She posed as a Java princess of priestly Hindu birth, pretending to have been immersed in the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood. She was photographed numerous times during this period, nude or nearly so.



Mata Hari in 1906, wearing only a bra and jewelry

She brought this carefree provocative style to the stage in her act, which garnered wide acclaim. The most celebrated segment of her act was her progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jeweled bra and some ornaments upon her arms and head. She was seldom seen without a bra as she was self-conscious about being small-breasted. Pictures taken during her performances suggest she may have worn a bodystocking for her shows, as navel and genitals are not seen even in poses where they should be visible on a nude person.

Mata Hari was also a successful courtesan, though she was known more for her sensuality and eroticism rather than for striking classical beauty. She had relationships with high-ranking military officers, politicians, and others in influential positions in many countries, including Frederick William Victor Augustus Ernest, the German crown prince, who paid for her luxurious lifestyle.
Her relationships and liaisons with powerful men frequently took her across international borders. Prior to World War I, she was generally viewed as an artist and a free-spirited bohemian, but as war approached, she began to be seen by some as a wanton and promiscuous woman, and perhaps a dangerous seductress.

Double Agent
During World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. As a Dutch subject, Margaretha Zelle was thus able to cross national borders freely. To avoid the battlefields, she travelled between France and the Netherlands via Spain and Britain, and her movements inevitably attracted attention. In 1916 she was travelling by steamer from Spain when her ship called at the English port of Falmouth. There she was arrested and brought to London where she was interrogated at length by Sir Basil Thomson, Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard in charge of counter-espionage. He gave an account of this in his 1922 book Queer People, saying that she eventually admitted to working for French Intelligence.

It is unclear if she lied on this occasion, believing the story made her sound more intriguing, or if French authorities were using her in such a way, but would not acknowledge her due to the embarrassment and international backlash it could cause.
In January 1917, the German military attaché in Madrid transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code-named H-21. French intelligence agents intercepted the messages and, from the information they contained, identified H-21 as Mata Hari. Unusually, the messages were in a code that German intelligence knew had already been broken by the French, leaving some historians to suspect that the messages were contrived.

On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her room at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris. She was put on trial, accused of spying for Germany and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. Although the French and British intelligence suspected her of spying for Germany, neither could produce definite evidence against her. Secret ink was found in her room, which was incriminating evidence in that period. She contended that it was part of her make-up. She wrote several letters to the Dutch Consul in Paris, claiming her innocence. "My international connections are due of my work as a dancer, nothing else [...]. Because I really did not spy, it is terrible that I cannot defend myself." She was found guilty and was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41.

July 31, 1917, Third Battle of Ypres Began in Flanders.  On July 31, 1917, the Allies launch a renewed assault on German lines in the Flanders region of Belgium, in the much-contested region near Ypres, during World War I. The attack begins more than three months of brutal fighting, known as the Third Battle of Ypres.

July 24, 1915, The Steamer Eastland Overturned in the Chicago River, drowning between 800 and 850 of its passengers who were heading to a picnic. The disaster was caused by serious problems with the boat's design, which were known but never remedied.On July 24, employees of Western Electric Company were heading to an annual picnic. Much of the crowd—perhaps even more than the 2,500 people allowed—boarded the Eastland.
Some reports indicate that the crowd may also have all gathered on one side of the boat to pose for a photographer, thus creating an imbalance on the boat. In any case, engineer Joseph Erikson opened one of the ballast tanks, which holds water within the boat and stabilizes the ship, and the Eastland began tipping precariously.

The Eastland capsized right next to the dock, trapping hundreds of people on or underneath the large ship. Rescuers quickly attempted to cut through the hull with torches, allowing them to pull out 40 people alive. More than 800 others perished.
Most of the corpses were taken to the Second Regiment Armory, which is now home to Harpo Studios and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Some of the show's employees have claimed that the studio is haunted by ghosts of the Eastland disaster

July 31, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa Vanished.  Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing in Detroit, Michigan. He was last seen alive in a parking lot outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant the previous afternoon. To this day, Hoffa's fate remains a mystery, although many believe that he was murdered by organized crime figures.

July 24, 1998, South Korea's Government Opened the Bidding for the Kia Motors Corporation, the country's third-largest car company, which went bankrupt during an economic crisis that gripped much of Asia.

Founded on the outskirts of Seoul in 1944, Kia began as a small manufacturer of steel tubing and bicycle parts. The name of the company was derived from the Chinese characters "ki" (meaning "to arise" or "to come out of") and "a" (which stood for Asia). By the late 1950s, Kia had branched out from bicycles to motor scooters, and in the early 1970s the company launched into automobile production. Kia's Sohari plant, completed by 1973, was Korea's first fully integrated automobile production facility; it rolled out the Brisa, the country's first passenger car, in 1974.

July 25, 2000,  Concorde Jet Crashed.   An Air France Concorde jet crashed upon takeoff in Paris on this day in 2000, killing everyone onboard (105 people -  nine crew members and 96 German tourists) as well as four people on the ground. The Concorde, the world's fastest commercial jet, had enjoyed an exemplary safety record up to that point, with no crashes in the plane's 31-year history.

July 24, 2005, Lance Armstrong Won Seventh Tour de France.  Legendary American cyclist Lance Armstrong won a record-setting seventh consecutive Tour de France and retired from the sport. After surviving testicular cancer, his rise to cycling greatness inspired cancer patients and fans around the world and significantly boosted his sport’s popularity in his native United States.

Resource(s):
history.com, about.com, ambassadors.net, wikipedia,

⅏Did You Know: William Sidis - Considered to be The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived

Did You Know...
Some considered William James Sidis (April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944), to be the smartest man who ever lived?   He was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic abilities. He became famous first for his precocity, and later for his eccentricity and withdrawal from the public eye. He avoided mathematics entirely in later life, writing on other subjects under a number of pseudonyms.

William James Sidis was born to Jewish Ukrainian immigrants on April 1, 1898, in New York City. His father Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D., had emigrated in 1887 to escape political persecution. His mother Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, M.D., and her family had fled the pogroms in 1889. Sarah attended Boston University and graduated from its School of Medicine in 1897. William was named after his godfather, Boris's friend and colleague, the American philosopher William James. Boris earned his degrees at Harvard University, and taught psychology there. He was a psychiatrist, and published numerous books and articles, performing pioneering work in abnormal psychology. Boris was a polyglot and his son William would become one at a young age.

Sidis's parents believed in nurturing a precocious and fearless love of knowledge, for which they were criticized. Sidis could read the New York Times at 18 months, had reportedly taught himself eight languages by age eight, and invented another, which he called Vendergood.

Young Sidis was truly an intellectual phenomenon. He was later estimated to have an IQ in the 250-300 range, and while that's been open to discussion or argument, there's little doubt that he was a very smart guy. His childhood achievements ranked with those of John Stuart Mill, Thomas Macaulay, and Johann Goethe. By the time William Sidis was two he could read English and, at four he was typing original work in French. At the age of five he had devised a formula whereby he could name the day of the week for any given historical date. At eight he projected a new logarithms table based on the number twelve. He entered Harvard at the age of twelve and graduated cum laude before he was sixteen. Mathematics was not his only forte. he could speak and read fluently French, German, Russian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Armenian and Turkish. During his first year at Harvard University the boy astounded students and scientists with his theories on "Fourth Dimensional Bodies."

After a group of Harvard students threatened Sidis physically, he dropped out before completing his degree and his parents secured him a job at the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science, and Art (now Rice University) in Houston, Texas as a mathematics teaching assistant. He arrived at Rice in December 1915 at the age of 17. After a short time there, he eventually stopped teaching after being harassed by the students who were older than he was.   When a friend later asked him why he had left, he replied, "I never knew why they gave me the job in the first place—I'm not much of a teacher. I didn't leave—I was asked to go." Sidis abandoned his pursuit of a graduate degree in mathematics and enrolled at the Harvard Law School in September 1916, but withdrew in good standing in his final year in March 1919.

He flirted with leftist causes and was briefly in the news in 1919 after being arrested for his involvement in a socialist rally that turned into a riot.

Around 1921, Sidis was determined to live an independent and private life.  He once told reporters that he wanted to live the perfect life, which to him meant living in seclusion. He granted an interview to a reporter from the Boston Herald which reported Sidis's vows to remain celibate and never to marry, as he said women did not appeal to him.  He only took work running adding machines or other fairly menial tasks. He worked in New York City and became estranged from his parents.

Sidis died in 1944 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Boston at the age of 46. His father had died of the same malady in 1923 at age 56.

From writings on cosmology, (In 1925 he published a remarkable book on cosmology in which he predicted black holes --14 years before Chandrasekhar did), to American Indian history, to a comprehensive and definitive taxonomy of vehicle transfers, an equally comprehensive study of civil engineering and vehicles, and several well-substantiated lost texts on anthropology, philology, and transportation systems, Sidis covered a broad range of subjects. Some of his ideas concerned cosmological reversibility, "social continuity," and individual rights in the United States.

In 1930, Sidis was awarded a patent for a rotary perpetual calendar that took into account leap years. In his adult years, it was estimated that he could speak more than forty languages!

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Did You Know for the Month of

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• 1969, July 6,  Brian Jones and Jim Morrison Died, Two Years Apart to the Day.  Rolling Stones original leader and guitarist Brian Jones is found dead of an apparent accidental drowning on this day in 1969. Two years later to the day, in 1971, Jim Morrison, the charismatic frontman of the iconic 1960s group The Doors, died of heart failure in a Paris bathtub.
• 1970, July 3, Charter Jet Crashed Mysteriously.   On this day in 1970, a British Dan-Air charter, flying a Comet 4 turbojet, crashed into the sea near Barcelona, Spain, killing 112 people.

The charter was commissioned by a tourist group who were headed for a summer vacation on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. The passengers boarded in the afternoon of July 3, the plane took off without incident and, as early evening approached, they neared their destination of Barcelona. The pilot called the air-traffic controller and indicated that they were 12 miles away and at 6,000 feet altitude.

This was the last anyone heard from the jet. No further contact was made to the air-traffic controllers. Witnesses in Mataro, Spain, spotted the plane going down. There were no survivors and the remains of the wreckage provided no clues as to the cause of the sudden crash. It remains a mystery.

• 1970, July 5, Pilot Error Caused Crash In Toronto.  An Air Canada DC-8 crashes while landing in Toronto, killing 108 people on this day in 1970. The crash was caused by poor landing procedures and inadvertent pilot error. The terrible accident came less than two days after another jet crash had killed more than 100 people in Spain.  The roots of this accident can be found in the working relationship of pilot Peter Hamilton and his co-pilot Donald Rowland.

On this day, Rowland accidentally deployed the spoilers–rather than merely arming them–as the plane was approaching Toronto's airport. The premature deployment immediately caused the right wing to plunge to the ground. One engine on the right side fell off and the loss of weight sent the plane back into the air. Hamilton tried to regain control and attempt another landing; as he did, another engine, and then the whole right wing, detached from the plane.
The DC-8 broke into pieces in mid-air near the airport. All 108 people onboard were killed

1985, July 03, "Back to the Future" Released, Featuring the 1981 DeLorean DMC-12. 
On this day in 1985, the blockbuster action-comedy "Back to the Future"--in which John DeLorean's iconic concept car is memorably transformed into a time-travel device--is released in theaters across the United States.
"Back to the Future," directed by Robert Zemeckis, starred Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, a teenager who travels back 30 years using a time machine built by the zany scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). Doc's mind-blowing creation consists of a DeLorean DMC-12 sports car outfitted with a nuclear reactor. Once the car reaches a speed of 88 miles per hour, the plutonium-powered reactor achieves the "1.21 gigawatts" of power necessary to travel through time. Marty arrives in 1955 only to stumble in the way of his own parents (Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson) and keep them from meeting for the first time, thus putting his own life in jeopardy.

• 1988, July 3, U.S. Warship Downed Iranian Passenger Jet.  In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes shoots down an Iranian passenger jet that it mistakes for a hostile Iranian fighter aircraft. Two missiles were fired from the American warship--the aircraft was hit, and all 290 people aboard were killed. The attack came near the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when U.S. vessels were in the gulf defending Kuwaiti oil tankers. Minutes before Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down, the Vincennes had engaged Iranian gunboats that shot at its helicopter.Iran called the downing of the aircraft a "barbaric massacre," but U.S. officials defended the action, claiming that the aircraft was outside the commercial jet flight corridor, flying at only 7,800 feet, and was on a descent toward the Vincennes. However, one month later, U.S. authorities acknowledged that the airbus was in the commercial flight corridor, flying at 12,000 feet, and not descending. The U.S. Navy report blamed crew error caused by psychological stress on men who were in combat for the first time. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay $62 million in damages to the families of the Iranians killed in the attack.
• 1996, July 5, First Successful Cloning of a Mammal.  On this day in 1996, Dolly the sheep--the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell--is born at the Roslin Institute in Scotland.  Over the course of her short life, Dolly was mated to a male sheep named David and eventually gave birth to four lambs. In January 2002 she was found to have arthritis in her hind legs, a diagnosis that raised questions about genetic abnormalities that may have been caused in the cloning process. After suffering from a progressive lung disease, Dolly was put down on February 14, 2003, at the age of six. Her early death raised more questions about the safety of cloning, both animal and human. Though Ian Wilmut, the lead scientist on the team that produced Dolly, has spoken out publicly against human cloning, its supporters are unlikely to be dissuaded. As for Dolly, the historic sheep was stuffed and is now on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Resource:
wikipedia, straightdope.com, uh.edu/engines, history.com

⅏Did You Know: Barlow and Chambers Execution

Did You Know...

The Barlow and Chambers execution refers to the hanging on July 7, 1986 in Malaysia of two Australian citizens, Kevin John Barlow and Brian Geoffrey Chambers of Perth, Western Australia, for the drug trafficking of 141.9 g of heroin.

The two men became the first Westerners to be executed under Malaysia's new tougher laws for drug offences that prescribe death for anyone convicted of having over 15 grams of heroin. Barlow was born in the UK in Stoke-on-Trent and held dual British and Australian nationalities. Barlow's family made appeals to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to make a protest about the impending execution, and an appeal for clemency to the Malaysian government from Australian politician Bill Hayden was made.

The executions caused public outcry and strained political relations between Australia and Malaysia at the time.
Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers were arrested in Bayan Lepas airport in Penang on 9 November 1983. What tipped airport security off was the fact that Barlow was reported to have acted extremely nervous. When they eventually opened the maroon suitcase the duo carried, they found 141.9g of heroin.

Abdullah Badawi
Pic by Mr Tan

Death is the right kind of punishment for drug traffickers because of the suffering they cause, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi says.
"We are very hard, very hard on drugs ... (they are) a threat to the wellbeing of our society," the Malaysian prime minister told journalists in Perth.
"You know the kind of suffering they (drugs traffickers) have inflicted upon the people who have to take their product.
"I have seen enough suffering. I have seen enough. I have seen what happens to these people."

Background
Between early 1981 and the end of 1983 Chambers had made at least twelve trips abroad to transport heroin to Australia. In 1980 Chambers and his then-girlfriend imported heroin to Australia using body packing techniques: Chambers placed some in his anus, the girlfriend inserted packets into her anus and vagina. The rest of the load was swallowed. The two were using the same technique in 1981 when, on transit in Singapore, customs officers detected Chambers' two vials of personal-use heroin in his jacket pocket. They were released after bribing officers. Chambers and his then girlfriend, Susan Cheryl Jacobsen, decided to move to Melbourne to escape Perth's organised crime scene. Driving intoxicated near Penong, South Australia, Chambers crashed the vehicle. Chambers was not seriously injured however Jacobsen received severe injuries. Jacobsen spent several days in a coma before dying of her injuries on 20 May 1983.

Planning
The drug run was organised by Perth criminal John Asciak. Chambers was enlisted for the job due to his experience in the task. Asciak spent much time at the residence of his girlfriend Debbie Colyer-Long and got to know her boarder, Kevin Barlow. Asciak soon learned Barlow had little money and few prospects for regular work. At the time Barlow was on compensation after injuring himself at work. He was depressed, consuming a lot of alcohol and marijuana after losing his girlfriend. He had also been threatened with the repossession of his car.
Though Barlow and Chambers later testified they were tourists travelling alone who met by chance in Singapore and then opted to travel together, their meeting in Singapore in October 1983 was planned by Asciak. Chambers had previously had a meeting with Barlow in Perth to approve him for the job. To help conceal their activities, Barlow had flown to Singapore directly from Perth, while Chambers had flown there via Sydney. After the Singapore meeting they disobeyed orders by travelling together and sharing the same hotel rooms; they had been directed to stay apart. 
Barlow was a novice on his first drug run; he was convinced by organisers that as Chambers was an experienced drug courier the plan would proceed smoothly.  Barlow was initially confident the drug run would be successful.
The proposed drug run had been openly discussed by John Asciak and Kevin Barlow in the household of Debbie Colyer-Long prior to the event. Colyer-Long's brother-in-law Trevor Lawson learned of it and had informed the National Crime Authority of the scheme.

Initial plans were that Barlow and Chambers conceal the drugs by inserting packages into their anuses and swallowing the rest. Barlow refused to do either, the former for reasons of distaste, the latter due to health concerns with that method. Chambers relented and placed the several packages of drugs, which were within plastic carry bags and wrapped in newspaper, into a newly purchased maroon suitcase. Barlow had become very nervous after the collection of the drugs

Arrest/Jail
Barlow and Chambers were observed alighting from the same taxi at Bayan Lepas International Airport on 9 November 1983. Barlow carried the maroon suitcase and entered the airport. He bypassed the luggage scanning area and approached the check-in desk. Chambers, carrying Barlow's bags, paid the taxi, entered the airport and passed through the luggage scanning area, and joined Barlow at the check-in desk. They were detained by police and Barlow was seen to be very nervous.
Taken to an interview room they were asked to open the suitcases. Chambers opened the bags he was carrying. Barlow said he was unable to open the case he had carried and that it was Chambers' case. Chambers unlocked the case's combination locks and the drugs were found, however he claimed he had not known the contents of the smaller carry bags the drugs were in.
When police handcuffed them, they were reportedly "shivering terribly".
Chambers was well liked in prison; however Barlow had trouble adjusting, and was described as being a "lunatic" and "cracking up".
Barlow attempted to excuse his actions by claiming that he had been forced to take the trip and his girlfriend threatened if he refused.

Trial/Sentence
Their trial started 17 July 1985 at the High Court of Penang. The trial opened with both men claiming the drugs found in the maroon suitcase belonged to the other.
Chambers remained handcuffed through the trial. Barlow was not cuffed but used crutches due to a groin injury.  The arresting officer testified that he saw Barlow holding the maroon suitcase and shivering while waiting to board the plane. The court heard that Chambers had acknowledged ownership of the suitcase two days after the arrest. Chambers testified in court that he didn't know about the drugs in the case, and that Barlow had also used the case. Chambers also testified that Barlow had attempted to bribe a policeman at the airport when the drugs were discovered.

An overhead view of the
Pudu Prison complex,
as seen from the
 Berjaya Times Square

The trial concluded 24 July and both men were found guilty. The trial judge deferred pronouncing sentence for a week to enable lawyers of the two men to prepare submissions to him which might be used in an appeal to the supreme Court of Malaysia, and to hear submissions on behalf of Barlow that he should be allowed to return to Australia immediately for an operation on his leg.  The prosecutors surmised that as they had arrived, stayed, and were leaving together, they had a common purpose of trafficking drugs. 

On 1 August 1985 Barlow and Chambers attended their sentencing hearing to learn they had received the death sentence by hanging.

Barlow and Chambers were hanged in Pudu Prison on 7 July 1986. Kevin Barlow's mother Barbara Barlow reportedly prepared a suicide potion for her son to enable him to evade death by hanging. She prepared the mixture of 75 sleeping tablets dissolved in gin, whisky and brandy in her hotel room and smuggled it into the prison in a small plastic bottle concealed in her handbag. However, fearing her son would use it before all avenues of appeal had been exhausted she made the last-minute decision to keep the secret solution to herself

Malaysia has executed three Australians for drug offences in recent years.
Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers were hanged in July 1986, followed by Michael McAuliffe in June 1993.

Germany's Green Party is worried about the health risks of sex toys. Dildos and vibrators contain dangerously high levels of phthalates and other plasticizers, which can cause infertility and hormone imbalances, they claim. Now the party wants the government to take action to protect the 20 percent of Germans who use sex toys.

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Did You Know?  For the month of

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1867, July 1, Canadian Independence Day.  The autonomous Dominion of Canada, a confederation of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the future provinces of Ontario and Quebec, is officially recognized by Great Britain with the passage of the British North America Act.
On July 1, 1867, with passage of the British North America Act, the Dominion of Canada was officially established as a self-governing entity within the British Empire. Two years later, Canada acquired the vast possessions of the Hudson's Bay Company, and within a decade the provinces of Manitoba and Prince Edward Island had joined the Canadian federation.
1979, July 1, The First Sony Walkman Goes on Sale.  The transistor radio was a technological marvel that put music literally into consumers' hands in the mid-1950s. It was cheap, it was reliable and it was portable, but it could never even approximate the sound quality of a record being played on a home stereo. It was, however, the only technology available to on-the-go music lovers until the Sony Corporation sparked a revolution in personal electronics with the introduction of the first personal stereo cassette player. A device as astonishing on first encounter as the cellular phone or digital camera would later be, the Sony Walkman went on sale for the very first time on July 1, 1979.
1984, July 1, PG-13 Rating Debuts. On this day in 1984, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which oversees the voluntary rating system for movies, introduces a new rating, PG-13.
The initial rating categories were G (appropriate for all ages), M (for mature audiences, but all ages admitted), R (persons under 16 not admitted without an accompanying adult) and X (no one under 17 admitted). The M category was eventually changed to PG (parental guidance suggested), the R age limit was raised to 17 and on July 1, 1984, the PG-13 category was added to indicate film content with a “higher level of intensity.” According to the MPAA, the content of a PG-13 film “may be inappropriate for a children under 13 years old” and “may contain very strong language, nudity (non-explicit), strong, mildly bloody violence or mild drug content.” On August 10, 1983, the action film Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, became the first-ever PG-13 movie to be released in theaters.
2002, July 1, Two Planes Collided Over Germany. A Russian Tupolev 154, carrying 45 young students from Russia to a resort near Barcelona in Spain for a summer vacation, collided in midair with a Boeing 757 cargo plane, headed from Bahrain to Brussels, over southern Germany on this day in 2002. The 69 passengers and crew on the Russian plane and the two-person cargo crew were all killed. The collision occurred even though each plane had TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) collision-avoidance equipment onboard and everything functioned correctly.

 

Resources:

wikipedia, theage.com.au,

⅏Did You Know: The "Ninth Fort" Massacres

Did You Know...

On June 25, 1940, hundreds of Kovno Jews are taken to the "Ninth Fort" and murdered?

The Ninth Fort, 1944

The Ninth Fort in Kaunas, Lithuania was originally built as a defensive fortress in the years 1901–1913. During the Nazi occupation, over 50,000 people were executed there, including over 30,000 Jews and over 10,000 foreigners.

Jews inside the Ninth Fort,

immediately after their arrival there

and prior to their execution

In secret the Nazis called it Vernichtungsstelle Nr 2 – Extermination place number 2. Here were murdered some 25,000 of Kovno’s Jews, as well as 15,000 Jews deported from the Greater Reich, thousands of Jewish Prisoners – of – War who had served in the Red Army, and many other Jews. 

Before their execution, the detainees were incarcerated in underground cells known as “casements” in damp, darkness, and fear. There, people fought with one another for a brighter corner in the cells, for a piece of a straw mattress, for a scrap of food, or for a crumb of bread. There, Jews were shackled in iron chains, harnessed to ploughs in place of horses, forced to dig into peat-pits inside the fort, and often whipped to death. There, one soon lost one’s own – there, life turned into senseless pain, after which death came as redemption.

Messages scrawled by

Jewish prisoners on a wall

 inside Fort IX,

shortly before their execution

Keidan a father of four children was incarcerated at the Fort and tortured there for five months. With others he stood naked in the pit awaiting execution, and somehow miraculously escaped from the Fort. He was the first to bring an authentic report from the Hell on Earth. In fifteen mass pits, some 45,000 innocent victims found their awful burial, 3,000 in each pit. Thousands of Red Army Prisoners-of-War, all Jews were separated from the other Soviet Prisoners-of- War and were systematically massacred at the Ninth Fort. 

In August 1943 the Kovno Gestapo received orders from Berlin to eradicate the mass graves – to exhume the corpses and to burn them. This was to be carried out by the end of January 1944, when the German retreat from the Baltic States was foreseen. The carrying out of this order was imposed upon seventy-five Jews who were already imprisoned at the Fort, among them Ghetto inmates who had been seized in the Ghetto and brought to the Fort, Red Army Prisoners–of–War, and youngsters from the Ghetto, who had been caught on their way to join partisans in the forest.

Kovno, Lithuania, Mass graves
at the Ninth Fort

Eleven of the seventy-five declared at the outset they were ill, and not capable of doing the job. The Gestapo murdered them by injections of poison. The remaining sixty –four, sixty men and four women formed a labour squad. All of them, apart from one Polish woman, were Jews. 

The work started in September 1943.  The sixty-four were divided into four groups, each of which carried out a part of the job. One group “the diggers” had to dig out the dead corpses – to scrape off the upper layer of the earth from the pits, and then, with spades, remove the first layers of the corpses. This group had to go down into the pit by ladder and, using pitchforks, toss the remaining bodies up to the surface.

All valuables had to be cleaned and polished and handed over to the German supervisors. Most of the corpses were half or totally decayed, but some were well preserved. More than once, the diggers recognised their own acquaintances. On one occasion, a digger recognised his brother.

Not one of the sixty-four prisoners believed he would remain alive  once the job was done. They were reminded morning and evening, day and night, that nobody had ever escaped from the Ninth Fort. 

Monument and Memorial
for Victims of Nazi Atrocities

It was the careful and meticulous planning of prisoner, Captain Kolia Vassilenko, who was brought to the Fort from the Soviet prisoner-of-war camp near Kalvaria, that aided in their freedom.  Vassilenko had been regarded as a Russian until he was compelled to go to the bathhouse, and was discovered to be a Jew.

All the prisoners managed to escape the fortress without being discovered and fled to locations they had decided on in advance.

When morning arrived, the Germans returned to the fortress and found it empty. They called for reinforcements and began a manhunt. All except three of the prisoners who had escaped to the forest were caught.

After they reached freedom, Vassilenko and a number of the escapees made their way to Kovno Ghetto where he gave details of the escape and how in1943 how the Germans carried out the murder of the family of Chief Rabbi Shapiro.

The fugitives also brought with them evidence and materials they had collected in and around the graves during the excavations. “Let them be given to relatives in the Ghetto, to let them know for whom there is no point in waiting any longer.”

Vassilenko told us – the group had also brought with them the gold teeth of some of the slain – the gold weighed a quarter of a kilogram. The other groups had also taken documents and valuables with them.

also

Did You Know?  For the month of

back in.....

• 1807, Jun 26, Lightning Strikes in Luxembourg.  On this day in 1807, lightning hits a gunpowder factory in the small European country of Luxembourg, killing more than 300 people. Lightning kills approximately 73 people every year in the United States alone, but victims are almost always killed one at a time. The Luxembourg disaster may have been the most deadly lightning strike in history.
• 1957, Jun 26, A Serial Killer Preys Upon a Woman Out for a Drive.  Margaret Harold is shot and killed while out for a drive with her boyfriend near Annapolis, Maryland.  Her killer swerved in front of the couple's car, approached with a .38 revolver, and shot Harold in the side of the face, while her boyfriend managed to escape.  Investigating police found an abandoned building nearby, filled with pornographic pictures, but its full significance would not be revealed until nearly two years later.

Tips evenutally pointed towards Melvin Rees, a piano salesman working in West Memphis.

Detectives found evidence that linked Rees to the slayings of four other young women in the Maryland area as well.  Rees was tried in February 1961 for the murder of Margaret Harold and in September 1961 for the murders of the Jackson family; he was convicted of both and sentenced to death.  His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1972, and he died in prison from heart failure in 1995.

• 1971, Jun 30, Soviet Cosmonauts Perish in Re-entry Disaster.  Three Soviet cosmonauts, Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev who served as the first crew of the world's first space station die when their spacecraft depressurizes during reentry.

On June 6, the cosmonauts were launched into space aboard Soyuz 11 on a mission to dock and enter Salyut 1, the Soviet space station that had been placed in orbit in April which they accomplished and spent 23 dys orbiting the earth.  On June 30, they left Salyut 1 and began reentry procedures. When they fired the explosive bolts to separate the Soyuz 11 reentry capsule from another stage of the spacecraft, a critical valve was jerked open.

A 1971 Stamp commemorating
 the memory of 3 cosmonauts
 (Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov,
and Viktor Patsayev)

One hundred miles above the earth, the capsule was suddenly exposed to the nearly pressureless environment of space. As the capsule rapidly depressurized, Patsayev tried to close the valve by hand but failed. Minutes later, the cosmonauts were dead. As a result of the tragedy, the Soviet Union did not send any future crews to Salyut 1, and it was more than two years before they attempted another manned mission.

• 1975, Jun 28, A Teenage Girl's Boyfriend Murders her Parents.  Police are called to the home of Jim and Naomi Olive in Terra Linda, California, after Jim Olive's business partner reports that the couple has not been seen in a week.  Marlene turned up at the police station later that day and began telling a bizarre series of stories explaining her parent's disappearance.  Eventually she led detectives to a fire pit outside the town where the burned remains of her parents were located.  With a little investigation, the detectives found out about Chuck Riley, Marlene's boyfriend. At his home was an unopened letter from Marlene that read, "I have no guilty feelings at all about my folks. NONE. NEITHER SHOULD YOU. Relax."

Because she was a teenager at the time of the murders, Marlene Olive served only four years before being released from prison in 1979. Riley was given a death sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment.

• 1976, Jun 27, Ebola Breaks Out in Sudan.  A factory storekeeper in the Nzara township of Sudan becomes ill on this day in 1976.   Five days later, he dies, and the world's first recorded Ebola virus epidemic begins making its way through the area. By the time the epidemic is over, 284 cases are reported, with about half of the victims dying from the disease.

After the storekeeper in Nzara died, a second man in town died on July 6. His brother became sick soon after, but managed to recover. The brother's co-worker went to the hospital on July 12 with symptoms and was dead two days later; the co-worker's wife died five days after that. A week later a male neighbor died. Eventually, another 48 infections and 27 deaths were traced back to the neighbor.
Given this pattern of infection and the fact that hospital workers also started to develop symptoms, doctors realized that transmission of the virus required only close contact. At Maridi Hospital in southern Sudan, 33 of the 61 nurses ended up dead from Ebola fever

The World Health Organization finally arrived in October and helped to contain the epidemic.   Scientists still do not know what causes the disease or how to cure it.

• 1988, June 27, Tyson knocks out Spinks.  On this day in history, heavyweight champion Mike Tyson (the only heavyweight boxer to hold the WBA, WBC and IBF titles simultaneously), knocks out challenger Michael Spinks 91 seconds into the first round. The decisive victory left the boxing world wondering if anyone could beat "Iron Mike" Tyson.

Mike Tyson at SXSW 2011
Pic by Wiki user Karppinen

Tyson was discovered by legendary boxing trainer Cus D’Amato. D’Amato became a father figure to "Iron" Mike and a stabilizing force in his life: He took the young fighter into his home and dedicated himself to Tyson’s training. D’Amato helped Tyson to focus his aggression and develop the discipline to become a champion. 

One of Tyson's trademark combinations was to throw a right hook to his opponent's body, then follow it up with a right uppercut to his opponent's chin; very few boxers would remain standing if caught by this combination

After Larry Holmes, Michael Spinks was considered the only boxer with a chance against Tyson.  Spinks outmaneuvered the bigger but older Holmes on his way to a 15-round decision and the IBF heavyweight belt on September 21, 1985. In the rematch a year later, Spinks won again.

Spinks was knocked out 91 seconds into the biggest payday and worst beating of his career and he never fought again.

On June 11, 2005, Tyson stunned the boxing world by quitting before the start of the seventh round in a close bout against journeyman Kevin McBride. After losing the third of his last four fights, Tyson said he would quit boxing because he no longer had "the fighting guts or the heart anymore."

• 1997, Jun 28, Mike Tyson Bites Ear.  Mike Tyson bites Evander Holyfield’s ear in the third round of their heavyweight rematch. The attack led to his disqualification from the match and suspension from boxing, and was the strangest chapter yet in the champion’s roller-coaster career.

Resources:

wikipedia, gutstein.net, holocaustresearhproject.org, wikipedia