Does Europe Face the Fate of the Fabled Atlantis?

1916

By Dr. Paul Schlieman
Grandson of the Famous Archeologist and Discoverer of Ancient Troy

The war in Europe has filled the world with horror. There are no wars in the past that can be compared with it. It surpasses by far the greatest calamities that ever have befallen mankind. Yet with all that there is another side to the question. There is a cosmic organism besides the one of the individual. Nature cares nothing for the joys and sorrows of the individual. The reason of nature has no relation to that of the man. The war with all its brutalities must be looked upon as a manifestation of natural forces — a cyclone of nature.

It was just as unavoidable as an earthquake. There was a cosmic reason for it. Every great mind foresaw it. It was necessary to what we call evolution.

Nations and countries, like individuals, have their lives and tragedies. Atlantis was a great continent, inhabited by a powerful and civilized nation when the rest of the world was merged in barbarism. Atlantis colonized Egypt and Central America. When at the zenith of their power the Atlanteans became involved in a war such as has befallen Europe, the whole continent was submerged and sank in the sea. All great calamities of nature follow a certain kind of war. When a social organism is poisoned by a wrong doctrine of life, the sooner it dies the better. Like the civilization of the Atlanteans, this of the Europeans is decadent and doomed. The vitality of every living body depends upon its spiritual not its physical constitution.

As much as we may pity the individual who suffers in such cosmic calamities, still we should be glad of the tempest that cleans nature from human rubbish and decadence. The cosmic will has no mercy upon any individual, because in going against nature the individual ignored the cosmic will. The European war is a gigantic purging process of evolution. The present European war was unavoidable, because the social soul of Europe was sick. Nothing but destruction could end such a sickness. The European disease was best reflected in the art and literature that preceded the war. With every year the paintings grew more abnormal and ugly. The music of the Germans, French and English was all discords and unpleasing noise.

The "culture" of Europe came to a climax of artificialities. The government of Europe became materialistic and militaristic.

On the one hand the Christian church, on the other the naked industrialism undermined the old Culture. The logic that invented the printing press and steam engine could not be reconciled with legendary religion. The Christian church that had been of such influence during the feudal period of social life, lost its grip when industrial civilization was created. Money in the one hand — the Bible in the other — this was the picture of a typical Kulturtraeger of Europe. The fatal paradox was to profess belief in the doctrines of Christianity and to make money at the same time in the way most of that money was made. The contradiction of the two doctrines can be considered as the logical cause of the materialistic education, the logical cause of the lack of spiritual ideals.

Before a fool dies he goes crazy. Europe went crazy before the war. Rome went crazy before her fall. The rubbish of materialistic civilization grew so poisonous that it needed an immediate cleaning up.

The fate of Sodom and Gomorrah has befallen Europe. But this is not all.

I fear that a great cosmic calamity will follow the war, a calamity of the kind that made an end to Atlantis. My reasons for this fear are well founded.

I consider that serious results will follow the concentration of enormous destructive energies on the comparatively narrow battlefield. Never in human history have there been employed such energies. All the thousands of guns and millions of rifles that are used every day represent a large percentage of the gas-producing instruments of the world. This means an abnormal transformation of physical energy into a chemical one. It means millions of cubic yards of an abnormal and violent change of elements. What will be its ultimate effect upon the atmosphere and vegetation no one as yet can tell. It may change the meteorologic balance to such an extent that either arctic colds, tropic heats or excessive rains will affect life seriously. This may result either in failure of crops or in epidemics not known to science.

On the other hand, it is a scientific possibility that the abnormal use of explosives will affect the gravitational and rotational laws of the earth. A microscopic change of the earth's axis would result in gigantic disturbances of nature.

My theory of the vanishing of Atlantis leads me, as it led my grandfather, to the conclusion that the inhabitants of that continent made use of the volcanic destructive powers of earth for a long time. When they abused these powers the great calamity occurred. I fear that the abnormal accumulation of metals around the war districts will cause abnormal events of nature. These metals have been brought together from all parts of the world. It is estimated that the United States alone has shipped more than a million tons of war materials to the warring nations. Much of these are metals, particularly iron, copper and lead. To my estimate the surface of the earth around the war district is fifteen million tons heavier than usual. This excessive weight is produced by metals.

It is not only the weight, but the magnetism of earth that is influenced by the presence of these metals.

When I consider the abnormal use of explosives, the abnormal weight and accumulation of metals in the European war, together with the certain change of the magnetic powers, I can easily understand the insignificant reaction that is needed to bring about a second catastrophe similar to that of Atlantis. The same geologic energy that swallowed Atlantis can swallow also war-ridden Europe. To sink the surface of Europe a few hundred feet means nothing to the ordinary forces of nature.

Man in his pride of invention sneers at nature. The explosives that he employs for destroying his fellow-man are stolen from nature. Defying the laws of nature, man defies and destroys himself. I do not need to speak of the terrible threat from the hastily dug, shallow graves of the millions that are murdered in this war.

The physical and spiritual phenomena of this human struggle point to the conclusion that Europe is facing a continental and cosmic catastrophe.

—The Lincoln Daily Star, Lincoln, NE, Jan. 23, 1916, p. 4, society/fashion section.

A Terrific Explosion – The Destruction of 2½ Tons Nitro Going Off

1878

Fearful Destruction by Two and a Half Tons of Nitroglycerine — Men Torn to Pieces — Machinery and Windows Demolished

Particulars of the recent nitroglycerine explosion, near Negaunee, Lake Superior, have been received. Nearly two tons and a half of nitroglycerine had been hauled to the Chicago and Northwestern railroad track, half a mile west of Negannee, and was being loaded into a freight car preparatory to its shipment to the Republic iron mine, some fifteen miles distant. In some unaccountable manner the nitroglycerine exploded just before ten o'clock in the morning.

The people of Negaunee thought at first an earthquake was about to overwhelm them. The entire city was shaken up, and a dense cloud of smoke and dust arose. The shock was terrible beyond imagination. Where the freight car had stood the railroad track for about fifty feet was torn from its bed and the rails twisted, broken and hurled away, and a hole twenty-five feet in diameter and five feet deep excavated and the earth thrown for rods around in every direction.

Not the slightest trace of the car was visible. The locomotive and tender, which stood behind the car, were thrown back over one hundred feet. Wheels, blues, cab, tubes, bell and everything about it were wrenched, twisted and torn asunder. Long lines of ore cars, standing upon a side track nearby, were stove in and demolished, and shreds and scrape of iron, wood, tin, etc., covered the snow in all directions.

Lying on the bottom of the cab were four of the seven men who were engaged in loading the car — the engineer, fireman and two brakemen — mangled and burned beyond recognition, with their heads hanging over the edge. As soon as the horror-stricken crowd which hastened to the scene could recover their senses, they took the charred and mangled remains of these unfortunates from the cab and, laid them on the ground until a team was procured, when they were taken to the depot for recognition. Of the other three men who were engaged in handling the cars nothing could be seen, but after diligent search a few fragments of charred flesh and bones were picked up and put together. Not more than enough fragments to fill an ordinary bucket were found.

About one hundred feet from the place of the explosion is the north pit of the Jackson mine. Down into this pit were hurled a horse, cart and driver. At the engine house adjoining this pit the force of the explosion rent the roof, stove in the sides and splintered every loose board, besides shattering and breaking the engine machinery inside. The engineer in this building luckily escaped with a few bruises. At the upper Jackson location, the windows, doors, ceilings, furniture and dishes at all the houses were broken and strewn about in great confusion, and women and children were lifted from their feet and hurled among the rubbish. The location was in fact a general wreck. At the Jackson school, where the children had just been called together, when the shock came every window in the west aide of the building was crushed in with the sashes, throwing a shower of shattered glass and fragments of sash over the heads of the children, and injuring four of them.

The Marquette Mining Journal says Captain Merry, of the Jackson mine, stood near the fatal car when the men commenced loading it, but fearing an accident started to leave the spot. He had walked about one hundred feet when the explosion took place, just as he happened to stand behind a small mound, which sheltered him from the full force of the shock. As it was he was thrown upon the ground violently, but sustained no serious injuries.

C. M. Wheeler, manager of the nitroglycerine works, was standing in front of the northwestern depot when the explosion took place and fainted when he heard the report. The horse attached to the cart that was thrown by the explosion into a pit fifty feet from the fatal car, when hauled out walked off as though nothing had happened. The driver escaped with slight injuries. The shock of the explosion was felt at Ishpening Cascade, the Saulsbury mine, the Carp Hill section house and Sand Switch, fully ten miles from Negaunee.

The losses by the explosion will reach nearly $20,000. Very little work was done at any of the Negaunee mines after the explosion, as most of the miners were kept busy boarding up the windows of their houses.

The Perils of War Correspondents

1878

A war correspondent of the London Times writes from Giurgevo on the Danube: When I descended I found I was not the only Englishman in the train. Col. Wellesley, our military representative at the emperor's headquarters, had also come down from Bucharest after a couple of days' stay there. He was bound for Poradim, whither I was also going, and, like me, he had to find a carriage for himself and luggage.

We placed the luggage outside in front of the station under the portico, and the colonel left his servant, Jagor, who is a Russian, in charge, with instructions to get himself something to eat in the meantime at the buffet. We had hardly quitted the station five minutes when we heard the sound of a shell tearing its way through the air above our heads. The people about the street, which was the main one, ran right and left, and we heard the dull explosion of the iron missile somewhere near the railway station.

We did not know at that moment what terrible havoc that piece of iron had done, and what a terrible fate we had only just escaped. We went on, thinking but lightly of this single shot, until we entered a chemist's shop. A minute afterward a person who entered the shop told us that three soldiers had been killed at the station.

Although we were quite near, we both jumped into an open fiacre standing in the street, and were driven up to the station. We thought that the colonel's servant, Jagor, had possibly been hit. As we drove up, the first thing which met our view outside the station under the portico, on the very spot where we had left our luggage, was a large mass of something partly covered with a gray overcoat. Could this be Jagor? We got out of the carriage and came near. It was not Jagor; it was a soldier, or all that was left of the poor fellow. One side had been torn completely away, and there he lay in a pool of his own blood. The ground was torn up all around him, and the wall of the building was splashed with blood. Windows were smashed, the portico had been broken through, and the stone pavement was thickly strewn with human remains.

Col. Wellesley looked around for Jagor. Hearing the carriage drive up, the faithful servant immediately came out of the station, and, much to our relief, was quite unhurt. But he had the narrowest escape imaginable.

He showed us our luggage which he had dragged into the ticket office directly after the fatal shot. It was covered with blood, Another soldier, also, lay inside smashed to death. Both poor fellows were standing by our luggage outside the station, having been asked by Jagor to keep an eye upon the things while he went into the buffet to get a little refreshment. Jagor had scarcely sat down in the room, through the window of which he could himself see the things, when the shell struck the portico and burst with a report that almost stunned him. One of the soldiers fell across the iron stove of the colonel's, and completely washed it with blood.

Scenes During the Potomac Flood – Great Trees, Debris, Pumpkins

1878

Scenes During the Potomac Flood

The Washington Star has this account of the recent rise in the Potomac at the National Capital:

From the Virginia side to look up the Potomac was like looking up the rapids at Niagara Falls, except that here the water was almost solid with mud, and was loaded with timber hewn and rough, and pumpkins and other farm products. Wrecks of bridges and houses were rapidly driven on the boiling flood.

As the angry waters struck the piers of the bridge they were forced up almost to the quivering timbers, and then started again on their rapid race for the sea. Looking down the river the water was dashed and tossed into the shape of ocean breakers. Behind the piers it boiled and bubbled like the contents of some infernal cauldron, with a roar equal to that of a tornado. Great trees and hewn timbers coming down stream would sometimes strike the piers and be whirled into the air against the bridge. In one case a tree trunk about sixty feet long and almost two feet in diameter was swept crosswise against the pier, and in an instant was broken into three parts and swept away in the mighty current.

Among the debris were hundreds of yellow pumpkins sweet from off the cornfields on the bottom lands many miles above, and the scramble for them was lively, some of the skiffs coming in loaded with them. Men, women and boys could be seen going home a large pumpkin under each arm, and rows of them lined the bridge and shore.

The damage to crops on the river farms must have been considerable, judging from the vast quantities of hay, corn and fodder that were afloat. During the night several canal boats came down, it is thought, from Georgetown, and went to pieces against the Long Bridge. A small dwelling house came down about two o'clock, and striking near the north draw shattered and went to pieces. Another large one with a roof newly shingled came down the south channe1, and striking a pier went to pieces and floated away in fragments below.


That Colorado Stone Man

A Denver assayer gives this account of the origin of the Colorado stone man with a tail:

In August, 1875, five of us were prospecting in the vicinity of Pueblo. In coming upon a sandstone quarry, one of the party observed a sort of likeness of a man drawn upon the rock. The incident occasioned a deal of talk about ancient creations, and the idea of getting up a second Cardiff giant was then favorably discussed.

The party agreed to undertake the task and a stonecutter named Saunders, who had been working in the vicinity and known to be a clever hand at modeling, was at once sought out and an agreement made for the figure. While the plan was in progress one of the party in a joking way, said the thing ought to have a tail, as in ancient times men had tails six or seven inches long. It was decided amongst the party that the figure should be known as a petrified Aztec Indian, and they would resurrect him after six months and impose him on the public as such.

The stonecutter, not seeing the joke, set to work, and made the figure, with tail appended. The price paid the artisan was $135, and after he had completed the figure it was buried. The "Muldoon" was made out of sandstone and dried by the cabin fire, which partly accounts for the little moles on the surface. After the burial — two feet from the surface of the ground — the party went on their way to await the resurrection.

A few of the prospectors had got wind of the proceedings and were keeping an eye on the party, and so they dispersed in different directions. Finally they became scattered, some in New York and the remainder in different portions of the country. I had forgotten nearly about the matter when the discovery was chronicled in the papers.

Drink-Crazed He Used Hatchet To Demolish Home; Police Got Him

Cedar Rapids, IA, 1920

If a high-powered explosive shell had entered the apartment of John Edgington at Second avenue and eighth street, today it could not have done more damage than Edgington did himself while apparently laboring under the impression that he was Carrie Nation. Seizing a hatchet, Edgington broke up anything and everything he could lay his hands on. With one blow he completely demolished a china closet; he chopped holes in a dresser, broke a big mirror in his room, smashed dishes and created general havoc.

Armed with the axe as he was and almost crazed from the effects of protracted drinking, he also threw a considerable scare into his wife and persons living in the neighborhood. When Policeman Mikota and Butler arrived at the rooming house Edgington was still engaged in his work of destruction, but accompanied the police quietly enough to the police station. There he again became violent and repeatedly dashed his head against the door of his cell. His cries could be heard all over the building and his actions were so wild that another man who was in the cell with him begged to be taken out and placed in another cell.

Edgington is said to have been drinking steadily since July 4 last. His condition would not permit of his arraignment in police court this morning but he will, it is expected, appear before Judge Clark tomorrow.

–The Evening Gazette, Cedar Rapids, IA, Aug. 13, 1920, p. 3.

Unsuccessful Suicide Attempt, Drinking Listerine

Missouri, 1922

MAN TRIES TO COMMIT SUICIDE

Police Say Dwight Tannehill Drank Listerine in Unsuccessful Attempt to End Life

An unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide is thought to have been made last night by Dwight Tannehill, when he drank a small quantity of Listerine.

According to the police, Tannehill came in late last night from Quincy, where he has been working, and told the police that there was an automobile here which belonged to him. Later, according to the police, he called Emerson Roberts and told him that he was Doctor Clapp and that Dwight Tannehill had shot himself and taken poison and for him to come at once.

When Roberts and his wife entered the Tannehill home, the police say that Tannehill attacked Roberts. Doctors were called and Tannehill was quieted. Later the police found a bottle labeled "Listerine" outside the window. The man is supposed to have attempted to end his life by drinking the contents of the bottle. He will recover.

—Moberly Monitor-Index, Moberly, Missouri, November 27, 1922, page 1.


Fire Destroys Barn and Peanut Roaster

Oklahoma, 1915

Fire destroyed a barn and corn and peanut roaster belonging to Mr. Hopgood early Sunday morning. He has for some months operated this roaster on West Main street and as it was a valuable piece of property, he kept it in his barn on East 8th street at night. The fire, which was discovered about 4:30 was of unknown origin. Mr. Hopgood stated that the roaster cost him $1,000.

—The Ada Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma, December 13, 1915, page 4.

Booze Thieves Destroy Congressman's Umbrella

1921

Booze Thieves Visit Longworth

Washington. — "Hootch" thieves broke into the office of Representative Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, in the House office building and ransacked his desk and filing cases, for the fourth time in the past few months.

They didn't find what they were after.

In their rage and disappointment, they took their spite out on his favorite umbrella, completely demolishing it.


"Seek and Ye Shall Find"

Santa Rosa.—Prohibition enforcement officers are seeking the operators of a large still which was seized on the Martin ranch south of this city. The haul also included a large quantity of illicit brandy and some mash and other materials used in distilling.

—Mountain Democrat, Placerville, California, October 29, 1921, page 10.

Plenty of "Kick" in Grocer's Brew; Still Blows Up and Wrecks Store

1920--

NEW YORK, N.Y., May 20. -- The plate glass windows of a grocery store in South Brooklyn were blown out a moment after Policeman Francis Smith had passed the building at 2 a.m. By the time Smith and Policeman McMahon had climbed through the jagged aperture and made their way through the store's tumbled heaps of cans and green goods, scores of residents of the neighborhood were pouring into the street.

In a back room of the grocery were found two stunned men, who later at the police station, where they are held for the Federal authorities, described themselves as Dario Santeveshl, 35, proprietor of the grocery, and Tony Petitschi, 49, the grocery man's friend.

The police say the explosion was of a home-made still. Apparently a milk can filled with "mash" had been put to boil on a gas stove. From the top there had been a spiral copper pipe running to a barrel. The lid of the milk can was clamped down so tightly that the steam supposed to condense in the pipe, and run into the barrel as "hootch," blew up. There was little left of the can and windows in several other buildings in the neighborhood were broken. The residents for a time attributed the explosion to a "blackhand" bomb.

According to the police, they found near the wrecked apparatus a forty-gallon barrel of wine and a three-gallon jug of alcohol. The two prisoners suffered only from shock.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 4.