The Wilhelm Scream

In the 1951 movie Distant Drums starring Gary Cooper, a small band of soldiers were crossing a swamp in pursuit of Seminole Indians. While wading through the Everglades one unnamed soldier was attacked and dragged underwater by an alligator. His last sound as he died was a startled scream. In The Charge at Feather River two years later, a soldier named Private Wilhelm screamed in what sounded like alligator-assaulted agony when he was struck by an arrow. In fact, his cry of pained surprise was practically identical to unnamed soldier’s. Both men would soon be forgotten as a bit parts in B-movies, seen by relatively few moviegoers. But the holler they bellowed went on to be heard by millions– if not billions– of people worldwide.

Number Stations

Short wave radio enthusiasts worldwide have heard of the strange and elusive Numbers Channels. It is a name that refers to any one of several of unusual broadcasts that usually start at a very specific time, though often from different locations. The broadcasts contain some odd elements like excerpts of music, a regular attention message, and a sting of phonetic letters or numbers—for which they are named. For the most part, the signals make no sense—at least not to most people—the messages are fairly random, and there is not enough information in the broadcast itself to allow one to decipher it. Such transmissions are fairly common. They are most often reported in Europe, but can be found anywhere. Each adheres to a strict schedule, and often begin at either the hour or half-after. Most of the time the voice reading these letters is female, though sometimes male or a child’s. Despite being without any obvious function, they seem pretty harmless. So why does no licensed radio station admit to sending them, no government will admit to sanctioning them, and no one will confess to being responsible for them?

Project Babylon: Gerald Bull’s Downfall

Gerald Bull is a prime example of a man who created his own luck–unfortunately for him most of it was bad. A brilliant and distinguished artillery engineer, Bull spent much of his life in the upper echelons of government-funded weapons research. Though his career took him down a convoluted and often difficult path, he devoted his professional life to a single-minded pursuit of his dream: to build a gun large enough to shoot satellites into orbit. Bull nearly single-handedly resurrected the science of supergun artillery, and in so doing played a major role in 2 wars. But Bull’s confrontational style and brusque manner won him very few friends within the governments for which he worked. His poor networking skills combined with a near total disregard for the dangerous politics in which he meddled led to heavy fines, a short stint in prison, and ultimately, to his assassination.

John Frum and the Cargo Cults

Every year on February 15th, natives of Tanna Island in the Republic of Vanuatu hold a grand celebration in honor of an imaginary man named John Frum. Villagers clothe themselves in homemade US Army britches, paint “USA” on their bare chests and backs, and run a replica of Old Glory up the flagpole alongside the Marine Corps Emblem and the state flag of Georgia. Barefoot soldiers then march in perfect step in the shadow of Yasur, the island’s active volcano, with red-tipped bamboo “rifles” slung over their shoulders. February 15th is known as John Frum day on Tanna Island, and these activities are the islanders’ holiest religious service.

The Alcatraz Redemption

Officially, there were never any successful escape attempts from California’s notorious Alcatraz Prison. Nicknamed ‘The Rock’, Alcatraz is located on the tiny island of the same name in San Francisco Bay. It is about one and a quarter miles from the mainland, outside reasonable swimming distance and surrounded by strong ocean currents. This location afforded it formidable defenses against escape. Between 1934 and 1963, when the prison was operating, only fourteen attempts were made; most of the escapees involved were shot by guards or recaptured. One exception, however, came in 1962. Prisoners Frank Lee Morris, Clarence Anglin, and John Anglin had spent months developing an elaborate plan to get out of the imposing structure, as well as a way to cross San Francisco Bay to the mainland with a makeshift raft. After lights-out on the night of 11 June 1962, the trio decided that the time was right and set their plan in motion. After that, however, they were never seen again.

Misbehaving Pituitaries

At the base of the human brain there lies a tiny organ called the pituitary gland. About the size of a pea, this demure little gland produces and secretes a cocktail of hormones into the bloodstream from its bony nook inside the skull, helping the body to govern many internal systems. The pituitary is perhaps most well-known for its production of the amino acid protein somatotropin, a growth hormone which stimulates cell reproduction and bodily development. This humble chemical factory typically produces some amount of growth hormone throughout an individual’s life, though the volume usually drops off precipitously after adolescence. In spite of its small size, however, misbehaving pituitaries have been known to cause massive consequences for their owners.

The Deepest Hole

Over forty years ago, researchers in the Soviet Union began an ambitious drilling project whose goal was to penetrate the Earth’s upper crust and sample the warm, mysterious area where the crust and mantle intermingle– the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or “Moho.” So deep is this area that the Russian scientists had to invent new ways of drilling, and some of their new methods proved quite inventive. But despite the valiant effort which spanned several decades, the Russians never reached their goal, and many of the Earth’s secrets were left undiscovered. The work done by the Soviets did, however, provide a plethora of information about what lies just beneath the surface, and it continues to be scientifically useful today. The project is known as the Kola Superdeep Borehole.

Damn Distractions

In the North American fur-trading days, many trappers came to rely on a high-calorie, long-endurance foodstuff known as pemmican, a recipe which was borrowed from the native peoples. Pemmican was produced by using rocks to smash fat and berries into thin strips of dried meat, fusing them together into a primitive meaty-and-fruity power bar. A more modern version of this chewy chow can be found here at Damn Interesting, as we smash sweet excuse-berries into thin strips of dried-out articles for your masticating pleasure.

We hope you won’t mind a handful of classic articles as we make some book-related preparations. We need a few more days to finish planting the art-related bush that we were beating around in our book announcement, and there are a number of other exciting additions afoot. We’ll keep you abreast of our progress in the days ahead.

On a related note, the very attractive Damn Interesting magnets have arrived, and they will shortly be sent out to all who donated $15 or more to the book effort. Exclamation point.

On an unrelated note, if you like to print the articles from Damn Interesting, you’ll find that the paper presentation of our pages has been much improved. It was previously pretty poor.

Bad Rye and the Salem Witches

In the late 1600s, the Puritan settlement of Salem in Massachusetts toppled into chaos when accusations of witchcraft began to appear. Two young girls, aged nine and eleven, were said to have fallen victim to fits “beyond the power of Epileptic Fits or natural disease,” including screams, strange contortions, and throwing objects. The village doctor, unable to explain the symptoms, suggested that witchcraft may be afoot in Salem. Others in the settlement began to exhibit similar inexplicable behavior, and shortly the accusations began to fly. The infamous trials that followed left nineteen people hanged to death, and scores of others imprisoned under suspicion of supernatural wrongdoing. Today, few would suggest that those punished were actually guilty of witchcraft, but the true cause of the errant behavior in Salem’s citizens is still a mystery. One theory– perhaps the most intriguing yet offered– suggests that the community’s rye crop may have been partially to blame. Moreover, such maladjusted rye may have played a role in many of history’s mysterious events.

Mincemeat and the Imaginary Man

Early in the morning on the 1st of May 1943, a fisherman on a beach in Spain discovered a waterlogged corpse which had washed ashore during the night. The dead man was clothed in British military attire and a life preserver, and he had a briefcase chained to his lifeless body. Apparently a casualty of an airplane accident at sea, the body was transported to the local port, where its discovery was reported to the Nazi officials stationed in the city of Huelva. From his personal effects, the man was identified as Major William Martin, a temporary captain and acting major in the British Royal Marines. Rather than allowing possible military intelligence to go unintercepted, the local agents for the Abwehr– the German intelligence organization– coaxed the briefcase open to examine its contents. Inside, along with the man’s personal effects, the Nazis discovered a personal correspondence between Lt. Gen. Sir Archibald Nye, vice chief of the Imperial General Staff, and General Sir Harold Alexander, the British commander in North Africa. This letter described key details of the Allies’ plans to invade Nazi-held territory. It seemed that luck was favoring Germany; but the discovery ultimately resulted in disaster for the Nazis.

The “Wow” Signal

It’s no rare occurrence in science fiction: The introverted researcher working the graveyard shift at a SETI radio observatory jumps out of his seat in surprise when the red light blinks on the control panel. “We’re getting a signal!” he shouts into a phone as needles dance across paper chart recorders, and scientists rapidly converge on the scene. At some point someone yells, “Get me the President!” at the person whose job it is to get presidents. On August 15th, 1977, such a signal was received at the Big Ear radio observatory in Ohio, though the ensuing drama was considerably more subdued. The volunteer who spotted the pattern on the paper logs circled the data and wrote “Wow!” in the margin. The radio telescope was observing space as part of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, and it was the most compelling signal the receiver had recorded in its fourteen years of operation. It was powerful enough to push the Big Ear’s monitoring device off the charts.

The Flying Saucers of North America

Under the cover of darkness on 07 October 1959, a convoy of military vehicles escorted a flatbed truck through the abandoned streets of Malton, Canada just outside of Toronto. Local police had arranged to clear the route from a top-secret aircraft hangar to Toronto harbor, so the drivers paid little mind to traffic laws as they traversed the city. Upon arrival at the harbor the concealed cargo would be transferred to a US Navy tugboat, where it would make its way to a special NASA research facility in the United States under close guard. The exaggerated security was understandable given the circumstances: The secret stowed beneath the truck’s tarps was a real-life flying saucer.

A Fluke of Nature

As the sun rises over a grassy pasture, and the morning light glints from the countless clinging drops of dew, a single snail resolutely inches toward a mound of steaming nourishment. But unbeknownst to the armored gastropod, this seemingly ordinary heap of cow dung conceals a legion of tiny Dicrocoelium dendriticum eggs, each of which contains the embryo of a sinister mind-controlling parasite. As the snail gorges itself on the fibrous feast, it unwittingly sets the collection of unborn lancet flukes on a miniature adventure which will lead them through slime, zombies, and bile to ultimately find their own unique kind of utopia.

The Farewell Dossier

In 1982, operatives from the USSR’s Committee for State Security– known internationally as the KGB– celebrated the procurement of a very elusive bit of Western technology. The Soviets were developing a highly lucrative pipeline to carry natural gas across the expanse of Siberia, but they lacked the software to manage the complex array of pumps, valves, turbines, and storage facilities that the system would require. The United States possessed such software, but the US government had predictably turned down their Cold War opponent’s request to purchase the product. Never ones to allow the limitations of the law to dictate their actions, the KGB officials inserted an agent to abduct the technology from a Canadian firm. Unbeknownst to the Soviet spies, the software they stole sported a little something extra: a few lines of computer code which had been inserted just for them.

The Fall of the Eastland

At a pier on the Chicago River on 24 July 1915, as the passenger steamer SS Eastland prepared to embark across lake Michigan, chief engineer Joseph Erickson grew increasingly concerned about his ship’s demeanor. While the long line of passengers strolled up the gangplank, the engine room crew pumped water into the ballast tanks to keep the ship and its shifting load on an even keel. But the Eastland was being more persnickety than usual on that particular morning, seemingly intent on leaning a bit to one side or the other. The hundreds of Western Electric employees on board the passenger liner were bound for the company picnic in Michigan City, Indiana, just across the lake. The annual event was typically filled with frolicking and festivity, so the ship was brimming with excited families and plentiful picnic baskets. When the vessel reached its capacity of 2,500, the gangplank was brought in and the ship’s orchestra sprang into action in the ballroom. Many passengers began dancing in spite of the crowded conditions, unconcerned with the slowly increasing slope of the dance floor.

Spring Break, Damnit

Sometime soon we’ll be reading through the writing samples we’ve received, so if you sent a sample we’ll get back to you. We’re also laboring to mail out the multitude of book-donation magnets.

By popular demand, we are withholding re-runs and apologies. For those who enjoy the occasional classic, you’re welcome to play Russian Roulette with our archives. For those who appreciate apologies… sorry, we can’t help you.

Submersible Aircraft Carriers

On 09 September 1942, at about 6:00am Pacific War Time, a lookout on the US Oregon coast spotted a single incoming aircraft. The small, unmarked biplane plane sputtered and popped as it flew through the dawn mist. It slowly made its way over a heavily wooded area which was known to be particularly prone to forest fires, and dropped a pair of cylinders from a low altitude. Soon a column of smoke became visible from the forest as the strange plane turned around, its distinct engine noise fading back towards the ocean.

Immediately, Howard “Razz” Gardner– the lookout who had first spotted the aircraft– dove into the thick forest to battle the developing blaze. By the time the larger support crew penetrated the woods with their firefighting equipment four and a half hours later, Gardner and a fellow lookout had managed to wrestle the fire into submission. As the crew helped to mop up the last of the smoldering mess, the investigators found the remains of the offending ordnance. The fragments of the phosphorus incendiary bombs were stamped with Japanese markings.

The event came to be known as the Lookout Air Raid, and it marked the first time that the continental United States was bombed by an enemy aircraft. It was determined that the aircraft responsible was a Yokosuka E14Y floatplane, and that it had managed to reach the US coast because it had been launched from an unlikely platform: a Japanese submarine lingering just offshore.

Silent Lucidity

There was a time that I could fly. I jutted my right fist into the air, and launched into the sky. My stomach dropped with the sensation of breaking gravity’s bond, and the summer air cooled as I reached higher. When the roads were so far below as to be an indistinct ashen blur, I halted and curled my legs under me as I was pelted by icy crystals of clouds, and surveyed all below. There was a moment of idle indecision, but in the end it mattered not at all. I picked a direction and dove. The experience was one of my many brushes with Lucid Dreaming. It is a phenomenon that many discredit, naming it a hoax and naturalist mythology despite the fact that it has strong scientific evidence supporting it as a real occurrence. With a devoted training regimen, most anyone can learn to harness their own subconscious to experience surrealistic events and places. In a controlled dream, one can pursue anything from the cessation of nightmares, to investigating problems, to engaging in sexual fantasies, to my personal choice—jetting around the skies like Superman.

Damn Radio Activity

If you live in the Miami area and you own one of those fancy new AM radio receiver sets, you’re in luck. I’ll be doing a short interview on Sports Talk 790 AM The Ticket today at about 6:15pm Eastern Time. It’s guaranteed to modulate your amplitude.

For those lacking in Miami proximity and/or AM radios, I hope to get my mitts on an MP3 copy of the interview to post here. Update: Here’s the MP3. I’m a scientist!

Project Alpha and the Spoon Benders

In the late 1960s, a young Israeli man named Uri Geller gained a substantial amount of attention and fame following a collection of remarkable demonstrations on US and British television. In full view of astonished audiences, Uri was seemingly able to manipulate metal with his mind. Spoons softened in his hands, keys curled at the gentle stroke of his fingers, and he was able to cause compasses to wobble at his cajoling. He was also known to restart stopped wristwatches by merely holding them in his hands. According to Geller, these feats were the products of sheer will, a phenomenon known as psychokinesis.

In addition to his mental metallurgy and magnetism, the dashing young Israeli demonstrated potent psychic abilities, most notably in his ability to reproduce drawings which he had never seen. A volunteer would draw a picture while Uri was not watching, and Geller would use his gifts to attempt to reproduce the image. Although his recreations were not always completely accurate, they were sufficiently similar as to provoke astonishment from onlookers.

Geller’s high-profile exploits in the 1970s significantly raised awareness of “paranormal science” worldwide, and since that time many have gone on to mimic his feats. Though there are throngs of skeptics who have reproduced his handiwork under the harsh light of reality, there are still a handful of yet-to-be-explained effects exhibited by Geller and his spoon-bending contemporaries.

How Not to be Seen

Humans have long been fascinated by the concept of invisibility. From H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man to Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility, purveyors of fiction have pondered what one would do if one could move about unseen. Invisibility is often portrayed as a perfect transparency– ala the Invisible Man– however this method is in conflict with the laws of nature as we understand them. Moreover, a transparent person would be plagued with a host of difficulties that seem quite insurmountable. Any consumed food or drink would be embarrassingly visible as it meanders through the digestive system, and these visible nutrients would immediately begin to integrate into the body. That’s to say nothing of wardrobe problems and social difficulties.

The competing approach to invisibility involves some sort of cloaking device to route photons around an object. This method is somewhat more feasible, but of course it comes with its own unique set of complications. For instance, if all the outside light is diverted around something, no light is able to reach an observer inside, leaving them unable to see out.

These difficulties and others have long left all serious speculation about invisibility lodged safely in the distant future. But this is no longer so. In October of 2006, Professor Sir John Pendry of the Imperial College London announced the successful creation of a rudimentary cloaking device which nudges the idea a bit closer to reality. Perhaps most surprising of all, the whole concept rests on a fairly simple physical principle of light– one that requires no electricity to operate, and that every high-schooler learns in basic physics.

Sympathy for the Devil

There are few things as thrilling as the story of a dramatic escape, especially one with a happy ending. It is understandable, therefore, that the public is often disappointed and critical when a kidnapping victim found alive is revealed to have had seemingly enough contact with the outside world to make such an escape. Stories of survival can feel ruined when there turns out to have been what looks like an ‘easy way out’.

One well-publicized example was that of Elizabeth Smart, the Utah teenager who was abducted at knifepoint from her bedroom in 2002. Nine months later she and her captors were stopped by police not far from her home. Elizabeth was in disguise, and lied about her identity. It was not until some time after being handcuffed and separated from the abductors that she began to cooperate. More recently, Missouri teenager Shawn Hornbeck was found in early 2007 after having been kidnapped and held for more than four years outside St. Louis, only 50 miles from home. Unlike Smart, Hornbeck was able to tell police officers who he was; it was revealed, though, that Hornbeck had been allowed Internet access and a fair degree of autonomy.

In such cases, it is extremely easy to blame the victims; it seems very plausible that the kidnapped individuals were simply not clever, resourceful, or courageous enough to flee their respective abductors. However, this disturbing tendency has little to do with any supposed weakness on the part of the victim. Given the right conditions, abductors are able to exert an astonishing amount of influence over their victims – to the point at which the captive has full loyalty to his or her captor while believing that this was his or her own choice. It is a cognitive phenomenon related to brainwashing and known as Stockholm syndrome.

Bad Blood in Tuskegee

Early in the twentieth century, the medical community was practically helpless in its battle against syphilis. The crippling affliction was spreading at an alarming rate in certain areas, particularly among the poorer segments of the world population. Even for those who could afford medical care, the only known treatments rivaled the disease itself in the harm they did to sufferers. In 1932, Dr. Taliaferro Clark from the United States Public Health Service (PHS) launched a study in Macon County, Alabama in order to document the progression of this troublesome sexually-transmitted disease. The region was home to hundreds of poor and mostly illiterate black farmers, and cases of syphilis had reached alarming proportions. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was undertaken in the hopes that a deeper understanding of syphilis would provide new insights on potential treatments, and possibly justify a government-funded treatment program. But from these noble beginnings, a lack of funds and a shortage of ethics led to one of the most shameful clinical mishaps in US history.

The Windscale Disaster

hIn the wake of World War 2 the United States government enacted legislation which prohibited any other nations from receiving the scientific bounty derived from the Manhattan Project. This meant that despite the participation of British scientists in the project, Britain recieved none of the benefits of the research. The year after the United States’ first successful nuclear bomb test in July of 1945, the British government decided that they too must develop a nuclear program in order to maintain their position as a world power. This pilot project eventually developed into the Windscale Nuclear plant. In October 1957, after several years of successful operation, the workers at Windscale noticed some curious readings from their temperature monitoring equipment as they carried out standard maintenance. The reactor temperature was slowly rising during a time that they expected it to be falling. The remote detection equipment seemed to be malfunctioning, so two plant workers donned protective equipment and hiked to the reactor to inspect it in person. When they arrived, they were alarmed to discover that the interior of the uranium-filled reactor was ablaze.

Staying Abreast of Human Sexuality

There are 1.75 million animal species that have been noted and named by our scientific classification system. Of them, there are 5,800 types of mammal. All mammals are warm-blooded and have a four-chambered heart, but so do birds. Most mammals give birth to live young, but there are exceptions to that. Mammals all have hair, but again they share that trait with other creatures–in this case spiders. In fact there is only one truly defining characteristic of mammals that is unique, and that is the trait for with they are named: the mammary gland. All mammalian species posses a gland that secretes or oozes milk for the repast of their young. In most cases the mammary gland becomes enlarged during lactation, and diminishes to almost unnoticeable when the milk is unneeded. However, amidst all 5,800 mammals, there is only one species that has perpetually swollen mammary glands. Odds are you are a member of this strangely anomalous, difficult to explain species. At first glance the human breast defies explanation, but there are those who have spent careers and lifetimes in pursuit of explaining the relative enormity of the bust. Theories about the abundance abound. As of yet there is no consensus as to why the human female is so endowed, but staying abreast of the emerging ideas can make for titillating research.

The Birth Control of Yesteryear

Approximately 2,600 years ago– around 630 BCE– the Greek island of Thera was plagued by drought and overpopulation. According to legend, an assortment of settlers were selected to sail south to establish a colony in more hospitable climes. The men and women apprehensively put to sea, and the gaggle of enterprising Greeks eventually erected the city of Cyrene on Africa’s northern tip. There, the settlers encountered a local herb which would ultimately bring them and their progeny fantastic wealth. The prized plant became such a key pillar of the Cyrenean economy that its likeness was stamped upon many of the city’s gold and silver coins. The images often depicted a regal-looking woman sitting in a chair, with one hand touching the herb and her other hand pointing at her genitals. The plant was known as silphium or laserwort, and its heart-shaped fruit purportedly brought the ancient world a highly sought-after freedom: the opportunity to enjoy sex with very little risk of pregnancy.

A Walk in the Valley of the Uncanny

In June 2006 at the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories in Keihanna, Japan, reporters and scientists gathered for the unveiling of a major new project by Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro. Once everyone had arrived, an assistant pulled back a curtain to reveal…another Dr. Ishiguro? Certainly the second figure had a very strong resemblance to Dr. Ishiguro, wearing the same glasses and dressed in the same clothing. Seated in a chair, the duplicate was rocking one foot back and forth, blinking and adjusting itself. It looked around and then, in ordinary Japanese, introduced itself; it was named Geminoid HI-1.

For the reporters, up to that point virtually the only clue that Geminoid was an android had come from knowing that Ishiguro is a prominent roboticist. Ishiguro’s creation is more a puppet than an android, strictly speaking; Ishiguro speaks and acts through it via the Internet. As well as transmitting his voice, a motion-capture system allows Ishiguro to project the movements of his mouth and upper body onto Geminoid. The android itself is built of silicone and steel, and based on casts taken from Ishiguro’s body. Regular, small actions such as blinking are controlled by autonomous programs.

The strikingly realistic robot has since been met largely with wonder and admiration, which could mark success for Ishiguro in more ways than the obvious. Although Ishiguro’s earlier android projects were only a little less realistic, they tended to disturb viewers. This is consistent with a 1970 hypothesis by Dr. Masahiro Mori, another Japanese roboticist. Although not yet well-investigated by science, Mori’s “Uncanny Valley” theory holds that as a simulation of a human being’s appearance and/or motion becomes increasingly accurate, there is very suddenly a point at which humans’ interest in the creation turns into utter repulsion.

Half Science and Hafnium Bombs

In the latter half of 1998, a small clutch of researchers and students at the University of Texas embarked upon a groundbreaking experiment. Within a large outbuilding marked with a slapdash sign reading “Center for Quantum Electronics”, the team powered up a makeshift x-ray emitter and directed its radiation beam at an overturned disposable coffee cup. Atop the improvised styrofoam platform was a tiny smear of one of the most expensive materials on Earth: a variation of the chemical element hafnium known as Hf-178-m2. The researchers’ contraption– cobbled together from a scavenged dental x-ray machine and an audio amplifier– bombarded the sample with radiation for several days as monitoring equipment quietly collected data. When the experiment ended and the measurements were scrutinized, the project leader Dr. Carl B. Collins declared unambiguous success. If his conclusions are accurate, Collins and his colleagues may have found the key to developing fist-sized bombs which can deliver destruction equivalent to a dozen tons of conventional explosives. Despite considerable skepticism from the scientific community, the US Department of Defense has since spent millions of dollars probing the physicist’s findings.

Beware the Dangers of Oxygen

There’s a caustic substance common to our environment whose very presence turns iron into brittle rust, dramatically increases the risk of fire and explosion, and sometimes destroys the cells of the very organisms that depend on it for survival. This substance that makes up 21% of our atmosphere is Diatomic oxygen (O₂), more widely know as just oxygen. Of course, oxygen has its good points. Besides being necessary for respiration and the reliable combustion engine, it can be liquefied and used as rocket fuel. Oxygen is also widely used in the world of medicine as a means to imbue the body with a greater amount of the needed gas. But recent studies indicate that administering oxygen might be doing less good than hoped–and in fact be causing harm. No one is immune to the dangers of oxygen, but the people who might most suffer the ill effects are infants newly introduced to breathing, and those who are clinically dead.

Heavy Water and the Norwegians

On 19 November 1942, a pair of Royal Air Force Halifax bombers shouldered their way through thick winter clouds over Norway with troop-carrying assault gliders in tow. Inside each glider a payload of professional saboteurs from the 1st British Airborne Division weathered a rough ride as the planes approached their intended landing site on frozen lake Møsvatn. Somewhere in the snow-encased hills below, a team of Norwegian commandos vigilantly awaited their arrival. The ultimate objective of the joint mission was to penetrate and incapacitate the Vemork hydroelectric plant, a fortified Nazi facility nestled high in the mountains of Norway. Though the plant’s original purpose had been the production of electricity and fertilizer, the German occupiers were capitalizing on the facility’s ability to collect large amounts of heavy-water– a key ingredient in the Nazi effort to develop an atomic bomb.