50 Years Ago

P. M. Borisov has outlined a project, in the ... Literaturnaya Gazeta, of a 90 km. long dam across the Bering Strait equipped with powerful pumps pumping cold Arctic Ocean water into the Pacific Ocean at the rate of 500 km.3 in 24 hours. Such a project ... would increase the flow of warm Atlantic Ocean water into the Arctic Ocean and change the climate of the Arctic regions. This project is criticized by D. A. Drogaitzev...[who] argues that such a project would displace the locus of Atlantic Ocean cyclones to the region of the Barentz Sea. Such a displacement would certainly change the climate of Northern Europe and Western Siberia, but this change will produce colder winters and hotter summers and will lead to the displacement of the desert belt from the region of North Africa and Central Asia to the north of Europe.

From Nature 6 May 1961

100 Years Ago

Three letters have recently appeared in The Times ... relating to a mysterious heraldic animal known as the “jall” or “eall,” of which the effigy has been recognised in St. George's Chapel, Westminster ... Although described as having horns, tusks, and a short fluffy tail, the jall has been identified with the goat ... In an old document ... the eall is stated to be as large as a horse, with a tail like that of an elephant, goat-like jaws, and horns capable of movement, its colour being black. Other accounts state, however, that it has jaws like a wild boar and cloven hoofs. It may be suggested, if the beast ever had corporeal existence, that the African wart-hog may have formed the original type, that animal having a black hide, cloven hoofs, an elephant-like tail, large tusks, and big face-warts which might perhaps be regarded as elastic horns.

From Nature 4 May 1911