Monthly Archives: August 2007

China's first nuclear test, codename "596"In the closing weeks of 1964, the US Central Intelligence Agency was gripped by anxiety in the wake of troubling news. On October 16th, a great mushroom cloud had been spotted towering over the remote Chinese missile-testing range at Lop Nur. All evidence had indicated that Chinese scientists were at least a year away from squeezing the destructive secrets from the mighty atom, but this bombshell underscored the agency’s dangerously feeble espionage efforts in the Far East.

Details regarding the twenty-two kiloton device were scarce, but the US regarded the development as an unwelcome wrinkle in the already precarious Cold War. Officials from India were also distressed, having felt the business end of China’s military during a recent border dispute. In the interest of self-preservation, the two nations made a secret pact to combine their China-watching efforts. Photo reconnaissance satellites were still too primitive for practical spying, and high-flying surveillance planes were too conspicuous, but there was one alternative vantage point. The intelligence agencies hatched a nefarious scheme to keep a sharp eye on China’s weapons tests from atop India’s Nanda Devi, one of the tallest mountains of the imposing Himalayan mountain range. It offered an unobstructed view of China’s distant test site, assuming one could manage to hoist a sufficiently powerful electronic eye to its summit.

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Extra charge for delivery insuranceThere are few who would call postal delivery exciting. The reasons for this attitude are difficult to pin down, but it seems there is something inherent about the meticulous sorting and distribution of various pieces of paper that fails to capture the imagination. Nevertheless, over the last century there have been those who have wanted to change that: visionaries who looked beyond the truck and mailbag and imagined a means of delivering credit card bills and erotic magazines that would defy the heavens and shake the very Earth itself. Rarely has history seen a concept so grand, and so impractical, as Rocket Mail.

The promise of rocket mail was an ultra-fast, unmanned mail transport solution that could neatly circumvent obstacles such as forests and bodies of water. The precise method proposed varied among advocates, but the basic concept was simple and universal. A rocket, anywhere from a foot in length to the size of an automobile, would be packed with mail and launched towards a target. Upon reaching its destination, it would be designed to do one of two things: either deploy a parachute and float gently to the delivery site, or, for a much better show, crash and burrow its nose into the ground, ideally with its payload intact. Assuming it could be perfected, rocket mail would be vastly superior to conventional forms of mail transport.

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Lame stock photoOnce again, we here at Damn Interesting are in search of proficient purveyors of intriguing information. But as a bit of a departure from our previous writer-replenishment efforts, we now hope to add a larger number of authors with a considerably smaller commitment per person. See the send-a-sample link for specifics.

If you are a talented writer in search of an outlet, we enjoin you to join us. Our fancies are yours to tickle.

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The common rat is hideous thing to behold. Two species make up what we call the true rat: the black rat Rattus rattus, and the wharf rat Rattus norvegicus. On the whole of the Earth, the only places where rats do not find a home are the forbiddingly cold Arctic and Antarctic regions, some miscellaneous islands where they haven’t gained a foothold, a wildlife preserve in New Zealand, and Alberta Canada where a concerted effort of riled Canadians will massacre rodents upon a hint that a rat may have infested the province.

Historically the rat has been labeled a pest and more-than-a-nuisance due to their capacity to carry diseases that can infect humans, and their propensity to reproduce like… well… uh… rodents. However, in this wonderfully modern time in which we live the rat is being put to task by their human overlords doing much more productive things.

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In the early 1990s, a Russian drilling rig encountered something peculiar two miles beneath the coldest and most desolate place on Earth. For decades, the workers at Vostok Research Station in Antarctica had been extracting core samples from deep scientific boreholes, and analyzing the lasagna-like layers of ice to study Earth’s bygone climate. But after tunneling through 414,000 layers or so– about two miles into the icecap– the layers abruptly ended. The ice below that depth was relatively clear and featureless, a deviation the scientists were at a loss to explain. In search of answers, the men drilled on.

Unbeknownst to the Russians, their drill had mingled with the uppermost reaches of one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world; a pristine pocket of liquid whose ecosystem was separated from the rest of the Earth millions of years ago. As for what sort of organisms might lurk in that exotic environment today, no one can really be certain.

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