Before and after images show bomb-hit Westminster Abbey in WWII

 

Just over eighty years ago, on the night of May 10, 1941, Westminster Abbey suffered its worst bomb damage of the Second World War.

Clusters of incendiaries fell on the Abbey roof and in the church's precincts. 

Most were quickly put out by fire watchers but one on the lantern roof, in the centre of the church, could not easily be reached and sent flames shooting 40 feet into the sky above London. 

The Abbey - the site of the coronation of every British monarch since William the Conqueror in 1066 - could have burned to the ground.  

Thankfully, the burning timbers and molten lead fell to the floor below - where monarchs are enthroned at a coronation - and the fire was more easily extinguished.

On the same night, the Deanery was gutted by fire and three clergy houses in the cloisters were destroyed.

In pictures released by the church to mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing, you can see the damage and how the Abbey was later restored. 

Also seen are some of the fire watchers who heroically protected the Abbey and whose hard work and vigilance helped to ensure that even on the night of the worst bombing raid, the damage was limited.

The Abbey also benefited from precautions that had been taken at the outbreak of war in 1939. 

Many of its treasures, including gilt bronze and oak tomb effigies, manuscripts and tapestries were evacuated for safety to country houses. 

Some of the stained glass windows were boarded over but quite a lot of glass was blown out by the blast, especially in 1940. 

Around 60,000 sand bags were used to protect immoveable royal and medieval tombs. The Coronation Chair was sent for safety to Gloucester Cathedral.

Areas of the Abbey were also set aside as APR (Air Raid Precautions) headquarters, a dressing station and dispensary. 

An air raid shelter was available for the clergy in College Garden.

Services continued in the Abbey throughout the war, with the nave altar being used after the May raid. 

More than 700 tonnes of high explosives and 86,000 incendiaries were dropped across London on the night of May 10.  

As well as the damage inflicted on the Abbey, the nearby House of Commons was totally destroyed after being hit by a bomb. 

The Medieval roof timbers of Westminster Hall were also set alight by incendiaries. 

After the blaze at the Abbey, King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth visited to inspect the damage.    

The lantern roof was built after the war and the Abbey has since undergone major restoration, between 1995 and 1998.  

Boris Johnson under pressure as British voters back second independence referendum

 

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson is facing intense pressure to allow a second Scottish independence referendum if the SNP win a majority at Holyrood on Thursday, after a new poll for The Independent showed British voters think he would be wrong to deny a fresh ballot.

The UK government argues that now is not the time for another vote and that politicians should focus on rebuilding the economy in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

But Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP has said outright victory in this week’s Holyrood elections would be a mandate for a second referendum.

And a new BMG poll for The Independent suggests Britons agree.

The survey found that 41 per cent of those asked said Mr Johnson should allow another vote within four years if pro-independence parties win a majority in the Scottish Parliament this week, compared to just 33 per cent who opposed and 26 per cent who said they did not know.

Nicola Sturgeon

The poll also shows Mr Johnson would be under heavily expected to win another referendum.

Just 19 per cent said Scottish independence would be positive for the UK, while 41 per cent believe it would be negative.

The only part of the UK where voters were more likely to back Mr Johnson’s position than oppose it was in Scotland.

There 41 per cent thought the prime minister should grant another referendum while 44 per cent thought he should not.

In response, Ms Sturgeon said: "What this poll shows is that Boris Johnson and the Tories can’t deny democracy forever.

“When the Scottish Parliament decides it is the right time for the people of Scotland to choose their future, it would be foolish for a Westminster Tory government to stand the way of the democratic will of the people of Scotland.”

But a UK government spokesperson said the SNP’s push for a “divisive referendum” was “irresponsible”.

The poll also shows that across Britain as a whole, only the over-65s believe Mr Johnson’s government has taken the right approach.

They back his position by 45 per cent to 35 per cent.

But no other age group agreed.

And young people were especially likely to believe the outcome of Thursday’s vote could lead to another independence poll.

Among 18-24 year olds, 48 per cent thought the government should allow another referendum, while just 15 per cent thought they should withhold permission.

As well as the SNP, the Scottish Greens also support independence, as do Alba, the new party formed by Ms Sturgeon’s rival and former ally Alex Salmond.

He is campaigning for voters to deliver a ‘super majority’ among pro-independence parties on Thursday.

UK ministers were spooked by a series of polls earlier this year which suggested support for independence had risen in Scotland.

However, polls in recent days suggest that backing may have waned during the course of this election campaign.

Some UK government insiders believe the chances of a pro-independence majority on Thursday are currently touch and go.

A UK government spokesperson said:  “Now more than ever, people in Scotland want to see the UK government and the devolved administrations working together to protect lives and livelihoods.

"The United Kingdom is the most successful political and economic union the world has ever seen, and this pandemic and our collective response, from the furlough scheme to vaccine procurement and the backing of our military personnel, has shown that we are at our strongest when we work together towards a common goal.

"The push for a divisive referendum is simply irresponsible. It is a distraction, when we need to focus on continuing to tackle the pandemic and rebuilding our economy."

Stratolaunch, the world’s largest plane, completes second test flight

 

The world's largest plane Stratolaunch performs test flight in Mojave, California

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The world's largest plane has completed its second test flight, marking a step forward for next-generation air launch technology.
With a wingspan stretching to 117 metres, wider than the length of a football pitch, the Stratolaunch plane rose to 14,000 feet and reached a top speed of 199mph test flight on Thursday.
"We are airborne,” the company tweeted at around 8.30am local time, as the plane's six-engines propelled it into the sky above the Southern California desert.
The plane's 28 wheels touched down just over three hours later.
Stratolaunch was started in 2011 by Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who passed away before the plane's first test flight took place in April 2019.

 

As global lockdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic limited the extent to which we can travel and go about our daily lives, some companies and individuals have turned to tech to go where humans can't. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used for everything from spraying disinfectant in cities to delivering essential items and enforcing lockdown rules during the coronavirus crisis. Yet drones had a whole host of surprising uses before the pandemic too – click or scroll through to see the amazing ways drones are going where humans can't.

Originally, the behemoth plane was designed to fly rockets to the edge of space so they could launch mid-air with the company saying it would make satellite deployment as "easy as booking an airline flight." 

But in 2020, Stratolaunch announced it would pivot to focus on launching hypersonic planes which fly five times faster than the speed of sound. 

The company is currently working towards launching its Talon-A prototype hypersonic plane.

Focusing on hypersonic aircraft is likely to mean Stratolaunch will work closely with the US department of defence. 

Military efforts to develop hypersonic weapons is growing increasingly competitive, especially between the US, China and Russia.

Last year, a Pentagon media briefing said development in the field was being driven by "our great power competitors and their attempts to challenge our domain dominance".

David Millman, Stratolaunch’s chief technology officer, told tech news outlet GeekWire: “That’s exactly one of the areas that we’re looking at: how can we help the Department of Defense in mitigating risks for all their extensive flight testing.”   

He added, the company plans to build three hypersonic vehicles and aims to conduct hypersonic tests at least once every 17 days.  

 

Armed forces using drones for surveillance

The German army uses drones created by aviation company EMT to carry out intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) operations. The drones, named Aladin, are able to function during day and night and in all weather conditions, and can be dismantled in the field in just five minutes.

  

Bernie Madoff, financier behind world's biggest Ponzi scheme, dies in prison

 

 Bernie Madoff pictures in 2009

Financier Bernie Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years in jail after pleading guilty to organising the world's biggest investing scam, has died in prison aged 82. 

Madoff died at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina from natural causes, the Associated Press reported.  

His death comes just over a year after he asked a US judge for early release, saying he was suffering from terminal kidney failure and other health problems and had 18 months to live.

The request, which was rejected, came after he served 10 years for defrauding some of the world's richest investors of about $19bn (£13.7bn). 

Madoff had been a favourite among investors after building a reputation as a star stock-picker who delivered steady returns.

However after the 2008 financial crisis, when clients began asking for their money back, it was revealed that he had been using inflows to pay "profits" to clients.

A sizable proportion of his victims were middle-class workers left struggling to pay bills due to the “cash in, cash out” fraud. 

Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 counts of fraud and money laundering in March 2009 after three months under house arrest and was sentenced to 150 years in jail.  

The fraud is the largest "Ponzi" scheme, where money is taken from new clients to repay earlier investors.

 Bernard Madoff exits Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, March 10, 2009, in New York. Madoff, the financier who pleaded guilty to orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in history, died early Wednesday, April 14, 2021, in a federal prison, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. 

When Madoff became a victim of the financial crisis returns diminished as there were fewer newer investors and others began to withdraw en masse, pulling more cash than he could pay out.  

Madoff, whose victims included celebrities such as Steven Spielberg and John Malkovich, started his firm in his twenties with $5,000 saved from working as a lifesaver and a sprinkler installer.

He later bought a $21m home in Palm Beach, a 55ft yacht, a $7m apartment in New York and houses in the Hamptons and France. 

A trustee appointed to recover money for Madoff’s victims said they have been repaid more than $13bn. 

Alaska, a wasteland that Russia did not hesitate to sell

The signing of the cession treaty of Alaska on March 30, 1867

In 1867, the Finn T. Ahllund ignored the advice of his comrades and agreed to work for the Russian-American Company in Alaska, then part of the Russian Empire. He and 47 other rookies set out, like this, for "the Siberia of Siberia."

Upon their arrival in New Archangel, they were brought before the governor, Dmitri Petróvich Maksútov, who awarded them the jobs and showed them their barracks. Ahllund was not impressed with his bedroom, an austere room that he had to share with fifty other people, and with an obvious sanitation problem.

On a visit a few years earlier, Britain's George Simons said that the town had seemed "the most miserable place he had ever visited." In addition, a diet without fruits or vegetables, based on dried fish and a rather scarce meat, made scurvy a constant, with deadly outbreaks in 1805 and 1821.

To make matters worse, almost at the gates of New Arcángel lived a hostile indigenous village, the Tlingit, then in a fragile truce. On one of his escapades beyond the palisade, Ahllund was able to witness the legends he had heard about her harshness. Otherwise, with their painted faces and piercings in their lips and ears, they seemed enormously enigmatic people.

New Arcangel in 1863

One night he saw a naked child being plunged into the icy waters of the Bering Sea, then his shivering body was whipped with a riding crop. The shaman's blows, intended to activate blood flow, were the only thing that kept the little boy from dying of hypothermia.

Not all tribes enjoyed the same freedom as the Tlingit. Driven from their native archipelago, the Aleuts were forced to hunt furs for the Russian-American Company.

Whether it was due to the abuses suffered or the mixed marriages, fully naturalized, the relationship between Aleuts and colonizers ended up giving birth to a generation of Creoles. As explained by Claus-M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick in Alaska, a history of the 49th state (1979), this is because Russians at the time did not attend to differences in race.

In fact, it was common for indigenous people to get drunk alongside Europeans on the many days off offered by the orthodox calendar, full of saints. For Ahllund, that was practically the only good news he'd had since his arrival. Perhaps then he understood why there were rumors that the tsar was going to sell a colony that, in the last hundred years, had barely progressed.

Tsar Peter the Great

It all started in 1725, when Tsar Peter the Great wanted to know what lay beyond the limits of his vast empire, and commissioned the Danish sailor Vitus Bering to explore the northwestern coast of North America. After a difficult journey through Siberia, he and his men reached the Kamchatka peninsula, ready to enter waters hitherto unknown to any European.

After a first unsuccessful attempt, they reached Alaska in 1741. They stayed there for a short time, the time necessary for Dr. Georg Wilhelm Steller, the expedition's naturalist, to collect some remedies to cut the outbreak of scurvy from the ship San Pedro.

As he himself regretted, they had invested ten years of their lives preparing an exploration that only lasted ten minutes. On his return, Bering ended up dying on an island, which, like the strait that separates the two continents, today bears his name.

The promyshlenniki

Due to the neglect of St. Petersburg, in the early years the colonizing task was left in the hands of the promyshlenniki, Siberian hunters attracted by the Bering stories. They hunted sea otters in the Aleutian Islands, and when they became extinct there, they continued eastward into North America. Being men who traveled alone, the majority illiterate and inclined to drink, they ended up enslaving the native Aleuts.

But, probably unknowingly, the promyshlenniki had caused an earthquake thousands of miles away. In Madrid, Carlos III received with disgust reports of the growing Russian presence on the northwestern coast of North America. After all, since 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas gave him full sovereignty over the American Pacific. The time had come to make that right effective.

On January 24, 1774, the ship San Blas left New Spain heading north. Her mission: to know the extent of the Russian advance. Under the orders of the Mallorcan Juan José Pérez Hernández, they sighted Vancouver and reached a strait that they called the San Lorenzo surge.

But, determined to find the Russians, they ignored another threat. Unbeknownst to them, in 1778, the legendary British sailor James Cook had reached the rise of San Lorenzo and renamed it Nutka. As soon as they heard that news, Captains Esteban José Martínez and Gonzalo López de Haro set out again for Alaska to establish a settlement before the English.

Too late. Upon reaching Nutka, Martínez discovered that a ship in the service of the British Crown was already anchoring in those waters. He decided to seize it, and later secured the position by building a fort which he called San Miguel. If that incident did not end in an open war between the two powers, it was because of the weakness of Spain.

Without the support of France, immersed in a revolution, and in frank decline in America, the Hispanic Crown had to end up yielding. In 1794 Nutka was handed over to the British. Today only the nomenclature of some places recalls the Spanish past of Alaska, such as the Malaspina glacier or the cities of Cordova and Valdez.

The withdrawal of the Spanish made things easier for Grigory Shélijov, a Russian merchant who wanted to turn the small fur economy of the promyshlenniki into a large-scale business. His business prospered so much that, in 1799, Tsar Paul I gave him a monopoly on all trade in Alaska. The Russian-American Company was born.

Aleksánder Baránov

That fell like a stone on the director of operations in America, Aleksánder Baránov. Despite being a man only interested in obtaining profits for his company, he was now responsible for governing and evangelizing that land.

For Baránov, the immediate problem was the lack of men. Many of his employees were Aleut slaves, ex-convicts, or forced Russian serfs. There was nothing better, since not many Russians were willing to endure the harsh living conditions in the colony.

According to the historians Naske and Slotnick, more than one drunk of those who populated the port of Okhotsk, in Siberia, ended up against his will on the way to Alaska. By the time they woke up from the melopea, they were already on board the ship. With such a group of people, the governor had to resort to severe physical punishment to impose discipline.

Baránov would be fought in the summer of 1805, when his substitute appeared in the port of Nuevo Arcángel. Nikolai Rezanov was a virtuous man, with refined tastes and who, at fourteen years of age, had already mastered five languages. Besides, he did really believe in the colonizing project.

Aleut in a baidarka, the boat used to hunt marine mammals. In the background, a Russian ship. Illustration from 1817

As soon as he arrived, he worried about evangelization, until then in the hands of some Finnish monks who did not even bother to learn the language of the natives. After reprimanding the religious, he began an ambitious project to write a dictionary of indigenous languages, which was to serve to make sermons more intelligible.

Despite certain achievements in sanitation, in the following years the colony would face insurmountable challenges. When Dmitri Petróvich Maksútov assumed the position of governor in 1864, the fur trade, his main source of income, was already in decline.

In St. Petersburg, patience with the American company was running out. The first to speak out was Grand Duke Constantine, the Tsar's younger brother. He saw the United States as an emerging power whose duty it was to claim the entire continent for itself.

And what better way than to take advantage of it, then, to put land in the middle with the British, who, after defeating Russia in the Crimean War (1853-1856), could well invade the Empire from neighboring Canada.

In March 1867, they sat down to negotiate with the American Secretary of State, William H. Seward, a staunch defender of the purchase. At four in the morning of March 30, the sale was agreed for 7.2 million dollars. At today's exchange rate, they would be approximately 132 million.

The check used to buy Alaska for the United States

The price may seem low, but Seward still had to take a lot of teasing because of him. Many criticized the purchase of a territory that seemed sterile to them. With a sense of humor, some media referred to the "madness of Seward", who had invested taxpayers' money to buy a "garden for polar bears."

For Ahllund, the news of the purchase came with the appearance in the port of Nuevo Arcángel of two North American steamers. A column of soldiers descended from these and marched in formation to the governor's house.

There the Russian garrison awaited them, which, at Maksútov's direction, began to solemnly lower their flag. At least they tried, since it got tangled up halfway. It took three attempts to free the post, as if the double-headed eagle did not want to leave America.

Plans for Britain's first deep coal mine in 30 years to be ditched

 

There are ¿very compelling reasons¿ to block the application for the mine on the Cumbrian coast, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng

Controversial plans to dig Britain’s first new coal mine for 30 years look set to be ditched by the Government.

There are ‘very compelling reasons’ to block the application for the mine on the Cumbrian coast, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said yesterday.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick had said a public inquiry would examine the application for the deep mine near Whitehaven.

Mr Kwarteng was asked why he was not stopping the development, which would extract 2.7million tonnes of coal a year from the seabed for steel production. 

He said: ‘Essentially what we’ve done is pretty much that. We’re looking at it, it is part of a planning process.

‘Initially, I think the relevant secretary of state [Mr Jenrick] said he wouldn’t go against the local planning decision, but he is now looking at that again and I think there were very compelling reasons to do as the CCC [climate change committee] suggested and not open the mine,’ he said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Asked if he was saying it should not open, the minister said: ‘What I said was that we’re going through a process, it is a legal process, a local planning process, and the Secretary of State for Local Government is reviewing that situation.’

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick (pictured) had said a public inquiry would examine the application for the deep mine near Whitehaven

The apparent rejection was welcomed by environmentalists who said opening a coal mine was wrong when the UK is holding the UN Cop26 climate summit this year. 

Dr Doug Parr, of Greenpeace UK, said it would ‘tarnish the Government’s credibility as the host of an absolutely crucial climate summit’.

3,500-year-old Egyptian papyrus reveals new details about mummification

 A new document found has provided previously unknown details about the mummification process . Researchers have found a 3,500-year-old medical papyrus, which makes it the oldest manual on the process they carried out to prepare their loved ones after death.

Specific research has focused on the Louvre-Carlsberg papyrus , named after its two 'owners': the well-known French museum and the Carlsberg Papyrus Collection at the University of Copenhagen . The papyrus, divided into two parts, originally belonged to two private collectors. Despite the fact that several sections are missing, it has been possible to date around the year 1450 BC , surpassing the other two examples of embalming by more than a thousand years.

In it, new evidence has been revealed regarding the entire process of embalming the face of a deceased in ancient Egypt, in which the face was covered with a piece of red linen and aromatic substances.

Medical text on the use of plants

Formerly, mummification was considered a sacred art whose knowledge was limited to very few people . Hence, according to experts, the secrets could be passed on by word of mouth . The newly found text is the third of its kind, which is also the oldest in the world. In it, reference is made to the medicine of plants and skin inflammations .

Sofie Schiødt, an Egyptologist at the University of Copenhagen , has been in charge of analyzing the document, in which she found "extremely detailed descriptions" of this entire mummification process and of which nothing was known until now in the other two manuals .

New details of mummification

One of these unknown procedures to date refers to the embalming of the face with a remedy made from aromatic substances and binders , which are cooked to form a liquid with which to coat a piece of red linen .

This fabric was placed over the face of the deceased, making a kind of protective layer of aromatic and antibacterial matter . This process was repeated every four days, while the body was covered by cloth and straw dipped in aromatic substances , in order to ward off insects and scavengers.

Despite being the first time these procedures have been revealed, Egyptologists had already examined some mummies whose faces were covered in cloth and resin , which, according to Schiødt, "would be a good fit."