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Mexico
Otis Leaves Devastation
Mexican rescue workers are still searching for 47 missing people in and around Acapulco, as 45 people are confirmed dead following the landfall of Hurricane Otis last Wednesday. Guerrero state officials said about 274,000 homes in the region were damaged or destroyed. Experts believe preparations for Otis’ arrival were inadequate due to the storm’s rapid strengthening from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in a matter of only 12 hours, a record for the area. Damages to roads have impeded the disaster response, leaving thousands of residents without water, food, and other supplies.
This map depicts the impacts of Hurricane Otis on the city of Acapulco, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. The storm strengthend from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in only 12 hours, leaving residents and officials unprepared for the storm’s full impact. Click on the map to learn more.
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Russia
Mob Takes Over Airport
Hundreds of people angry at the bombardment of Gaza stormed the Makhachkala Uytash airport in Dagestan, southern Russia, on Sunday to intercept passengers arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv on the runway. Protestors waved Palestinian flags and held anti-Israel signs, one of which read “we are against Jewish refugees.” At about 9 pm, the crowd reached the runway, fighting police and throwing rocks at security. At least 60 people were arrested and 20 were injured during this event. The Israeli passengers were isolated and guarded, and the transiting flight took off for Moscow two hours after arrival. Government officials blame the messaging app Telegram for causing this riot, and a popular channel on the app has been blocked as a result. Russian officials blamed the unrest on “external interference.”
This map depicts the location of the Makhachkala Uytash airport which shut down as a result of the mob on Monday night. Click on the map to learn more.
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Graphic Source: BBC News
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World
New Study on Chicxulub Impact
A new study in the journal Nature has presented evidence that fine silicate dust emitted from the Chicxulub asteroid’s impact blocked out the Sun, resulting in a global winter that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. A team of geoscientists led by The Royal Observatory of Belgium analyzed several rocks in North Dakota dating back to the extinction event. The rocks possessed greater amounts of silicate dust particles between 0.8 and 8.0 micrometers amongst the sulfur, soot, and minerals. The team believes the asteroid’s impact ejected clouds of the silicate dust particles across the atmosphere, blocking out the Sun for two years. Without the Sun for this amount of time, photosynthesis would have been obstructed, killing off vegetation and eventually three out of four species. According to their models, the silicate dust may have lingered in the atmosphere for as long as 15 years, dropping global temperatures by 8.4°F (15°C).
This map depicts the sequence of events following the Chicxulub impact and the global effects of atmospheric silicate dust. Click on the map to learn more.
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Q: Where do the Romani, a traditionally itinerant people who live mostly in Europe now, originate?
A: India
The Roma people have been living in Europe since the 12th century. In 1763, scholars analyzed the Romani language and traced it back to Sanskrit. Historians now agree that Romani culture originated in northwest India. The Roma began to leave India about 1,000 years ago, probably to escape the invasion of Afghan general Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century. In Iran, they split into two groups. One went south, through Syria to northern Africa and Greece. The other group went north through Armenia, before arriving in what is today Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia. Europe’s earliest record of the Romani may be in the writings of a monk at Mount Athos, Greece in 1100. German officials wrote about encountering Romani near Hamburg in 1417. People wrote about Romani in Barcelona, Spain, in 1425. Romani adapted to the surrounding culture wherever they went but kept many of their traditions of performing arts (ex: Flamenco in Spain), metalworking, sculpture, and jewelry-making. Europeans began to resent Romani who refused to fully integrate into society, and from the 1400s to the 1700s, Romani were enslaved across Europe and sent to colonies in India, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Africa to work on plantations. The greatest number of Romani came to North America in the 19th century, fleeing famine, conflict, and oppression in Russia and the Balkans. During WWII, Romani people were victims of the Holocaust, sent to concentration camps by the Nazis. Today, there are an estimated 12 to 15 million Romani living around the world.
Source
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Q: The beginning of Halloween celebrations in the US is attributed to migration from what country?
Stay tuned for the answer to today’s question in tomorrow’s DailyGeo.
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