2024 Wheel of Horrors Thread (Earthquakes, Train Crashes and more...)

[LD0506]

[China]

Hundreds ill, one dead after unidentified disease hits city in India

 

NEW DELHI — At least one person has died and 200 others have been hospitalized due to an unidentified illness in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, reports said Monday.

 

The illness was detected Saturday evening in Eluru, an ancient city famous for its hand-woven products. Since then, patients have experienced symptoms ranging from nausea and anxiety to loss of consciousness, doctors said.

 

A 45-year-old man who was hospitalized with symptoms similar to epilepsy and nausea died Sunday evening, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

 

Officials are trying to determine the cause of the illness. So far, water samples from impacted areas haven’t shown any signs of contamination and patients have tested negative for Covid-19.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

[China]

RBG, Kobe Bryant, Little Richard: Remembering notables who died in 2020

 

In this year of the coronavirus pandemic, deaths were often just a cold statistic. Grieving families barely had a moment to say goodbye, to remember or to celebrate.

 

But every well-lived life, whether lost to  disease, old age, accident or  other cause, leaves positive paths forward, or sometimes cautionary tales, for family, friends or fans. Those memories can bring tears, renew faith, and often spark a smile when the hint of a grandparent shows up in the face of a newborn.

 

So it is with this year’s “Passages,” USA TODAY’s annual remembrance of those who lived big enough to inspire not only loved ones but whole generations.

 

Click on the link for more

[China]

Shelter-in-place order for Kanawha County, WV after explosion at Chemours plant

 

KANAWHA COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) – New details are being released about an explosion at the Optima Chemicals Company along W. Dupont Ave. in Belle overnight.

The explosion was reported around 10 p.m. Tuesday.

 

CW Sigman, the Kanawha County Emergency Management Director, tells WSAZ chlorine and methanol were included in the explosion.

 

The explosion sent large chunks of metal through the air.

 

Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said three people were transported to the hospital, while a fourth person took himself to seek treatment. Two of the people transported were from inside the plant. One person was severely injured.

 

There was a shelter in place for a two-mile radius late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, according to dispatchers.

 

WSAZ has been told the explosion happened at a tenant company that operates at Chemours called Optima. It’s still unclear what they produce at the plant.

 

Carper also says it does not appear any chemicals got into the Kanawha River.

 

The cause of the explosion is under investigation.

 

Click on the link for more

 

 

[China]

Looks like the Chinese have figured out how to get rid of murder hornets...drones with flamethrowers.

 

Flamethrower drone incinerates wasp nests in China

 

A drone has been converted into a flying flamethrower in central China in a fiery campaign to eradicate more than 100 wasp nests.

 

Blue Sky Rescue, a volunteer group that conducts search and rescue and other emergency work, have teamed up with villagers in Zhong county near the city of Chongqing.

 

They raised 80,000 yuan ($12,200) to buy a drone and equip it with a gasoline tank and an arm-length nozzle.

 

Videos released by Blue Sky show a recent mission by the six-arm drone. It hovers above a hive as large as a suitcase before swooping down. The drone operator flips the ignition switch, and the drone spits bursts of fire onto the hive.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Utah wildlife officials warn of outbreak of highly contagious rabbit hemorrhagic disease

 

A highly contagious disease found in rabbits is currently spreading through multiple parts of Utah, wildlife officials have warned.

 

Rabbit hemorrhagic disease has recently been confirmed in both southern and northeastern Utah, according to the Utah Division of Wildlife.

 

The disease is caused by a calicivirus that affects rabbits, including wild and domesticated European rabbits, from which rabbit populations in the U.S. are descended from, according to the House Rabbit Society, a nonprofit rabbit rescue organization.

 

However, it does not affect human health, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

 

It was first seen in China in 1984 but is thought to have originated in Europe. There have since been confirmed cases in Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Let's look at some predictions from nearly a decade ago:

 

2020 Vision: A Look Forward To The Promises of a Truly Amazing Year

 

April 27, 2011

 

Robotic moon bases, chips implanted in our brains, self-driving cars, and high-speed rail linking London to Beijing. According to a dazzling number of technology predictions that single out the year 2020, it's going to be to be one hell of a year. Here, we take a look at some of the wonders it holds in store.

 

So what will the world look like in 2020? With Liebhold riding shotgun, we took a quick spin through 2020 to see what the future might hold. Click through the gallery to see some of the bolder 2020 forecasts we've seen--and why some of them don't stand a chance.

 

Japan Will Build a Robotic Moon Base
 

China Will Connect Beijing to London via High Speed Rail
 

Cars Will Drive Themselves
 

Biofuels Will be Cost-Competitive With Fossil Fuels
 

The 'Flying Car' Will be Airborne
 

We'll Control Devices Via Microchips Implanted in Our Brains
 

Commercial Space Will Take Us to the Moon and Asteroids (and We'll be Mining Them)
 

Click on the link for more

[China]

2020 is so bad that Aretha Franklin has apparently died...again:

 

Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul, Dies at 76

 

Inside Edition CBS

Wed, December 16, 2020, 11:05 PM EST

 

Aretha Franklin has died at the age of 76. The legendary performer is perhaps most famous for her hit song "Respect," which she released in 1967. By the age of 18, she had secured a record deal and climbed the billboard charts. She was known as the "Queen of Soul" by the late 1960s. In 2005, President George W. Bush honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 

Click on the link if you feel like it

[China]

17 things you've already forgotten happened in 2020

 

At long, long, long last, this weird and horrible year is ending. But however much it might feel like it, a pandemic was not the only thing to happen in 2020.

 

Here are 17 of the biggest, bizarrest, space-aliens-exist-est moments of the year that you've already forgotten happened.

 

1. We almost started World War III

Really, you'd think you would remember this one! On Jan. 2, the Pentagon announced that President Trump had ordered the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed via drone strike. 

 

2. Mr. Peanut was killed off, then reincarnated as Baby Nut

 

3. The weather went wild

In 141 years of climate records, there had never been a hotter January than the one this year. New York City was reclassified as a "humid subtropical climate zone," a designation shared by … Florida. Nearly 3 billion animals were affected by Australia's wildfire season, which ended in March with more than 46 million acres burned. There were a record-breaking 30 named storms in the Atlantic Hurricane Season, with meteorologists needing to resort to identifying storms with letters of the Greek alphabet after running out of prepared names. And only three states — Alaska, Hawaii, and North Dakota — weren't a part of a billion-dollar weather disaster.

 

...

 

6. The Defense Department shared bona fide UFO videos

In April, the Department of Defense released three videos of … well, to be honest, they're not really sure. The footage captured by Navy pilots shows physics-defying flying objects, which one astrophysicist who briefed the department described as "off-world vehicles not made on this earth."

 

Click on the link for the full list

[China]

 

[Jabbyrwock]

In case anyone was wondering if its still 2020:

 

Kilauea volcano has erupted on Hawaii’s Big Island, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The eruption began late on Sunday within the Halema'uma'u crater, shortly after 9.30pm local time. 

Observers at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) noticed the eruption started within the crater at Kīlauea’s summit, according to the USGS, who was in contact with the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. 

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hawaii-kilauea-volcano-eruption-today-b1776989.html

 

[China]

This Agency's End-of-2020 PSA Wins Prize for Most F-Bombs Ever

 

NSFW language.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Busch1724]

Don't forget 2020 also had two Taylor Swift albums released...

 

What did we do to deserve that? 

[Jabbyrwock]

21 minutes ago, Busch1724 said:

Don't forget 2020 also had two Taylor Swift albums released...

 

[China]

Dave Barry’s Year in Review 2020

 

We’re trying to think of something nice to say about 2020.

 

Okay, here goes: Nobody got killed by the murder hornets. As far as we know.

 

That’s pretty much it.

 

In the past, writing these annual reviews, we have said harsh things about previous years. We owe those years an apology. Compared to 2020, all previous years, even the Disco Era, were the golden age of human existence.

 

This was a year of nonstop awfulness, a year when we kept saying it couldn’t possibly get worse, and it always did. This was a year in which our only moments of genuine, unadulterated happiness were when we were able to buy toilet paper.

 

Which is fitting, because 2020 was one long, howling, Category 5 crapstorm.

 

We sincerely don’t want to relive this year. But our job is to review it. If you would prefer to skip this exercise in masochism, we completely understand.

 

If, however, you wish, for some sick reason, to re-experience 2020, now is the time to put on your face mask, douse your entire body with hand sanitizer and then — to be safe — don a hazmat suit, as we look back at the unrelenting insanity of this hideous year, starting with …

 

JANUARY
… which begins with all of Washington, as well as parts of Virginia and Maryland, gripped by the gripping historic drama of the impeachment of Donald Trump. Remember that? How gripped we were?

 

Click on the link for more

[China]

Napoleon re-enactor Oleg Sokolov sentenced for dismembering student-turned-lover

 

A Russian professor who beheaded his student-turned-lover — and then planned to commit suicide as Napoleon Bonaparte — has been sentenced to more than 12 years in a stockade, according to a report.

 

Oleg Sokolov, 64, a former history professor at St. Petersburg State University, was found boozed up in a river in November 2019 with a bag containing the severed arms of 24-year-old Anastasia Yeshchenko.

 

Her severed head was discovered in an IKEA bag in his luxury apartment, while her torso and legs were recovered from the Moika River in St. Petersburg, East2West News reported.

 

Sokolov — Russia’s most famous Napoleon re-enactor — sat impassively while wearing a mask as a court in St. Petersburg sentenced him to 12½ years in a penal colony on Friday.

 

“He shot her, then tried to strangle her, but she continued showing signs of life so he shot her again,” Judge Yulia Maksimenko said, adding that he shot her four times with a rifle before dismembering her with a knife and saw.

 

One of the bullets, which were fired from a Soviet-era TOZ-17 stylized as a 19th-century cavalry rifle, went through the woman’s right eye, East2West reported.

 

After killing her and hiding her body parts under a bed, Sokolov partied with friends.

 

“His friends visited him, they all drank cognac,” the court heard.

 

Once they left, he beheaded and dismembered the corpse in his bathroom.

 

Sokolov was caught when he was found in the icy river trying to dispose of his lover’s arms, which he had chopped off at her shoulders.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

River dredging near Chernobyl could send radioactive waste into water table, scientists warn

 

In 1986, a reactor accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine led to an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction that is still considered to be the worst nuclear disaster in history. The fallout from the Chernobyl explosion has made hundreds of square miles around the now-uninhabited town a veritable dead zone, void of humans. 

 

Now, a Ukrainian dredging company, Sobi, is doing construction work in the Chernobyl area that some experts warn could cause more people to get sick and spread radioactive waste.

 

Specifically, Sobi has been dredging the Pripyat, a river that runs past the Chernobyl reactor, in order to create an inland shipping route, according to The Guardian. Groups that attempt to protect the public from nuclear radiation, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, have warned that the dredging could cause radioactive sludge from the 1986 disaster to leach into the drinking water consumed by 8 million Ukrainians. Other NGOs, including the World Wildlife Fund and BirdLife, have accused the Ukrainian government of breaking the law by allowing the dredging despite not performing an environmental impact statement, which is mandated by Ukrainian regulations.

 

Despite these concerns, Sobi has continued with its work since July.

 

"The fact they want to build a dam and have boats going just by the bottom of the Chernobyl reactor – for me this is unbelievable," Dr David Boilley, a nuclear physicist and chairman of a French NGO that monitors radioactive pollution, told The Guardian. "This is the most contaminated part of the exclusion zone." A Sobi manager told The Guardian that "analysis showed that the work can be done safely."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Popocatépetl: Mexican volcano's spectacular eruption caught on camera

 

Mexico's Popocatépetl volcano erupted on Thursday with a dramatic show of lava and a cloud of ash and rocks that reached 3,000m (9,800ft) into the sky.

 

No-one was hurt. Popocatépetl is an active stratovolcano, 70km (43 miles) south-east of the capital, Mexico City.

 

Its name means "smokey mountain" in the indigenous Náhuatl language.

 

Caught on camera, a timelapse of the eruption shows its power.

 

Click on the link for the video

[COWBOY-KILLA-]

I’ve been to this Volcano up close. It’s amazing. The few days we were there it spewed clouds of ash and creates some gnarly colors and landscapes surrounding it.
 

One of the very small local cities close by has an urban legend of Nahuales that roam the cornfields and countryside. 
 

a nagual (pronounced [na'wal]) is a human being who has the power to shapeshift into a jaguar form. A widespread superstition holds that Naguals must make a pact with the devil as well as make him an offering. Naguals use their powers for good or evil according to their personality. In modern rural Mexico, nagual is sometimes synonymous with brujo ("wizard"): one who is able to shapeshift into an animal at night, (normally into a dog, owl, bat, a big wolf, or turkey) drink blood from human victims, steal property, cause disease, and the like.
 

One night we were were out on an adventure and we were crossing a cornfield and my friend stopped and turned white with fear. He didn’t move a muscle. I asked him, hey are you ok? You are acting weird. He smiled and said all good all good, no worries, in Spanish.
 

Later on that night after leaving the area he said he swore he saw one. He Said he didn’t want to bring attention to it with the 3 of us standing close by so he moved the conversation on To something else. 
 

I told him, man, next time speak up. So we can gtfo outta some scary ass cornfield at 2am. Lol. They take the Ocult very serious for the most part. I doNt partake but always approach the ocult with respect and caution, even though I’m a skeptic.  Always an adventure down there.

 

 The city we were in has a long history with these creatures that goes back hundreds of years. We looked it up the next day after his sighting. We didn’t know beforehand.

 

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by COWBOY-KILLA-

[China]

On 12/21/2020 at 9:39 AM, Jabbyrwock said:

In case anyone was wondering if its still 2020:

 

Kilauea volcano has erupted on Hawaii’s Big Island, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The eruption began late on Sunday within the Halema'uma'u crater, shortly after 9.30pm local time. 

Observers at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) noticed the eruption started within the crater at Kīlauea’s summit, according to the USGS, who was in contact with the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. 

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hawaii-kilauea-volcano-eruption-today-b1776989.html

 

 

 

[China]

New for 2021:

 

Parasite found in undercooked meat linked with risk of rare brain cancer

 

A common parasite people get from contaminated water and undercooked meat may be associated with rare brain cancers, researchers reported Monday.

 

They found evidence that people infected with Toxoplasma gondii, or T. gondii, have a higher risk of developing rare but highly fatal gliomas.

The parasite can sometimes form cysts in the brain and the inflammation associated with these cysts might be responsible, the researchers reported in the International Journal of Cancer.

 

This is not a banana and an apple.  This is Toxoplasma gondii.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[China]

Have fun with 2020!

 

2020 Game

[China]

The Kraken has awoken:

 

Rumble felt in Broward, Miami-Dade and Florida Keys

 

What’s shaking, South Florida? On Friday afternoon, it was definitely something.

 

From north Broward County all the way down to the Keys, residents in several parts of the region reported feeling a “rumbling” Friday afternoon that made them wonder if there might have been an earthquake or sonic boom.

 

The cause of the mysterious rumble has not been determined, but the U.S. Geological Survey tells Local 10 News that it wasn’t an earthquake.

 

“We got reports of people experiencing shaking in the South Florida area around 1:15 p.m.,” said Paul Caruso, a USGS geophysicist. “Our computers did not locate any earthquakes automatically, so we looked at all the seismometers and we did not detect any earthquake activity.”

 

In the past, military jets breaking the sound barrier have caused similar reports in South Florida.

 

One viewer in Miami spotted a military jet flying north to south unusually low, which could explain a lot, but at this point, local authorities are still trying to confirm what caused the unusual shake.

 

No injuries or damages have been reported, but it created quite a stir for unsuspecting residents.

 

Viewers in several Broward County cities, as far north as Coconut Creek, called our newsroom to report what they felt after 1 p.m. Calls also came from Weston, Sunrise, Plantation, Margate and Tamarac.

 

Some people in Miami-Dade were also reporting feeling something strange — including in West Kendall, Doral and Pinecrest — and emergency dispatchers in the Florida Keys were also taking calls.

 

Click on the link for the full story

[China]

My daughter has no idea what's coming.  This will be my third (I missed one while I was away at college)...

 

Trillions of Brood 10 Cicadas to Emerge in U.S. After 17 Years Underground

 

Trillions of cicadas are set to emerge across 15 U.S. states this spring, as a colony of insects known as Brood 10 awakens from a 17-year-long hibernation.

 

 

The bugs, colloquially but incorrectly known as "locusts," are expected to appear for the first time since 2004 in Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

 

Having spent almost two decades underground in their immature "nymph" state eating tree root sap, the bugs will crawl out in mid-May to late June when soil hits 64 degrees Fahrenheit—likely after a sprinkling of warm rain. Once above ground, the insects will set about mating, the noise of which can hit 100 decibels, and lay their eggs before dying.

 

Click on the link for the full article