5 X 5: NATURAL DISASTERS

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5 facts about 5 natural disasters

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A natural disaster is a sudden event that causes widespread destruction, major collateral damage, or loss of life, brought about by forces other than the acts of human beings. A natural disaster might be caused by earthquakes, flooding, volcanic eruption, landslide, hurricanes, etc. To be classified as a disaster, it must have profound environmental effects and/or loss of life and frequently causes financial loss.

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• From 1928 to 1930, China was afflicted by a long drought.

• The subsequent winter of 1930–31 was particularly harsh, creating large deposits of snow and ice in mountainous areas. In early 1931, melting snow and ice flowed downstream and arrived in the middle course of the Yangtze during a period of heavy spring rain. Ordinarily, the region experienced three periods of high water during the spring, summer and fall, respectively; however, in early 1931, there was a single continuous deluge

• In May-August 1931, massive flooding of China's Yellow and Yangtze rivers led to almost four million deaths from drowning, disease and starvation.

• This flood is frequently featured in the list of disasters in China by death toll, sometimes topping lists of the world’s deadliest disasters.

• At the time the government estimated that 25 million people had been affected by the flood. Historians since have suggested that the true number may have been as many as 53 million. With no food, people were reduced to eating tree bark, weeds, and earth. Some sold their children to survive, while others resorted to cannibalism.

Reed huts in a refugee camp on the banks of the Han river

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• The 1970 Bhola cyclone (also known as the Great Cyclone of 1970 struck East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) and India's West Bengal.

• It remains the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded and one of the world's deadliest humanitarian disasters. At least 300,000 people died in the storm, possibly as many as 500,000, primarily as a result of the storm surge that flooded much of the low-lying islands of the Ganges Delta.

• The Pakistani government, led by junta leader General Yahya Khan, was criticized for its delayed handling of relief operations following the storm, both by local political leaders in East Pakistan and by the international media. The poor and discriminating response from the West Pakistan government led to the increasingly widespread disillusionment from the East Pakistani people, allowing the opposition Awami League to gain a landslide victory in the province during the election that took place a month later as well as the Bangladesh Liberation War 7 months later.

• Over 3.6 million people were directly affected by the cyclone, and the total damage from the storm was estimated at US$86.4 million (US$701 million in 2024). The survivors claimed that approximately 85% of homes in the area were destroyed or severely damaged, with the greatest destruction occurring along the coast. Ninety percent of marine fishermen in the region suffered heavy losses, including the destruction of 9,000 offshore fishing boats. Of the 77,000 onshore fishermen, 46,000 were killed by the cyclone, and 40% of the survivors were affected severely. In total, approximately 65% of the fishing capacity of the coastal region was destroyed by the storm, in a region where about 80% of the protein consumed comes from fish.

• Agricultural damage was similarly severe with the loss of US$63 million worth of crops and 280,000 cattle.

1970 Bhopal Cyclone damage

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• The 1980 Mount St. Helens major eruption remains the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in U.S. history. Fifty-seven people were killed; 200 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways, and 185 miles (298 km) of highway were destroyed.

• A massive debris avalanche, triggered by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake, caused a lateral eruption that reduced the elevation of the mountain's summit from 9,677 to 8,363 ft (2,950 to 2,549 m), leaving a 1 mile (1.6 km) wide horseshoe-shaped crater

• The 1980 eruption disrupted terrestrial ecosystems near the volcano. By contrast, aquatic ecosystems in the area greatly benefited from the amounts of ash, allowing life to multiply rapidly. Six years after the eruption, most lakes in the area had returned to their normal state.

• After its 1980 eruption, the volcano experienced continuous volcanic activity until 2008. Geologists predict that future eruptions will be more destructive, as the configuration of the lava domes requires more pressure to erupt.

• However, Mount St. Helens is a popular hiking spot and it is climbed year-round. In 1982, the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument was established by President Ronald Reagan and the U.S. Congress.

Mount St Helens before and after eruption.

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• On 26 December 2004 a major earthquake struck with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The earthquake was caused by a rupture along the fault between the Burma Plate and the Indian Plate

• A massive tsunami with waves up to 30 m (100 ft) high, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami after the Boxing Day holiday devastated communities along the surrounding coasts of the Indian Ocean, killing an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries in one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

• The direct results caused major disruptions to living conditions and commerce in coastal provinces of surrounded countries, including Aceh (Indonesia), Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu (India) and Khao Lak (Thailand).

• It is the deadliest natural disaster of the 21st century and the worst tsunami disaster in history. It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Asia, the most powerful earthquake in the 21st century, and at least the third most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the world since modern seismography began in 1900. It caused the planet to vibrate as much as 10 mm (0.4 in) and also remotely triggered earthquakes as far away as Alaska.

• The plight of the affected people and countries prompted a worldwide humanitarian response, with donations totalling more than US$14 billion[22] (equivalent to US$23 billion in 2023 currency).

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• The 2010 Haiti earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, with death toll estimates ranging from 100,000 to about 160,000. Morgues were overwhelmed with tens of thousands of bodies. These had to be buried in mass graves.

• The government of Haiti estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings had collapsed or were severely damaged.

• Haiti's history of national debt, prejudicial trade policies by other countries, and foreign intervention into national affairs contributed to the existing poverty and poor housing conditions that increased the death toll from the disaster.

• Slow distribution of resources in the days after the earthquake resulted in sporadic violence, with looting reported. There were also accounts of looters wounded or killed by vigilantes and neighbourhoods that had constructed their own roadblock barricades.

• Haiti is no stranger to natural disasters. In addition to earthquakes, it has been struck frequently by tropical cyclones, which have caused flooding and widespread damage. The most recent cyclones to hit the island before the earthquake were Tropical Storm Fay and hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike, all in the summer of 2008, causing nearly 800 deaths.
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Damaged buildings in Port-au-Prince

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

FUNNY FRIDAY

Something different today folks, a lot of quick items and most with a dark bent.

Hopefully you will not be offended and will see the humour.

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Dating in your 30s is like looking for a parking spot......

The good ones are all taken. The rest are either handicapped or too far away.

My therapist told me to write letters to the people you hate and then burn them

Did that, but now I don't know what to do with the letters.

My girlfriend’s birthday is in a week and she said "Nothing would make me happier than a diamond ring!"

So I got her nothing

Wouldn't it have been amazing if John Lennon had invented that device that you put in your front door to secretly see who's on the other side...

I mean, imagine all the peepholes.

"Sir, we're mining too many useless mineral ores."

Hitler: "Mine less, then."

Grammar Nazi bursts in: "MINE FEWER."

Hitler looks over: "Yes?"

Old Macdonald...

...spelled "redirection" without any consonants.

Why are retired Nazis so good with animals?

They're veteran Aryans.

What has 2 wings and 1 arrow ?

A Chinese telephone

Wing Wing 

Arrow?

I won $3 million on the lottery this weekend so I decided to donate a quarter of it to charity.

Now I have $2,999,999.75.

I got fired on the first day of my new job for asking customers if they would prefer "Smoking or Non-Smoking."

Apparently, the correct phrase is, "Cremation or Burial."

I told a girl, "you look great without glasses"

She said, "but I don't wear glasses." I replied, while polishing my lenses, "yeah, but I do."

Grandpas last words before he kicked the bucket -

"How far do you think I can kick this bucket?"

If you can make a woman laugh, you're almost there.

If you're almost there and then she laughs, that's a different thing.

To the man in the wheelchair that stole my camouflage jacket...

You can hide, but you can't run.

I got kicked out of the hospital.

Apparently, the sign "Stroke patients here" meant something totally different.

I can count on one hand how many times I have been to Chernobyl.

It's 14.

My girlfriend left me because I kept pretending to be a transformer

I said "No, wait! I can change!"

An Afghan, an Albanian, an Algerian, an American, an Andorran, an Angolan, an Antiguans, an Argentine, an Armenian, an Australian, an Austrian, an Azerbaijani, a Bahamian, a Bahraini, a Bangladeshi, a Barbadian, a Barbudans, a Batswanan, a Belarusian, a Belgian, a Belizean, a Beninese, a Bhutanese, a Bolivian, a Bosnian, a Brazilian, a Brit, a Bruneian, a Bulgarian, a Burkinabe, a Burmese, a Burundian, a Cambodian, a Cameroonian, a Canadian, a Cape Verdean, a Central African, a Chadian, a Chilean, a Chinese, a Colombian, a Comoran, a Congolese, a Costa Rican, a Croatian, a Cuban, a Cypriot, a Czech, a Dane, a Djibouti, a Dominican, a Dutchman, an East Timorese, an Ecuadorean, an Egyptian, an Emirian, an Equatorial Guinean, an Eritrean, an Estonian, an Ethiopian, a Fijian, a Filipino, a Finn, a Frenchman, a Gabonese, a Gambian, a Georgian, a German, a Ghanaian, a Greek, a Grenadian, a Guatemalan, a Guinea-Bissauan, a Guinean, a Guyanese, a Haitian, a Herzegovinian, a Honduran, a Hungarian, an I-Kiribati, an Icelander, an Indian, an Indonesian, an Iranian, an Iraqi, an Irishman, an Israeli, an Italian, an Ivorian, a Jamaican, a Japanese, a Jordanian, a Kazakhstani, a Kenyan, a Kittian and Nevisian, a Kuwaiti, a Kyrgyz, a Laotian, a Latvian, a Lebanese, a Liberian, a Libyan, a Liechtensteiner, a Lithuanian, a Luxembourger, a Macedonian, a Malagasy, a Malawian, a Malaysian, a Maldivan, a Malian, a Maltese, a Marshallese, a Mauritanian, a Mauritian, a Mexican, a Micronesian, a Moldovan, a Monacan, a Mongolian, a Moroccan, a Mosotho, a Motswana, a Mozambican, a Namibian, a Nauruan, a Nepalese, a New Zealander, a Nicaraguan, a Nigerian, a Nigerien, a North Korean, a Northern Irishman, a Norwegian, an Omani, a Pakistani, a Palauan, a Palestinian, a Panamanian, a Papua New Guinean, a Paraguayan, a Peruvian, a Pole, a Portuguese, a Qatari, a Romanian, a Russian, a Rwandan, a Saint Lucian, a Salvadoran, a Samoan, a San Marinese, a Sao Tomean, a Saudi, a Scottish, a Senegalese, a Serbian, a Seychellois, a Sierra Leonean, a Singaporean, a Slovakian, a Slovenian, a Solomon Islander, a Somali, a South African, a South Korean, a Spaniard, a Sri Lankan, a Sudanese, a Surinamer, a Swazi, a Swede, a Swiss, a Syrian, a Taiwanese, a Tajik, a Tanzanian, a Togolese, a Tongan, a Trinidadian or Tobagonian, a Tunisian, a Turkish, a Tuvaluan, a Ugandan, a Ukrainian, a Uruguayan, a Uzbekistani, a Venezuelan, a Vietnamese, a Welshman, a Yemenite, a Zambian and a Zimbabwean all go to a nightclub...

The doorman stops them and says sorry I cant let you in without a Thai.

Imagine if Americans switched from pounds to kilograms overnight

There would be mass confusion.

Did you hear about the midget that got pick pocketed?

I can't believe someone could stoop so low..

First rule of Vegan club:

You tell everyone about Vegan club.

My girlfriend said to me the other day, “If anything ever happens to me, I want you to meet someone new.”

Apparently, getting stuck in traffic doesn’t count as “anything”.

I just found out I'm being followed!

My girlfriend told me she's been seeing people behind my back.

I told myself I need to stop drinking so much

...But I'm not about to start listening to some drunk weirdo that talks to himself

"Indecisive" is my favourite word.

Actually, no it isn't.

A German arrives at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris

Customs officer: “Occupation?”.

German: “Nein, just visiting.”

My girlfriend left a note on the refrigerator that said "This isn't working. Goodbye."

I opened the refrigerator and it was working fine wtf

Was Barry White ? Was Cilla Black ? Was James Brown ?

It sure makes Stevie Wonder

A bear walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, "I'll have a............beer."

The bartender responds, "What's with the big pause?"

The bear holds up his arms and says, "Always had 'em."

I told my psychiatrist that I've been hearing voices.

He told me that I don't have a psychiatrist.

A man just assaulted me with milk, butter and cheese

How dairy

I really love playing chess with elderly people in the park.

It's just really hard to find thirty two of them willing to do it.

My girlfriend says I'm an idiot who can't do anything right.

So I packed her bags and left.

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QUOTE FOR THE DAY

 

FACTS

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Trivia, sent to me by Leo M. Thanks Leo.

I have not fact checked the items beloe.

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Glass takes one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!

Gold is the only metal that doesn't rust, even if it's buried in the ground for thousands of years.

When a person dies hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight.

Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.

The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.

If you stop getting thirsty , you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.

Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.

Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.

The song Auld Lang Syne is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.

Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent. Drinking a glass of water before you eat may help digestion and curb appetite.

Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it's heated above 450F.

The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.

Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean.

The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man.

Airports at higher altitudes require a longer airstrip due to lower air density.

The University of Alaska spans four time zones.

In ancient Greece , tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.

Warner Communications paid 28 million for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday, which was written in 1935!

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

A comet's tail always points away from the sun.

Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some medicines.

The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.

If you get into the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up, you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.

In ancient times strangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed.

Strawberries and cashews are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.

Avocados have the highest calories of any fruit at 167 calories per hundred grams.

The moon moves about two inches away from the Earth each year.

The Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust.

Due to earth's gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000 metres.

Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy.

Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration which could be sufficient to knock the bridge down.

Everything weighs one percent less at the equator.

For every extra kilogram carried on a space flight, 530 kg of excess fuel are needed at lift-off.

The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

NOSTALGI. . . NOT JUST FANCIFUL LINGING

 

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

OZ SLANG

 

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I was watching something on TV when the description of a traffic report came on, described as being ‘From Woy Woy to Woop Woop’. It started me wondering about the origin of the expression Woop Woop, something that was more common when I was young (I will look at the origin later). It also started me thinking about a pet gripe of mine, the loss of our rich and colourful slang as the world becomes globalised, usually to Americanisms. I remember I have posted about this before.

So in Bytes to come I will be posting some new items and reposting some past ones about disappearing slang that was common in my childhood and hardly ever heard today.

The first is from the vault, from November 26, 2015, and it appears below.

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Some Oz slang and expressions

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Brass Razoo:

In a discussion today someone used the expression “not worth a brass razoo.” This then led to a further discussion as to how the phrase may have originated.

According to Wikipedia:

Brass razoo is an Australian phrase that was first recorded in soldiers' slang in World War I. It is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "a non-existent coin of trivial value".

It is commonly used in the expression I haven't got a brass razoo, meaning the speaker is out of money. 

That tells us what it means but not how it originated. That’s where it gets murky.

There are a number of opinions and explanations on the possible origin:

• That Australian troops serving in France used the smallest denomination in French currency, a sou, to denote having nothing eg “I haven’t got a sou.” Over time this became corrupted to “razoo” with the word brass, meaning money in England, being added later.

• The Yanks use the term raspberry to denote a derogatory farting sound . It was also known as a razoo. Interchanges between Australian and American infantry serving in France jokingly included razoos, later known as “arse razoos”, which then became “brass razoo” and applied to having nothing.

So there you have it, the jury is still out on this one.

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Pakapoo Ticket:

Which leads to another strange one, a favourite expression of someone in the first office I worked in: that something written out that was untidy looked like a pakapoo ticket. (This is also written as a pak ah pu ticket).

Pak ah pu was a gambling game commonly called the Chinese Lottery that was brought to Australia in the 19th century by Asian immigrants. Its name came from the Cantonese word for pigeon in that a trained pigeon picked the winning characters. The game utilised books with characters and players bet on which characters might be picked. It is said that the modern gambling game Keno is an adaption of pak ah pu. The indecipherable sheets, at least to non-Asian observers, resulted in untidy writing being compared to such tickets.

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Dorothy Dixer:

Dorothy Dixer is the term applied in Australian Parliaments to staged questions asked of the leaders and Ministers that enable those persons to then deliver a very favourable prepared reply or report.

Dorothy Dix was the pen name of US writer Elizabeth Gilmer who found fame as an advice columnist. Gilmer was reputed to write not only her responses to the questions sent to her but also the questions themselves.

As a result, from the 1950’s the questions of government leaders and ministers that were a set up to enable a prepared reply to be given came to be known as Dorothy Dixers, later shortened to just Dixers.

From The Australian, 28 May 2003:

Like everyone else, Kevin Rudd was spellbound when diminutive Liberal MP Sophie Panopolous rose to ask a dorothy dixer. And it was not her husky voice or hair or makeup that stopped traffic, but the rows and rows of pearls .. dangling beneath her neck. 'Condolence motion to the oysters', barked Rudd.

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Woop Woop:

Woop Woop (wop-wop in New Zealand) is the name of) an imaginary town or district in a remote rural area, typically characterised as backward and unsophisticated, a remote town or district which is very far and symbolizes isolation and backwardness.

Equivalent terms include "beyond the black stump" and "dingo woop woop" (also Australia), "the boondocks" (Southern United States) and "out in the sticks" or "the back of beyond" (UK).

The term “woop woop” was mainly used in the early 1900s in Australia to describe a mythical outback town.

According to Wikipedia, the term derived from the nickname that was given to a man whose job was to carry fleeces in shearing sheds.

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QUOTE FOR THE DAY

 

ART SPOT

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Just as I was wondering what to post, I received an email from Byter Sue P:

Hi Otto

Look at these little beauties!

https://lito-leafart.com/

https://www.persephonesocial.com/conversations/lito-leaf-art

https://www.designboom.com/art/lito-leaf-art-cutout-09-15-2020/

Hope you are happy and well

Regards, Sue

Thank you, Sue.

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The links provided by Sue are to a Japanese artist who goes by the handle ‘lito leaf art’, his art consisting of carved leaves. Yes, you heard that right, he creates lovely art works by intricately carving leaves.

Here is one of the articles, plus pics . . .

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By the way, the lack of punctuation is as in the article, not me.

It reminds me of:

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Article:

lito leaf art, the japanese artist that carves tree leaves to create magnificent scenes

from grocery stores inhabited by animals, to a rhinoceros washing the teeth of its calf, japanese artist lito leaf art carves the most amusing sceneries on tree leaves. using a very precise cut-out technique, a closer inspection of each piece reveals surprising details that create dreamy narratives.

‘I make positive use of my own ADHD (developmental disability) biased concentration and commitment to create paper-cutting works using leaves,’ comments lito on their instagram page description. a closer look into their social media reveals the artist has been creatively expressing themselves through meticulous drawings that have evolved into the carved leaves.

placed against the sky, viewers are able to imagine worlds on these miniature creations. sometimes surreal, other times scary, but every time beautiful and poetic, make sure you visit the artist’s instagram and twitter accounts where they post each new creation, together with a short but sweet story.

Instagram link:

https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17910476108469081/

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Photographs: