Vocabulary BOOST - (H-BOMB in Spain)

Y si quieres transcripts para seguir más de cerca este podcast y para que no te pierdas ni una sola palabra, métete a Englishwithdain.com slash transcripts. Ambos links están en la descripción del episodio. Hey, what's up? What's going on? Welcome to Englishwithdain, a podcast designed to improve your English. As always, I'm your host, Dane, and you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at EnglishwithDane.

Today's episode is about a moment in history that I read about the other day and couldn't believe. It happened on the 17th of January, like today. So what we'll do is read it together, make sure we understand everything, and as always, extract a bunch of new vocabulary. But you already knew that. So let's jump in. You are listening to episode 154 of English with Dane. Hit it. Okay, we have officially started the show, so let's read about this crazy moment in history.

This article, by the way, can be found on history.com. I'll put the link in the description. The title reads, H-Bomb Lost in Spain. B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain's Mediterranean coast, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and one in the sea. It was not the first or last accident involving American nuclear bombs.

As a means of maintaining first strike capability during the Cold War, U.S. bombers laden with nuclear weapons circled the Earth ceaselessly for decades. In a military operation of this magnitude, it was inevitable that accidents would occur. The Pentagon admits to more than three dozen accidents in which bombers either crashed or caught fire on the runway, resulting in nuclear contamination from a damaged or destroyed bomb andor the loss of a nuclear weapon.

One of the only broken arrows, to receive widespread publicity occurred on January 17th, 1966, when a B-2 bomber crashed into a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain. The bomber was returning to its North Carolina base following a routine airborne alert mission along the southern route of the Strategic Air Command when it attempted, when it attempted to refuel with a jet tanker.

The B-52 collided with the fueling boom, so with that thing that helps them get the fuel in that long rod, ripping the bomber open and igniting the fuel. The KC-135 exploded, killing all four of its crew members. But four members of the seven-man B-52 crew managed to parachute to safety. None of the bombs were armed, but explosive material in two of the bombs that fell to the earth exploded upon impact, forming craters and scattering radioactive plutonium over the fields of Palomares.

A third bomb landed in a dry riverbed and was recovered relatively intact. The fourth bomb fell into the sea at an unknown location. Palomares, a remote fishing and farming community, was soon filled, llenado, was soon filled with nearly 2,000 U.S. military personnel and Spanish Guardia Civil who rushed to clean up the debris and decontaminate the area.

The U.S. personnel took precautions to prevent overexposure to the radiation, but the Spanish workers who lived in a country that lacked experience with nuclear technology did not. Eventually, some 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and vegetation were shipped to the United States for disposal. Meanwhile, at sea, 33 U.S. Navy vessels were involved in the search for the lost hydrogen bomb.

Using an IBM computer, experts tried to calculate where the bomb might have landed, but the impact area was still too large for an effective search. Finally, an eyewitness account by a Spanish fisherman led the investigators to a one-mile area. On March 15th, a submarine spotted the bomb, and on April 7th, it was recovered. It was damaged but intact. That is crazy. I want to do some more research about this. I'm sure there are some crazy stories about it.

I want to hear the accounts of the fishermen and people who lived in Palomares. Is there a documentary about this? If there isn't, there should be with the amount of documentaries that are floating around. Anyway, let's do a quick vocabulary check. The first word or phrase I wanted to talk about is as a means of. So as a means of is another way of saying in order to, with the aim of, with the purpose to, etc. As a means of maintaining first strike capability.

Then in that same sentence, we have laden or laden with. Bombers laden with nuclear bombs. So laden, spelled L-A-D-E-N, means carrying or holding a lot of something. The table was laden with food, for example. Then in that same sentence, we had the word ceaselessly. Ceaselessly. Now this is an interesting word. Let's break it down. To cease means to stop, right?

Ojo. Don't confuse this word with cze, spelled S-E-I-Z-E, which means to take something forcibly, like the police would maybe seize your car. This is cis. C-E-A-S-E. Not cis, but cis. Okay, now that that's clear, let's talk about ceaseless li. To arrive at this word, we take cis and then add two suffixes les and li. So les in this case, aktua como un sin, no? Sin barar. Then li at the end turns it into an adverb so it describes how the bombers circled the earth. How did they circle?

Ceaselessly, sin barar. Ceaselessly, sin varar. Let's read the sentence again now that we know every part of it. As a means of maintaining first strike capability during the Cold War, US bombers laden with nuclear weapons circled the earth ceaselessly for decades.

Nice. Next up is the verb to scatter, spelled S-C A T T E R. The sentence was none of the bombs were armed, but explosive material in two of the bombs that fell to earth exploded upon impact, forming craters and scattering radioactive plutonium over the fields of Palomares. So to scatter means to throw in various random directions. So the radioactive plutonium was scattered all over the fields of Palomares. Dispersar o esparcir. ¿Qué más? Ah, really quickly, the verb to lack.

I know you know this one probably, but for those of you who don't, to lack means to be without something. The sentence was the US personnel took precautions to prevent overexposure to the radiation, but the Spanish workers who lived in a country that lacked experience with nuclear technology did not. One more before we go. The sentence was finally an eyewitness account by a Spanish fisherman led the investigators to a one-mile area.

First, witness means testigo, someone who was there and witnessed the events. So it can be a noun, a witness, but you can also witness something. So a noun and a verb. In this case, it has the word I in front of it. And honestly, I'm not sure what the difference is. It's someone who saw what happened with their eyes, not someone that was just around the area and just more or less knows. Not sure, but you get it. Then account. An account is a report or description of an event or experience.

So what you say happened. Again, finally, an eyewitness account by a Spanish fisherman led the investigators to a one mile area. Alright, that's it for this episode of English with Dane. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you learned something. If you made it this far, si llegaste hasta aquí, if you made it this far, please give English with Dane a five-star rating on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

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