Danger Within

and machine guns. As much of that dichotomy wreaked havoc on the battlefield, it also caused problems at home. Civilian life struggled to keep up with rapid changes in technology, and in nineteen seventeen, in Hall Facts Nova Scotia, the past and the future collided to disastrous results. During this time, Halifax was already a prosperous Atlantic harbor town. In fact, it was the closest large North American port to Europe. As such, thousands of ships passed through carrying weapons, supplies,

and soldiers for the war. The city grew quickly without much planning for it. The small stretch of harbor that the community crowded around was called the Narrows. It was a name that was accurate and, as it turns out, also an ominous warning. On the morning of December sixth, the Norwegian ship the Imo was exiting the harbor after a few delays. It wasn't carrying much, but it was instead headed to New York to pick up supplies. Its captain, William Hayes, allowed the ship to go over the speed

limit to make up for lost time. Unfortunately, many regulations seemed to be poorly enforced in order to serve the war effort. For example, ships were supposed to sail on the right side of the harbor, kind of like driving on the right side of the road in America. But on that day the Imo came upon two ships that were sailing on the wrong side, heading straight toward them, so the Imo had to correct course. Both times, it sailed farther and farther to the left, but this put

it at further risk of collision. Another ship, the French vessel mont Blanc, was traveling into the harbor at the same time, only it was on the correct side of the harbor for incoming vessels. Its captain Francis Mackie seemed to be just about the only one following the rules, but this, of course meant that he was on a collision course with the IMO. Unfortunately, by the time the ships came upon each other, there was nothing the two

captains could do to avoid collision. The IMO scraped up against the mont Blanc, leaving a gash in its hull, a hull that was not empty like the IMO, it was full of explosives intended for the war. The collision created a spark that started a fire on the mont Blanc and ignited barrels full of volatile chemicals on the deck. They exploded into the air like pockets, leading to a huge cloud of smoke above the wreck. The fire on

the deck spread too. The ship's crew all evacuated, screaming in French about the danger, but few could understand them. Local firefighters raced to put out the fire. However, they weren't fast enough, and after about twenty minutes the rest of the explosives in the ship's hull ignited. The blast had the explosive force of three thousand tons of T and T for comparison, the atomic bombs that were dropped decades later on, Nagasaki and Hiroshima had a force of

just three times that. The shockwave traveled faster than the speed of sound and instantly killed sixteen hundred people. The closest to the blast were vaporized. Those slightly further away were crushed as the force threw them up against buildings or collapsed those buildings on top of them. Those on the outskirts of the blast were perforated by shards of glass from shattered windows. The glass was absolutely deadly, too, traveling so fast that it severed heads and limbs or

just blinded those who were lucky. Twelve miles away, windows continued to shatter and people felt themselves pushed backwards. Sixty two miles away, windows shattered and people could still hear the blast. Hundreds of miles away in Massachusetts, some fishermen heard a strange boom on the horizon, and back in Halifax Harbor, the water vaporized by the explosion left a vacuum that was filled by a tsunami that killed even

more people and leveled more buildings. When it was all said and done, nearly two thousand people were dead, nine thousand were horrifically injured, and twenty five thousand were left homeless. A blizzard ravaged the area the next day, hindering recovery efforts for the teams. It was a terrible moment of the past and future colliding, of a city failing to maintain safety standards while keeping up with its own growth. Halifax had braced for German u boat attacks, but the

biggest threat had turned out to come from within. The Himalayan Mountain Range is one of the most daunting features on planet Earth. Some fifteen hundred miles long, it contains Earth's tallest mountain and also holds some of humanity's most chilling secrets, because we're drawn to explore every inch of our world, even if that means reaching for heights that

can prove fatal for us. In the winter of nineteen forty two, a forest ranger named Hari Kishen Madhwal was hiking through the Himalayans when he made a shocking discovery. Among these icy peaks, a five day trek from the nearest village was a glacial lake surrounded by bones, hundreds of them, some with flesh still attached. The lake was named Rupkun, but in popular lore it's become known as

skeleton lake. After discovering what seemed to be a mass grave, Madhwal reported this to the Indian government, which at the time was under British rule. There was an immediate panic among the British as they suspected that this grave could be the remains of an attempted invasion of India by Imperial Japan. For context, this was the height of the Second World War and the British Empire was not prepared for that kind of attack. This initial theory was, of

course incorrect. The bones were too ancient to be Japanese soldiers, and besides, other than one iron spearhead, there was no evidence of weapons among the remains, either ancient or modern. The snow and ice melted the following summer, revealing that Madwal's discovery had only been part of the picture. The lake was three meters deep and there were even more bones at the bottom visible from the surface. So who were these people and how had they come to die

in such a remote location. Rukund is sixteen thousand feet above sea level, an altitude which is incredibly hostile at the best of times. Over the years, various expeditions attempted to catalog and study these bones in an attempt to ascertain their origin. In nineteen fifty six, they were carbondated and determined to be between five and eight hundred years old.

Speculation ran wild, of course, was Roupcooned, once a remote place where holy men committed ritual suicide, was at the final resting place of a thirteenth century army, an open air grave for the victims of a plague. The bones showed no evidence of violent deaths, and there were no horse skeletons among the dead, which meant that it was unlikely to be an army, even if their weapons had

disintegrated over time. Most of the bodies analyzed were between eighteen and thirty five years old at the time of death and showed no evidence of disease men, women, and children. Adding to this mystery was the fact that there had never been any trade routes through the region, so these must have been individual travelers. One hint at the truth, though, came from folklore. The closest villages claimed that a ridge above Roupcoon was once part of a pilgrimage to honor

Non d Devi. It was a deadly route that came up often in local stories. Finally, a breakthrough in the case came from analyzing the skulls that were found there. They showed small compression fractures, evidence of sudden blunt trauma to the skull before death. The theory became that a single, large group of pilgrims had fallen victim to one of the region's violent hailstorms. In the early two thousands, Rupcund became a pilgrimage site, all of its own visitors flocking

to the famous skeleton lake. Even as researchers worked away analyzing the bones, tourists were there paying to see what was left behind. It seemed for a long time that the cryptic mystery was just to become another tourist trap, until twenty nineteen. That is, modern testing revealed that the remains were far more diverse than originally theorized. The bones were not just of South Asian origin, but from Crete

and the Mediterranean as well. Skeletons belonging to three separate genetic groups were identified, having then deposited over a period that star banned a thousand years. It was not a single group of pilgrims after all, Given that it's unlikely that Greek islanders were part of a pilgrimage to honor

Nanda Devi. With the location's current status as a tourist destination, the bones around Rupcoond are at increased risk of contamination as visitors actually rearrange them, take some away, and leave trash among the dead. Even today, research among these remains is ongoing, but it's uncertain whether we will ever find out where all the remains came from. In the meantime, it's a helpful reminder that even in the most remote parts of the Earth, there are stories that remain untold.

While human nature has always led us into the unknown, that adventurous spirit has also left us some curious mysteries. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosity's podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership

with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.