‘Balloonacy’: Commander Cheyne's flight of fancy

Polar Record ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huw Lewis-Jones

ABSTRACTCommander John P. Cheyne, R.N. (1826–1902) is a forgotten figure in the history of nineteenth-century polar exploration. A veteran of three expeditions in search of the missing Franklin expedition, his retirement was atypical of the many naval officers who had served in the Arctic. Late in 1876, after the disappointing return of the British Arctic expedition under George Strong Nares, Cheyne first announced his grand plans to reach the North Pole by balloon. He embarked on a transatlantic lecture tour in an effort to raise funds. It was a novel proposal that captured public imagination, but also drew wide criticism, and sometimes ridicule. This paper draws upon a study of primary and secondary materials: original manuscripts and correspondence, British and American newspapers and the illustrated press, souvenirs, pamphlets, and periodical reviews. This is a neglected episode in the history of polar exploration and in the history of aeronautics more generally, and it is a story of naivety and optimism, bravado and speculation. This paper examines the prevailing currents of public opinion of the value of exploration in this period, the debates surrounding new techniques of polar travel, and the changing image of the explorer. Both aeronautical pioneer and itinerant showman, Cheyne was increasingly maligned as a charlatan and lunatic. He proved unable to realise his dream of polar flight.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Jackson ◽  
Anna Bang Kvorning ◽  
Audrey Limoges ◽  
Eleanor Georgiadis ◽  
Steffen M. Olsen ◽  
...  

AbstractBaffin Bay hosts the largest and most productive of the Arctic polynyas: the North Water (NOW). Despite its significance and active role in water mass formation, the history of the NOW beyond the observational era remains poorly known. We reconcile the previously unassessed relationship between long-term NOW dynamics and ocean conditions by applying a multiproxy approach to two marine sediment cores from the region that, together, span the Holocene. Declining influence of Atlantic Water in the NOW is coeval with regional records that indicate the inception of a strong and recurrent polynya from ~ 4400 yrs BP, in line with Neoglacial cooling. During warmer Holocene intervals such as the Roman Warm Period, a weaker NOW is evident, and its reduced capacity to influence bottom ocean conditions facilitated northward penetration of Atlantic Water. Future warming in the Arctic may have negative consequences for this vital biological oasis, with the potential knock-on effect of warm water penetration further north and intensified melt of the marine-terminating glaciers that flank the coast of northwest Greenland.


2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison E. Robertson ◽  
Silvia R. Cianzio ◽  
Sarah M. Cerra ◽  
Richard O. Pope

Phytophthora root and stem rot (PRR), caused by the oomycete Phytophthora sojae, is an economically important soybean disease in the north central region of the United States, including Iowa. Previous surveys of the pathogenic diversity of P. sojae in Iowa did not investigate whether multiple pathotypes of the pathogen existed in individual fields. Considering the many pathotypes of P. sojae that have been reported in Iowa, we hypothesized multiple pathotypes could exist within single fields. In the research reported herein, several soil samples were collected systematically from each of two commercial fields with a history of PRR in Iowa, and each soil sample was baited separately for isolates of P. sojae. Numerous pathotypes of P. sojae were detected from both fields. As many as four pathotypes were detected in some soil samples (each consisting of six to eight soil cores), which suggests that a single soybean plant could be subjected to infection by more than one pathotype. This possibility presents important implications in breeding resistant cultivars and in the management of PRR. Accepted for publication 14 July 2009. Published 8 September 2009.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4-2021) ◽  
pp. 28-36
Author(s):  
O. V. Shabalina ◽  
◽  
K. S. Kazakova ◽  

The article presents materials from the personal fund of the largest hydropower engineer of the North-West of the USSR S. V. Grigoriev, belonging to the Museum-Archive of History of Studying and Exploration of the European North of the Barents Centre of Humanities of the KSC RAS. The personal documents of the scientist and the practitioner are sources of biographical information given in the article and potential sources for research in the field of the history of the scientific study of water bodies, rivers and the development of hydropower in the Arctic.


1996 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. McCann ◽  
Winfried K. Dallmann

AbstractNew geological mapping has revealed further details of the tectonic and stratigraphic effects of Devonian and later reactivations of the Billefjorden Fault Zone, one of a number of important north—south trending lineaments in Svalbard. Analysis of offsets along the many steeply-dipping faults within the zone, and effects on the subsidence and deformation of the adjacent crustal blocks, is presented as a series of tectonic maps from the Late Devonian through to the Tertiary. Late Devonian sinistral transpression, suggested previously, cannot be ruled out, and Carboniferous reactivation was dominated by extension, with possibly a slight dextral strike-slip component. After Late Carboniferous to Early Cretaceous platform subsidence, during which the fault zone had little effect on sedimentation, development of the Tertiary West Spitsbergen Fold Belt (related to the opening of the Arctic Ocean) involved compressive (and transpressive?) reactivation of basement-seated structures further east, including the Billefjorden Fault Zone. In the Billefjorden—Austfjorden area this produced a large monoclinal fold across the fault zone, which was later cross-cut by extensional structures to produce the present day Billefjorden syncline. This localized late extension is related to a slight variation in the trend of the Billefjorden Fault Zone through this area.


Author(s):  
TB Hoareau

AbstractAfter millennia of hunting and a population collapse, it is still challenging to understand the genetic consequences of whaling on the circumarctic bowhead whale. Here I use published modern mtDNA sequences from the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort population and a new time calibration to show that late–glacial climate changes and whaling have been the major drivers of population change. Cultures that hunted in the Arctic Seas from as early as 5000 years ago appear to be responsible for successive declines of the population growth, bringing the effective size down to 38% of its pristine population size. The Thules and the Basques (year 1000–1730) who only hunted in the North Atlantic had a major impact on this North Pacific population, indicating that bowhead whale stocks respond to harvesting as a single population unit. Recent positive growth is inferred only after the end of commercial whaling in 1915, and for levels of harvesting that are close to the current annual quota of 67 whales. By unfolding the population history of the bowhead whale, I provide compelling evidence that mtDNA yields critical yet undervalued information for management and conservation of natural populations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1/2021) ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Yu.I. Maksimov ◽  
◽  
A.B. Mambetova ◽  
A.I. Krivichev ◽  
◽  
...  

The article provides an overview on the history of the Kola Arctic region and the Arctic artistic exploration based on the “Straight to the North” temporary exhibition in Murmansk Regional Art Museum, 2019. Pieces of icon painting, decorative and applied arts, books, household items, painting and graphic arts and collection of the Kola Peninsula minerals were exhibited there. Some art works are described in details: paintings of Russian artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Soviet artists, including painters from Murmansk and members of “The Arctic” creative team in 1978–1985. The authors analysed, how social and economic development of the Kola Arctic region influenced new art styles and directions: from plein air painting under the Extreme North conditions to industrial landscapes and creation of an art community. The authors dedicate the article to the memory of Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, the leader of “The Arctic” creative team Arvi Ivanovich Huttunen (31.08.1922–27.08.2020).


Author(s):  
Scott MacKenzie

This chapter examines the many re-iterations of Robert Flaherty’s influential film Nanook of the North (1922) to show how this key documentary film has been re-imagined and re-articulated in documentaries such as Claude Massot’s Nanook Revisited (1990), feature length fictional accounts of Flaherty’s journey north such as Massot’s Kabloonak (1994), indigenous media such as the National Film Board of Canada’s Netsilik series (1967), IMAX films like To the Arctic (2012) and experimental cinema such as Philip Hoffman and Sami van Ingen’s Sweep (1995). Through the analysis of these varied works, MacKenzie delineates how the continual re-iterations of Nanook of the North play and complex and conflicted role in the popular imagination of the Arctic.


Author(s):  
Derrick Bell

Given Theirhistory Of Racial Subordination, how have black people gained any protection against the multifaceted forms of discrimination that threaten their well-being and undermine their rights? The answer can be stated simply: Black rights are recognized and protected when and only so long as policymakers perceive that such advances will further interests that are their primary concern. Throughout the history of civil rights policies, even the most serious injustices suffered by blacks, including slavery, segregation, and patterns of murderous violence, have been insufficient, standing alone, to gain real relief from any branch of government. Rather, relief from racial discrimination has come only when policymakers recognize that such relief will provide a clear benefit for the nation or portions of the populace. While nowhere mentioned in the Supreme Court’s Brown opinion, a major motivation for outlawing racial segregation in 1954, as opposed to the many failed opportunities in the past, was the major boost that this decision provided in our competition with communist governments abroad and the campaign to uproot subver­sive elements at home. This fortuity continues a long history of similar coincidences motivating the advancement or sacrifice of black interests. Three major examples of what I call interest-convergence covenants involve the abolition of slavery in the northern states, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Civil War amendments to the Constitution. Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the divergent responses of blacks and whites to his action, were foreshad­owed by abolition policies in the northern states a half-century earlier. In the northern states, slavery was abolished by constitutional provi­sion in Vermont (1777), Ohio (1802), Illinois (1818), and Indiana (1816); by a judicial decision in Massachusetts (1783); by constitutional interpretation in New Hampshire (1857); and by gradual abolition acts in Pennsylvania (1780), Rhode Island (1784), Connecticut (1784 and 1797), New York (1799 and 1827), and New Jersey (1804). In varying degrees, abolition in the North was the result of several factors: idealism stemming from the Revolution with its “rights of man” ideology; the lesser dependence of the northern economy on a large labor force; the North’s relatively small investment in slaves combined with the great hostility of the white laboring class to the competition of slaves; the fear of slave revolts; and a general belief that there was no place for “inferior” blacks in the new societies.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Hancock ◽  
P. F. Rawson

AbstractEarly CretaceousThe Cretaceous Period lasted for about 70 million years. During this time there was a major change in the sedimentary history of the area as tectonism died down and deposition started of an extensive blanket of coccolith ooze: the Chalk. The change took place mainly over a brief interval across the Albian/Cenomanian (Lower/Upper Cretaceous) boundary, at about 95 Ma. Until that time crustal extension along the Arctic-North Atlantic megarifts continued to influence the tectonic evolution of northwest Europe (Ziegler 1982, 1988). This tensional régime caused rifting and block faulting, particularly across the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary (Late Cimmerian movements) and in the mid Aptian (Austrian phase). During the latter phase, sea-floor spreading commenced in the Biscay and central Rockall Rifts. The northern part of the Rockall Rift began to widen too, possibly by crustal stretching rather than sea-floor spreading (Ziegler 1988, p. 75). During the Albian the regional pattern began to change and by the beginning of the Cenomanian rifting had effectively ceased away from the Rockall/Faeroe area.Most of the Jurassic sedimentary basins continued as depositional areas during the Early Cretaceous, but the more extensive preservation of Lower Cretaceous sediments provides firmer constraints on some of the geographical reconstructions. The marked sea-level fall across the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary isolated the more southerly basins as areas of non-marine sedimentation, and it was not until the beginning of the Aptian that they became substantially marine.The extent of emergence of highs in the North Sea area is difficult to assess, especially where


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