Latest news with #ThorHeyerdahl
Yahoo
01-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NATO sends warships to patrol Arctic waters
MILAN — NATO has deployed a maritime task group made up of Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, and German vessels to boost its maritime presence in the Arctic and High North. The alliance's maritime forces assigned to the Standing Maritime Group 1, or SNMG1, have been operating in the strategic waters since this week. These include the flagship vessel De Ruyter from the Netherlands, the Thor Heyerdahl from Norway, the Bartolomeu Dias from Portugal, and the Rhön from Germany. Additional maritime patrol aircraft have been complementing the ships' activities. The NATO task group will conduct anti-submarine activities designed to protect critical sea lines of communication and ensure freedom of navigation in the region as well as routine patrols. '[They will also carry out] integrated operations involving the coordination of various surface ships and air assets to increase the alliance's understanding of the maritime environment, enhance information sharing and rehearse navigational maneuvers,' Commander Arlo Abrahamson, spokesperson for NATO's Allied Maritime Command, told Defense News. He added that it will provide NATO maritime forces with 'valuable' opportunities to enhance their knowledge of the polar regions and their ability to sustain operations in these waters. The deployment comes a few days after Russia launched a major naval exercise in the Pacific, Arctic, Baltic and Caspian seas, according to the Russian defense ministry. The 'July Storm' drill, which took place from July 23-27, was reported to have involved 150 warships and 15,000 military personnel. Over the last few years, experts have signaled an Arctic rapprochement between China and Russia displayed by organized joint military drills near the Arctic region as well as naval and air patrols over the East China Sea and Sea of Japan. A recent report published by the Center for European Policy Analysis warned that both countries also share a willingness to disrupt critical undersea infrastructure, which could affect the interests of NATO states. 'The disruption of critical undersea infrastructure (CUI) and seabed warfare activities represents another form of nefarious relations that Russia and China might further in the Arctic – both have a clear interest in disrupting CUI as part of a continued subthreshold operations against Western interests,' the report said. Seven NATO countries have territories located within the Arctic circle: Denmark, Canada, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. Solve the daily Crossword
New York Times
25-06-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Scientists Retrace 30,000-Year-Old Sea Voyage, in a Hollowed-Out Log
In 1947, against the best navigational advice, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and five crew members set sail from Peru on a balsa wood raft to test his theory that ancient South American cultures could have reached Polynesia. The frail vessel, called Kon-Tiki, crossed several thousand nautical miles of the Pacific in 103 days and showed that his anthropological hunch was at least feasible. In 2019, in much the same spirit, a research team led by Yousuke Kaifu, an anthropologist at the University of Tokyo, built a dugout canoe in order to study another aspect of western Pacific migration: How did ancient humans, more than 30,000 years ago, navigate the powerful Kuroshio current from Taiwan to southern Japanese islands, such as Okinawa, without maps, metal tools or modern boats? 'Since any physical evidence would have been washed away by the sea, we turned to experimental archaeology, in a similar vein to the Kon-Tiki,' Dr. Kaifu said. Two new studies published on Wednesday in the academic journal Science presented the results of those experiments. In one report, advanced ocean models recreated hundreds of virtual voyages to pinpoint the most plausible routes for the crossing. 'We tested various seasons, starting points and paddling methods under both modern and prehistoric conditions,' Dr. Kaifu said. The other paper charts the 45-hour journey that Dr. Kaifu's crew made from eastern Taiwan to Yonaguni Island in the southern Ryukyus. The mariners, four men and one woman, paddled the 25-foot canoe, a hollowed-out cedar log christened Sugime, for 122 nautical miles on the open sea, relying solely on the stars, sun and wind for their bearings. Often, they could not see their target island. 'Yosuke Kaifu's team has found the most likely answer to the migration question,' said Peter Bellwood, an archaeologist at the Australian National University who was not involved in the undertaking. Such a crossing between islands, he said, would have been one of the oldest, and among the longest, in the history of Homo sapiens up to that period, exceeded only by the migration to Australia from eastern Indonesia some 50,000 years ago. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
On This Day, May 17: Aristides wins first Kentucky Derby
On this date in history: In 1792, 24 brokers met in New York City and formed the New York Stock Exchange. In 1875, Aristides was the winner of the first Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. In 1943, the Memphis Belle became one of the first B-17 to complete 25 missions in World War II, securing the plane and crew's reputations as rockstars. The plane was the subject of a documentary at the time and a film about the crew was made in 1990 starring Matthew Modine, Eric Stoltz and Harry Connick Jr. Ten days after the 25th mission, the pilot, Capt. Robert K. Morgan and co-pilot, Capt. James Verinis, met the king and queen of England, to whom Morgan explained the origin of the plane's name. In 1954, in a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. In 1970, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl set sail from Morocco in a papyrus boat called the Ra II, modeled on drawings of ancient Egyptian sailing vessels. His mission was to prove his theory that ancient civilizations could have sailed to the Americas. He arrived in Barbados 57 days later. In 1973, the U.S. Senate Watergate Committee opened hearings into a break-in at Democratic National headquarters in Washington. In 1987, two Iraqi Exocet missiles hit the frigate USS Stark in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 seamen. Iraq apologized for mistaking the ship's identity and the Stark's top officers were reprimanded and retired. In 1989, 1 million people demonstrated for democratic reforms in Beijing. The number of students fasting to support the drive reached 3,000. In 1999, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost his bid for re-election when voters chose Ehud Barak, head of the center-left Israel One coalition, to succeed him. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In 2005, Los Angeles voters elected Antonio Villaraigosa as the city's first Hispanic mayor since 1872. In 2007, the United States' "minority" citizenship topped the 100 million mark, about one-third of the total U.S. population, the U.S. Census Bureau said. Hispanics made up the largest group, ahead of Black Americans, 44.3 million to 40.2 million. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the sentencing of a juvenile to life in prison for a non-homicide case, calling the practice unconstitutional, and cruel and unusual punishment. In 2018, the Senate confirmed Gina Haspel to be the first female director of the CIA, ending weeks of speculation over whether her past role in using torture as an interrogation technique would derail her nomination. In 2019, Taiwan became the first Asian nation to legalize same-sex marriage. In 2021, Cyclone Tauktae made landfall in western India with sustained winds of 115 mph. The storm would go on to kill 174 people and cause more than $2 billion in damage in India, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
