500words

  The Great Hedge of   India Map Showing the hedge in green The Great Hedge of India was part of India’s inland customs line. Started in 1840s by the East India Company as a series of guard houses in Bengal, and taken over by the British government in 1858, it gradually became a continuous barrier stretching from the Punjab in the North West of India,   in what is now Pakistan, to Orissa near the Bay of Bengal in the South East, a distance of some 2,300 miles, a comparable distance with London to Istanbul. The barrier produced a stranglehold on trade and travel for the whole of the Indian sub-continent.   One official wrote that it could be “compared to nothing else in the world other than the Great Wall of China.” Nobody knows who first had the idea to build a hedge across the heart of India, and crazy as it may sound, it was certainly not frivolous.   It’s sole purpose was to exploit one of the most basic ingredients for human survival, salt.   ...

Aberfan, on the West slopes of the Taff valley about four miles from Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, grew up as a colliery village supporting the Merthyr Valley coalmine, opened in 1869. By 1966 the population of the village had risen to 5,000. Originally spoil from the colliery was deposited on the valley bottom, but by the 1910s tipping started on the slopes above the village. By 1966 there were seven tips comprising 2 million cubic meters of waste. Tip 7 was the only one in use, it was about 110ft high and included “tailings”, fine coal ash which becomes similar to quicksand when wet. At 9.15 in the morning of 21st October 1966 water saturated material broke away from the base of tip7 above the village of Aberfn. The movement caused the material to liquify and it raced 700yds down the hill at 11-21mph in wave 20-30ft high engulfing 2 cottages and killing the occupants. It continued on down the hill bursting 2 watermains which added further water to the spoil. This avalanche hit...

This is a photograph of the mysterious Sentinelese people who inhabit North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Islands.  The Sentinelese people may be one of the most isolated populations in the world. The island, and this photograph, came to global attention in 2018 with the murder of John Allen Chau, an American missionary who wanted to convert the Sentinelese to Christianity.  He was killed after illegally travelling to the island.  He should have know better.  The Sentinelese have a long history of extreme aggression towards outsiders trying to make contact. Describing the Sentinelese, 13th century explorer Marco Polo wrote, "They are the most violent and cruel generation who seem to eat everybody they catch." Fast forward through years of Burmese slave trading and British occupation (which probably didn't lessen the Sentinelese dislike of outsiders) to 1867 when an Indian merchant ship, Nineveh, was wrecked during a storm. 106 crew members landed on the beach a...

   We all know that the camera never lies; except we all know that it does, and quite often. The level of deception varies hugely. Maybe a filter to smooth your skin tone out and make your eyes a bit bigger, maybe a touch of photoshop magic to give you that physique that you so desire; sometimes to hilarious effect. Photomanipulation is not a new phenomenon. The idea to trick the viewer is almost as old as photography itself; the first photograph was created in 1814 and by 1860 photomanipulation was being used politically, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's portrait was forged by sticking Lincoln's head to the Southern politician John Calhoun's much less scrawny body . This story begins in 1917 and concerns two cousins: Frances Griffiths aged 9, and 16-year-old Elsie Wright who duped thousands across the world including Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, into believing in fairies. This hadn’t been their original intention, they just wanted to get o...

  Late in 2019 rumour of a virus started to emerge from China – later named Covid-19 and to spread the world and become a global pandemic.   Across the world, governments took steps to contain the virus, through various means, some quickly, some less so.   A lot of countries introduced ‘stay at home’ rules and closed down airports and ports to prevent ingress and egress of people, who may carry the virus, increasing the spread. One of the effects of these steps was to stop the movement of ships in and out of port, and with that, an estimated half a million seafarers were stranded at sea.   They were stuck in a place they didn’t want to be – and there was no way out.   Hundreds of thousands of seafarers were unable to repatriate to their home countries, were unable to take shore leave, were unable to see their families.   In fact they were effectively imprisoned on their vessels.   At the same time, those seafarers who would have expected to take on v...

  Adrift Jose Salvador Alvarenga is a Salvadorian fisherman who spent 483 days at sea. Alvarenga set off from Mexico on 17 November 2012, with a fellow fisherman, Ezequiel Córdoba. They intended to spend 30 hours deep-sea fishing, but their boat was blown off course and damaged during a storm that lasted five days. With no sails or oars, and with a dead battery, the fishermen drifted towards open waters. They managed to catch fish, turtles, jellyfish and seabirds, and drank rainwater, as well as their own urine and turtle blood, in order to survive. However, around four months into the journey, Córdoba became sick from eating raw food, and eventually starved to death when he then refused to eat. Alvarenga continued to drift at sea for several more months, until he reached the Marshall Islands on 30 January 2014, following a journey of around 6,000 miles. Underwater Harrison Okene was on board the tug-boat AHT Jascon-4, when it capsized off the coast of Nigeria on 26 May 2013....

  Places people didn’t want to be stuck in: The Pillory The pillory was an ancient form of punishment by public humiliation used generally to punish petty criminals such as cheats, liars, rioters and homosexuals.   The use of the pillory and whipping post go back to 1274, it was used in countries over Europe and their colonies.   The last recorded use in England and Wales was in 1830 although it was not formally abolished until 1873.   Originally a public humiliation for petty crime, in the 15 th and 16 th centuries it became a tool for the Catholic ascendancy to use against Presbyterian dissenters. The pillory consisted of wooden boards on a post, it had holes to hold the head and hands and was erected in market places, cross roads or other public spaces, usually placed on a platform to increase the visibility of the culprit to the audience.   It often had a placard placed nearby stating the prisoner’s crime.   The punishment generally lasted no mor...