Showing posts with label Aneka. Show all posts
5.29.2025
Larry Hoover: The Controversial Legacy of the Gang Leader & Calls for Clemency
# **Larry Hoover: From Gangster Disciples Founder to Prison – The Full Story**
**Introduction**
Larry Hoover, the infamous co-founder of the Chicago-based *Gangster Disciples*, remains one of America’s most debated figures. Convicted in 1997 for drug trafficking, conspiracy, and murder, Hoover’s life sentence has sparked movements demanding clemency, supported by high-profile figures like Kanye West (Ye) and Drake. Here’s the latest on his case and legacy.
 |
| Larry Hoover, Pict:Rapzilla |
## **Who Is Larry Hoover?**
Born in 1950, Hoover co-founded the *Gangster Disciples* in the 1960s, which grew into one of Chicago’s largest street gangs. Initially aimed at community protection, the group later became involved in organized crime.
### **Key Facts About Hoover’s Case:**
- **1973:** Convicted for murder (served 150-200 years).
- **1997:** Federal conviction for drug trafficking, extortion, and ordering murders.
- **Current Status:** Serving six life sentences in ADX Florence, a supermax prison.
## **Why Is Larry Hoover Back in the News?**
1. **Clemency Campaigns:** Advocates argue Hoover has reformed in prison and deserves sentence reduction.
2. **Celebrity Influence:** Kanye West and Drake’s 2021 "Free Larry Hoover" concert amplified attention.
3. **Legal Appeals:** His legal team continues challenging his conviction, citing unfair trial conditions.
## **Controversies & Debates**
- **Reform vs. Punishment:** Supporters claim Hoover has disavowed gang violence, while opponents argue his crimes were too severe.
- **Political Angle:** Some view his case as a symbol of systemic injustice in the U.S. prison system.
## **Latest Updates (2024)**
- No official clemency granted yet, but petitions circulate.
- FBI files and documentaries keep public interest alive.
9.20.2023
Revisions to Keep Your Eye on the Ball
Keep your eyes on the ball is a common refrain in almost every sport. It also applies to golf! The likelihood of hitting the ball is quite low if you are not paying attention to it.
Maintain your attention on a single area of the ball. As you swing, don't look at your club.
Keep your attention on the ball, and let everything else go away.
Instead of focusing on the ball as it hangs from the end of the golf club, try to glance down at it. Raising your shoulders won't improve your ability to see the ball. If you turn the ball over and look at it, You won't have an inclination to look up before the end of your swing, and you'll receive more effective results.
Unfortunately, when you start to bring the club back, it is entirely normal to turn your head. Keep your focus on the ball and disregard the instinctive feeling.
When you are staring down at the ball, you should realize that keeping your hands moving parallel to the flight line is the only method to maintain the club head's proper line of flight. When you make contact with the ball, keep your hands parallel to the club head.
Keep your attention on the ball, and let everything else go away.
Instead of focusing on the ball as it hangs from the end of the golf club, try to glance down at it. Raising your shoulders won't improve your ability to see the ball. If you turn the ball over and look at it, You won't have an inclination to look up before the end of your swing, and you'll receive more effective results.
Unfortunately, when you start to bring the club back, it is entirely normal to turn your head. Keep your focus on the ball and disregard the instinctive feeling.
When you are staring down at the ball, you should realize that keeping your hands moving parallel to the flight line is the only method to maintain the club head's proper line of flight. When you make contact with the ball, keep your hands parallel to the club head.
No matter what kind of shot you need to make, it is crucial to learn to monitor the ball. No matter what kind of shot you need to make, it is crucial to learn to monitor the ball. The most important thing is to see the ball clearly so that you can smash it firmly and effectively, regardless of where it is—whether it is in the long grass, the sand trap, on a slope, or anywhere else.
Few golfers maintain their focus on the ball while standing stationary. People frequently first glance in the direction they want the ball to go before turning their attention to it. The majority of golfers would be shocked to hear that they don't just sit there and stare at the ball. You start having issues the moment you shift your focus off the task at hand.
Concentration lapses are the main cause of golf errors. You can hit the ball well if you maintain your attention on it.
Remind yourself to keep your eyes on the ball throughout the entire swing to improve your golf game. Your golfing skills will be so substantially better than theirs that your pals could seek you for help!
Few golfers maintain their focus on the ball while standing stationary. People frequently first glance in the direction they want the ball to go before turning their attention to it. The majority of golfers would be shocked to hear that they don't just sit there and stare at the ball. You start having issues the moment you shift your focus off the task at hand.
Concentration lapses are the main cause of golf errors. You can hit the ball well if you maintain your attention on it.
Remind yourself to keep your eyes on the ball throughout the entire swing to improve your golf game. Your golfing skills will be so substantially better than theirs that your pals could seek you for help!
7.05.2022
THE SWORD OF WEALTH CHAPTER 2 - TARSIS
Among the chieftains of production who were leading Italy to prosperity and power Antonio Tarsis held the foremost place. Son of a shop-keeper in Palermo, he began life poor and without influence. It had taken him less than twenty years to build up a fortune so large that the journals of new ideals pointed to it as a terrible example. Cartoonists had fallen into the habit of picturing him with a snout and bristled ears. There was a serious portrait of him in the directors’ room of one of the companies he ruled. It was painted by a man whose impulse to please was stronger than his artistic courage.
He told all that he dared. In full length, it showed a man under forty, black-bearded, with a well-turned person of middle height; small, adroit eyes heavily browed, prominent nose inclined to squatness, spare lips and broad jaws; the portrait, at a glance, of a[Pg 21] fighter of firm grain, fashioned for success in the great battle.
So much for the Tarsis of paint and canvas.
The one that faced you in the flesh had harder, crueler eyes; the living clutch of the lips was tighter; the faint yet redeeming human quality of the man in the picture was lacking. And in the hue of his skin, much darker than the painter had ventured, nature did not deny the land of his birth—Sicily. It was there, at the beginning of manhood, that chance threw him into the post of time-keeper for a silk-mill. He did his work so well that never a centesimo went to pay for moments not spent in the service of the company.
7.03.2022
The Sword of Wealth By Henry Wilton Thomas
The Sword of Wealth
CHAPTER I
THE UNEXPECTED MAN
CHAPTER I
THE UNEXPECTED MAN
A week before the day set for her wedding, in a bright hour of early April, Hera rode forth from the park of Villa Barbiondi. Following the margin of the river, she trotted her horse to where the shores lay coupled by a bridge of pontoons—an ancient device of small boats and planking little different from the sort Cæsar’s soldiers threw across the same stream. She drew up and watched the strife going on between the bridge and the current—the boats straining at their anchor-chains and the water rioting between them.
Italy has no lovelier valley than the one where flowed the river on which she looked, and in the gentler season there is no water-course more expressive of serene human character. But the river was tipsy to-day. The springtime sun, in its passages of splendour from Alp to Alp, had set free[Pg 2] the winter snows, and Old Adda, flushed by his many cups, frolicked ruthlessly to the sea.
Peasant folk in that part of the Brianza had smiled a few days earlier to see the great stream change its sombre green for an earthy hue, because it was a promise of the vernal awakening. Yet their joy was shadowed, as it always is in freshet days, by dread of the havoc so often attending the spree of the waters.
Time and again Hera had ridden over when the river was in such mood, and known only a keen enjoyment in the adventure. Now she spoke to Nero, and he went forward without distrust in the hand that guided him; still, the pose of his ears and the quivering nostrils betrayed a preference for roads that neither swayed nor billowed. Less than half the crossing had been accomplished when the crackle of sundering timber startled her; then events confused themselves strangely amid the rustle of the wind and the scream of the water.
A few paces ahead, at the middle of the stream, where the current’s play was fiercest, two pontoons tore free from their anchorage, and here the bridge parted. With her consciousness of this[Pg 3] rose the blurred vision of a horse and rider flying over the breach. Then she was aware of the beat of swift-moving hoofs, and, in the next instant, it seemed, of a voice at her side:
“Turn back, signora, I beg of you!”
She brought her horse around, but while she did so there was a second rending of woodwork, a snapping, too, of anchor-chains, and the part of the bridge on which they stood—severed by a new breach from the rest of the structure—began to go with the tide.
It was an odd bark on which they found themselves being swept toward the sea. It consisted of six of the pontoons, held together none too securely by the planking that made the deck.
Round and round it swung, tossed like a chip on the racing flood. The temper of Hera’s horse was less equal to the swirling, rocking situation than that of her companion’s mount. In vain she tried to quiet him. From side to side of the raft the beast caracoled or rose with fore legs in the air when she drew him up, perilously near the edge.
“Dismount, dismount!” the other called to her.
Before she could heed the warning Nero began[Pg 4] to back near the brink, leaving her powerless to prevent him carrying her into the water. But the stranger had swung out of the saddle. A spring forward and he had Nero by the head in a grip not to be shaken off. The animal’s effort to go overboard was checked, but only for the moment, and when Hera had dismounted her deliverer passed his own bridle-reins to her that he might be free to manage her more restive steed.
“There, there, boy!” he said in the way to quiet a nervous horse. “No fear, no fear. We shall be out of this soon. Patience! Steady, steady!”
A minute and he had Nero under such control that he stood with four hoofs on the deck at one time and balked only fitfully at the restraining hand on the bridle.
Silently Hera watched the man at his task, struck by the calmness with which he performed it. By neither look nor word did he betray to her that fear had any place in his emotions. Swifter the river tossed them onward. Louder their crazy vessel creaked and groaned. But his mastery of himself, his superiority to the terrors that bounded them, his disdain for the hazard of events while he did the needful work of the[Pg 5] moment, awoke in her a feeling akin to security. It was as if he lifted her with him above the danger in which the maddest whim of fortune had made them partners.
“Do you see any way out of it?” she asked, presently, following his example of coolness.
He seemed not to hear her voice. With feet set sure and a steady grip on the bridle, he peered into the distance ahead—far over the expanse of violent water, now tinted here and there with rose, caught from the glowing west, where the sun hung low over dark, wooded hills. She wondered what it was that he sought so eagerly, but did not ask. She guessed it had to do with some quickly conceived design for breaking their captivity, and when at length he turned to her she saw in his eye the light of a discovered hope.
“Yes,” he said, “we have a good chance. The current bears us toward the point at the bend of the river. We must pass within a few yards of that if I judge rightly.”
“And then?”
“I shall make use of that,” he answered, pointing to a coil of rope that hung on his saddle-bow.
“What I mean to do is——”
Peasant folk in that part of the Brianza had smiled a few days earlier to see the great stream change its sombre green for an earthy hue, because it was a promise of the vernal awakening. Yet their joy was shadowed, as it always is in freshet days, by dread of the havoc so often attending the spree of the waters.
Time and again Hera had ridden over when the river was in such mood, and known only a keen enjoyment in the adventure. Now she spoke to Nero, and he went forward without distrust in the hand that guided him; still, the pose of his ears and the quivering nostrils betrayed a preference for roads that neither swayed nor billowed. Less than half the crossing had been accomplished when the crackle of sundering timber startled her; then events confused themselves strangely amid the rustle of the wind and the scream of the water.
A few paces ahead, at the middle of the stream, where the current’s play was fiercest, two pontoons tore free from their anchorage, and here the bridge parted. With her consciousness of this[Pg 3] rose the blurred vision of a horse and rider flying over the breach. Then she was aware of the beat of swift-moving hoofs, and, in the next instant, it seemed, of a voice at her side:
“Turn back, signora, I beg of you!”
She brought her horse around, but while she did so there was a second rending of woodwork, a snapping, too, of anchor-chains, and the part of the bridge on which they stood—severed by a new breach from the rest of the structure—began to go with the tide.
It was an odd bark on which they found themselves being swept toward the sea. It consisted of six of the pontoons, held together none too securely by the planking that made the deck.
Round and round it swung, tossed like a chip on the racing flood. The temper of Hera’s horse was less equal to the swirling, rocking situation than that of her companion’s mount. In vain she tried to quiet him. From side to side of the raft the beast caracoled or rose with fore legs in the air when she drew him up, perilously near the edge.
“Dismount, dismount!” the other called to her.
Before she could heed the warning Nero began[Pg 4] to back near the brink, leaving her powerless to prevent him carrying her into the water. But the stranger had swung out of the saddle. A spring forward and he had Nero by the head in a grip not to be shaken off. The animal’s effort to go overboard was checked, but only for the moment, and when Hera had dismounted her deliverer passed his own bridle-reins to her that he might be free to manage her more restive steed.
“There, there, boy!” he said in the way to quiet a nervous horse. “No fear, no fear. We shall be out of this soon. Patience! Steady, steady!”
A minute and he had Nero under such control that he stood with four hoofs on the deck at one time and balked only fitfully at the restraining hand on the bridle.
Silently Hera watched the man at his task, struck by the calmness with which he performed it. By neither look nor word did he betray to her that fear had any place in his emotions. Swifter the river tossed them onward. Louder their crazy vessel creaked and groaned. But his mastery of himself, his superiority to the terrors that bounded them, his disdain for the hazard of events while he did the needful work of the[Pg 5] moment, awoke in her a feeling akin to security. It was as if he lifted her with him above the danger in which the maddest whim of fortune had made them partners.
“Do you see any way out of it?” she asked, presently, following his example of coolness.
He seemed not to hear her voice. With feet set sure and a steady grip on the bridle, he peered into the distance ahead—far over the expanse of violent water, now tinted here and there with rose, caught from the glowing west, where the sun hung low over dark, wooded hills. She wondered what it was that he sought so eagerly, but did not ask. She guessed it had to do with some quickly conceived design for breaking their captivity, and when at length he turned to her she saw in his eye the light of a discovered hope.
“Yes,” he said, “we have a good chance. The current bears us toward the point at the bend of the river. We must pass within a few yards of that if I judge rightly.”
“And then?”
“I shall make use of that,” he answered, pointing to a coil of rope that hung on his saddle-bow.
“What I mean to do is——”
[Pg 6]
 |
| The Sword of Wealth, By Henry Wilton Thomas |
The sound of breaking planks signalled a danger with which he had not reckoned. He saw one of the end pontoons wrench itself free. Hera saw it too, as it bore away to drift alone; and they knew it for a warning grimly clear that all the members of their uncertain bark must part company ere long.
In the silence that fell between them she looked toward the Viadetta bank, where peasants awoke the echoes with their hue and cry. He kept his gaze on the spear of land that marked the river’s sharpest turn. Once or twice he measured with his eye the lessening distance between them and the shore.
“We hold to the right course,” he said, confidently. “There will be time.”
Piece by piece Hera saw the thing that bore them scatter its parts over the river.
“What shall we do?” she asked, a shudder of fear mingling strangely with trust in him.
At first he made her no answer, but continued to watch the shore as if striving to discern some signal. Another pontoon broke loose, carrying off a part of the deck and leaving the rest of the planks it had supported hanging in the water.[Pg 7] The sound of the breaking timbers did not make him turn his head. When at last he faced her it was to speak in tones all at odds with their desperate state.
“See the Old Sentinel!” he exclaimed, gleefully. “He shall save us!”
Not far to the south she could see the projecting land, a flat place and bare except for some carved stones lying there in a semblance of order—the bleached ruins, in fact, of a temple raised by one of her ancestors. The wash of ages had brought the river much nearer than it was in the days of that rude conqueror, and one stone, bedded deep in the mould, stood erect at the water’s edge. Its base was hidden, but enough remained above ground to tell what part it had played in architecture—a section of a rounded column. Brianza folk knew it by the name of the Old Sentinel. Always it had been there, they told the stranger. Now the magic of the low sun changed it into a shaft of gold. From childhood Hera had known the ancient landmark, and was the more puzzled to divine how it could serve them now.
“Can I help?” she asked, as he turned toward her again.
[Pg 8]
“Yes,” he answered, quickly. “Hold my horse. Can you manage both?”
“I will try,” she said, moving closer to him.
“We must not lose the horses,” he warned her. “They will be useful in case I—even after we are connected once more with the land.”
She took the other bridle, which he passed to her, and grasped it firmly. Then she saw him lift from the saddle-bow the rope—a lariat of the plainsman’s sort, fashioned of horsehair, light of weight, but stronger than if made of hemp. He gathered it in an orderly coil and made sure of his footing. Now she knew what he was going to attempt, and the desperate chance of the feat came home to her. In a flash she comprehended that upon the success of it their lives depended even if the dismembering raft held together so long. If his aim proved false, if the lariat missed the mark, a second throw might not avail; before he could make it they must be swept past the column of stone.
Calmly he awaited the right moment, which came when their rickety outfit, in the freak of the current, was moving yet toward the land. He poised a second and raised the coil. Twice he[Pg 9] swung it in a circle above his head—the horses were watching him—and with a mighty fling sent it over the water. Steadily it paid out, ring for ring, straight as an arrow’s course, until the noose caught the column fairly, spread around it, and dropped to the ground.
“Bravo, Signor Sentinella!” he cried, pulling the line taut. “A good catch!”
“Bravo, Signor—” she amended, pausing for his name.
“Forza is my name,” he said, hauling for the shore, hand over hand.
It was work that had to be done quickly. A few seconds and their craft would swing past the column to which it was moored. To haul it back then would mean a tug against the current. In this he knew that no strength of his could avail even if the lariat did not part. His sole chance was to keep the float moving in a slanting line toward land before it should be carried beyond the Sentinel. The bulk of woodwork and pontoons was of great weight, and the task took all the strength he could muster.
“Let me help you,” Hera said, seeing that he strained every muscle.
[Pg 10]
“No, no! Hold the horses! Now is our time. We are in shallow water.”
He looped the rope about his right hand, and with this alone held them to the shore. Kneeling on the half-submerged planks at the edge, he leaned over the water, and, with his left hand, passed the end of the lariat under and around a yet staunch timber of the deck. In his teeth he caught the end and held it; then clutched it again in his free hand, and, with the quick movement of one sure of his knot, made it fast.
“Now for it,” he said, on his feet once more, as their raft, tugging hard at the line, swung around with the current, and another pontoon broke away.
Before she was aware of his purpose he had lifted her into the saddle and mounted his own horse.
“Come along,” he said, cheerfully. “It is only wet feet at the worst,” and he put spur to his horse.
Their animals sprang into the water together just as the lariat snapped, and the raft, set free, went on with the rushing flood. Side by side they splashed their way to the pebbled[Pg 11] beach and up to where the ruins of Alboin’s temple reposed.
Before them was a ride in the growing dusk over open lengths of hillside pass and by sylvan roads to Villa Barbiondi. On high the wind blew swiftly; clouds that had lost their lustre raced away, and the shadows fell long on hills that were dull and bare as yet, but soon to be lightened with passionate blossoming. Before her, in the gloaming distance, were glimpses over the trees of her father’s dark-walled house—a grand old villa, impressive by contrast with its trim white neighbours pointing the perspective. Glad to feel solid ground beneath their hoofs once more, the horses galloped away, and their riders let them go. Not until the partial darkness of a grove enclosed them did they slacken speed; there the road wore upward, and the horses of their will came to a walk. Beyond the black stocks and naked boughs the crimson glow of sunset lingered.
“Now that it is past,” Hera said, as if musing, “I see how great was the danger.”
“I think you were alive to it at the time,” he returned in the manner of one who had observed and judged. “You are brave.”
[Pg 12]
“It was confidence more than bravery,” she told him frankly.
“But you made it easy for me to do my part,” he insisted.
“That was because—well, as I see it now—because there was no moment when I did not feel that we should come out of it all right.”
“Then I must tell you,” he said, “to whom we are indebted for our escape. Somewhere in the woods, the fields, or the highways on the other side of the river is a Guernsey heifer living just now in the joy or sorrow of newly gained freedom. But for that we might not be here in fairly dry clothes.”
They had emerged from the grove, and he pointed toward the opposite shore, where the white buildings of the Social Dairy were still visible, though the twilight was almost gone.
“The heifer was born and bred in our little colony over there,” he went on, “and until an hour ago her world was bounded by its fences. But she jumped our tallest barrier, and I was after her with the lariat when the bridge broke.”
“I admit our debt to the heifer,” she said, laughing. “To her we owe the rope—but not the[Pg 13] throwing. I was unaware that anyone short of the American cowboy could wield a lasso so well.”
“It was in America that I got an inkling of the art,” he explained. “Once the life of a California ranchero seemed to me the one all desirable—a dream which I pursued even to the buying of a ranch.”
“And the awakening?” she asked, a little preoccupied. His reference to the Social Dairy had solved for her the riddle of his identity. She knew him now for the leader of a certain radical group in the Chamber of Deputies.
“The awakening came soon enough,” he said. “At the end of two years the gentleman of whom I bought the dream consented to take it back at a handsome profit to himself.”
“Then you paid dearly, I am afraid, for your lessons in lariat throwing.”
“I thought so until to-day,” he replied, turning to meet her eyes.
They rode on at a smarter gait. She had looked into his clear face, and it seemed boyish for one of whom the world heard so much—for the leader of Italy’s most serious political cause. He was, like her, a noble type of the North’s blue-eyed race;[Pg 14] only the blood of some dark-hued genitor told in his hair and color, while her massing tresses had the caprice of gold. They came to a hill and the horses walked again.
“My deliverer, it appears, is Mario Forza, the dangerous man,” she said, with a playful accent of dismay.
“Yes; the title is one with which my friends the enemy have honoured me.”
She leaned forward and patted her horse, saying the while:
“I have it in mind from some writer that to dangerous men the world owes its progress.”
“Do you believe that?” he asked, seriously.
“Yes; in the way that I understand it. Perhaps I do not get the true meaning of my author.”
“One can never be certain of knowing the thought of another,” he said.
“True. For example, I am far from certain that I know the thought of your New Democracy—what you are striving to do for Italy. And yet,” she added, reflectively, “I think I know.”
“Do you understand that we aim to fill our country with true friends—to teach Italy that it[Pg 15] is possible for all her children to live and prosper in their own land?”
“Yes,” she answered, positively, gladly.
“Then you know the thought of the New Democracy.”
Evincing an interest that he felt was not feigned, she asked him how the cause fared, and he told her that among the people it gained, but in Parliament set-backs, discouragements, were almost the rule.
“But you will fight on!” she exclaimed, out of the conviction he gave her of valour.
“Ah, yes; we shall fight on.”
The hush of the night’s first moments had fallen upon the scene. What light tarried in the west showed the mountain’s contour, but relieved the darkness no longer. Yellow windows studded the lower plains and the woody heights. They could see above the trees the shadowy towers of Villa Barbiondi, and only a little way before them now, but still invisible, stood the gates of the villa park.
They had reached the foot of a sharp rise in the road when two blazing orbs shot over the crest of the hill, bathing horses and riders in a stream of[Pg 16] light. A motor car came to a standstill, and the older of the two occupants, a tall man in the fifties, sprang down nimbly.
“Hera! Hera!” he cried. “Heaven be praised!”
As he approached he snatched a mask from his face, and there was her father, Don Riccardo.
“And to think that you are here, all of you, safe as ever!” he exclaimed, caressing her hand. “Ah, my daughter, this is a joyous moment.”
“Yes; all of me saved, babbo dear,” she said. “But indeed it came near being the other way.”
“Again Heaven be praised!” said Don Riccardo.
“Heaven and this gentleman,” Hera amended, turning to Mario. “The Honourable Forza—my father.”
“Your hand, sir!” cried Don Riccardo, going around her horse to where Mario stood. “Believe me, you have saved my life as well. My debt to you is so great that I can never hope to pay.”
Mario told him that it was not such a big debt. “In plain truth,” he added, “I was obliged to save Donna Hera in order to save myself. So it was the sort of activity, you see, that comes under the head of self-preservation.”
[Pg 17]
“Ah, is it so?” returned Don Riccardo, genially. “Nevertheless, sir, I shall look further into your report of the affair. To-night I shall sound it. In your presence we shall have the testimony of an eyewitness. At least we shall if you will give us your company at dinner, which, by the way, is waiting.”
“I am sorry, but to-night I cannot.”
“Then to-morrow, or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?”
“Wednesday I should be glad.”
“Good! On Wednesday, then, we shall tarnish your fame for veracity, and, if I mistake not, brighten it for modesty.”
The final tones of the sunset’s colours had given way to deepest shadow. At Hera’s side, listening to her account of the river episode, stood Don Riccardo’s companion of the motor car—a dark, bearded man of middle height, whose face was hard and cruel, and seemed the more so in the grim flare of the machine’s lamps.
“Signor Tarsis!” Don Riccardo called to him. “Let me present you. The Honourable Forza. Probably you have met.”
Tarsis, drawing nearer, gave Mario no more than[Pg 18] a half nod of recognition, while he said, in a manner of one merely observing the civilities:
“I have to thank you for the service I hear you have rendered my affianced wife.”
There was a pause before Mario replied that he counted it a great privilege to be at hand in the moment of Donna Hera’s need. The last word was still on his lips when Tarsis turned to Don Riccardo and asked if he were ready to go back to the villa, and the older man answered with a bare affirmative. Presently the car was brought about; as it shot away Hera and Mario followed. Now and again the highway bore close to the river’s margin, and the splash of the rampant water sounded in the dark. A little while and they stopped at the Barbiondi gates, where their ways parted—hers up the winding road to the house, his onward to the nearest bridge, that he might cross and ride back to Viadetta.
“I regret that I cannot be with you to-night,” he told her. “An hour and I must start for Rome.”
“Until Wednesday, then?” she said, giving him her hand.
“Until Wednesday.”
She spoke to Nero and was gone. A moment[Pg 19] Forza lingered, looking into the darkness that enveloped her. Once or twice, as she moved up the road, he caught the sparking of her horse’s steel. At a turn in the way she passed into the light of the motor car’s lamps, and he gained one more glimpse of her, and was content. Then he set off for the Bridge of Speranza.
In the silence that fell between them she looked toward the Viadetta bank, where peasants awoke the echoes with their hue and cry. He kept his gaze on the spear of land that marked the river’s sharpest turn. Once or twice he measured with his eye the lessening distance between them and the shore.
“We hold to the right course,” he said, confidently. “There will be time.”
Piece by piece Hera saw the thing that bore them scatter its parts over the river.
“What shall we do?” she asked, a shudder of fear mingling strangely with trust in him.
At first he made her no answer, but continued to watch the shore as if striving to discern some signal. Another pontoon broke loose, carrying off a part of the deck and leaving the rest of the planks it had supported hanging in the water.[Pg 7] The sound of the breaking timbers did not make him turn his head. When at last he faced her it was to speak in tones all at odds with their desperate state.
“See the Old Sentinel!” he exclaimed, gleefully. “He shall save us!”
Not far to the south she could see the projecting land, a flat place and bare except for some carved stones lying there in a semblance of order—the bleached ruins, in fact, of a temple raised by one of her ancestors. The wash of ages had brought the river much nearer than it was in the days of that rude conqueror, and one stone, bedded deep in the mould, stood erect at the water’s edge. Its base was hidden, but enough remained above ground to tell what part it had played in architecture—a section of a rounded column. Brianza folk knew it by the name of the Old Sentinel. Always it had been there, they told the stranger. Now the magic of the low sun changed it into a shaft of gold. From childhood Hera had known the ancient landmark, and was the more puzzled to divine how it could serve them now.
“Can I help?” she asked, as he turned toward her again.
[Pg 8]
“Yes,” he answered, quickly. “Hold my horse. Can you manage both?”
“I will try,” she said, moving closer to him.
“We must not lose the horses,” he warned her. “They will be useful in case I—even after we are connected once more with the land.”
She took the other bridle, which he passed to her, and grasped it firmly. Then she saw him lift from the saddle-bow the rope—a lariat of the plainsman’s sort, fashioned of horsehair, light of weight, but stronger than if made of hemp. He gathered it in an orderly coil and made sure of his footing. Now she knew what he was going to attempt, and the desperate chance of the feat came home to her. In a flash she comprehended that upon the success of it their lives depended even if the dismembering raft held together so long. If his aim proved false, if the lariat missed the mark, a second throw might not avail; before he could make it they must be swept past the column of stone.
Calmly he awaited the right moment, which came when their rickety outfit, in the freak of the current, was moving yet toward the land. He poised a second and raised the coil. Twice he[Pg 9] swung it in a circle above his head—the horses were watching him—and with a mighty fling sent it over the water. Steadily it paid out, ring for ring, straight as an arrow’s course, until the noose caught the column fairly, spread around it, and dropped to the ground.
“Bravo, Signor Sentinella!” he cried, pulling the line taut. “A good catch!”
“Bravo, Signor—” she amended, pausing for his name.
“Forza is my name,” he said, hauling for the shore, hand over hand.
It was work that had to be done quickly. A few seconds and their craft would swing past the column to which it was moored. To haul it back then would mean a tug against the current. In this he knew that no strength of his could avail even if the lariat did not part. His sole chance was to keep the float moving in a slanting line toward land before it should be carried beyond the Sentinel. The bulk of woodwork and pontoons was of great weight, and the task took all the strength he could muster.
“Let me help you,” Hera said, seeing that he strained every muscle.
[Pg 10]
“No, no! Hold the horses! Now is our time. We are in shallow water.”
He looped the rope about his right hand, and with this alone held them to the shore. Kneeling on the half-submerged planks at the edge, he leaned over the water, and, with his left hand, passed the end of the lariat under and around a yet staunch timber of the deck. In his teeth he caught the end and held it; then clutched it again in his free hand, and, with the quick movement of one sure of his knot, made it fast.
“Now for it,” he said, on his feet once more, as their raft, tugging hard at the line, swung around with the current, and another pontoon broke away.
Before she was aware of his purpose he had lifted her into the saddle and mounted his own horse.
“Come along,” he said, cheerfully. “It is only wet feet at the worst,” and he put spur to his horse.
Their animals sprang into the water together just as the lariat snapped, and the raft, set free, went on with the rushing flood. Side by side they splashed their way to the pebbled[Pg 11] beach and up to where the ruins of Alboin’s temple reposed.
Before them was a ride in the growing dusk over open lengths of hillside pass and by sylvan roads to Villa Barbiondi. On high the wind blew swiftly; clouds that had lost their lustre raced away, and the shadows fell long on hills that were dull and bare as yet, but soon to be lightened with passionate blossoming. Before her, in the gloaming distance, were glimpses over the trees of her father’s dark-walled house—a grand old villa, impressive by contrast with its trim white neighbours pointing the perspective. Glad to feel solid ground beneath their hoofs once more, the horses galloped away, and their riders let them go. Not until the partial darkness of a grove enclosed them did they slacken speed; there the road wore upward, and the horses of their will came to a walk. Beyond the black stocks and naked boughs the crimson glow of sunset lingered.
“Now that it is past,” Hera said, as if musing, “I see how great was the danger.”
“I think you were alive to it at the time,” he returned in the manner of one who had observed and judged. “You are brave.”
[Pg 12]
“It was confidence more than bravery,” she told him frankly.
“But you made it easy for me to do my part,” he insisted.
“That was because—well, as I see it now—because there was no moment when I did not feel that we should come out of it all right.”
“Then I must tell you,” he said, “to whom we are indebted for our escape. Somewhere in the woods, the fields, or the highways on the other side of the river is a Guernsey heifer living just now in the joy or sorrow of newly gained freedom. But for that we might not be here in fairly dry clothes.”
They had emerged from the grove, and he pointed toward the opposite shore, where the white buildings of the Social Dairy were still visible, though the twilight was almost gone.
“The heifer was born and bred in our little colony over there,” he went on, “and until an hour ago her world was bounded by its fences. But she jumped our tallest barrier, and I was after her with the lariat when the bridge broke.”
“I admit our debt to the heifer,” she said, laughing. “To her we owe the rope—but not the[Pg 13] throwing. I was unaware that anyone short of the American cowboy could wield a lasso so well.”
“It was in America that I got an inkling of the art,” he explained. “Once the life of a California ranchero seemed to me the one all desirable—a dream which I pursued even to the buying of a ranch.”
“And the awakening?” she asked, a little preoccupied. His reference to the Social Dairy had solved for her the riddle of his identity. She knew him now for the leader of a certain radical group in the Chamber of Deputies.
“The awakening came soon enough,” he said. “At the end of two years the gentleman of whom I bought the dream consented to take it back at a handsome profit to himself.”
“Then you paid dearly, I am afraid, for your lessons in lariat throwing.”
“I thought so until to-day,” he replied, turning to meet her eyes.
They rode on at a smarter gait. She had looked into his clear face, and it seemed boyish for one of whom the world heard so much—for the leader of Italy’s most serious political cause. He was, like her, a noble type of the North’s blue-eyed race;[Pg 14] only the blood of some dark-hued genitor told in his hair and color, while her massing tresses had the caprice of gold. They came to a hill and the horses walked again.
“My deliverer, it appears, is Mario Forza, the dangerous man,” she said, with a playful accent of dismay.
“Yes; the title is one with which my friends the enemy have honoured me.”
She leaned forward and patted her horse, saying the while:
“I have it in mind from some writer that to dangerous men the world owes its progress.”
“Do you believe that?” he asked, seriously.
“Yes; in the way that I understand it. Perhaps I do not get the true meaning of my author.”
“One can never be certain of knowing the thought of another,” he said.
“True. For example, I am far from certain that I know the thought of your New Democracy—what you are striving to do for Italy. And yet,” she added, reflectively, “I think I know.”
“Do you understand that we aim to fill our country with true friends—to teach Italy that it[Pg 15] is possible for all her children to live and prosper in their own land?”
“Yes,” she answered, positively, gladly.
“Then you know the thought of the New Democracy.”
Evincing an interest that he felt was not feigned, she asked him how the cause fared, and he told her that among the people it gained, but in Parliament set-backs, discouragements, were almost the rule.
“But you will fight on!” she exclaimed, out of the conviction he gave her of valour.
“Ah, yes; we shall fight on.”
The hush of the night’s first moments had fallen upon the scene. What light tarried in the west showed the mountain’s contour, but relieved the darkness no longer. Yellow windows studded the lower plains and the woody heights. They could see above the trees the shadowy towers of Villa Barbiondi, and only a little way before them now, but still invisible, stood the gates of the villa park.
They had reached the foot of a sharp rise in the road when two blazing orbs shot over the crest of the hill, bathing horses and riders in a stream of[Pg 16] light. A motor car came to a standstill, and the older of the two occupants, a tall man in the fifties, sprang down nimbly.
“Hera! Hera!” he cried. “Heaven be praised!”
As he approached he snatched a mask from his face, and there was her father, Don Riccardo.
“And to think that you are here, all of you, safe as ever!” he exclaimed, caressing her hand. “Ah, my daughter, this is a joyous moment.”
“Yes; all of me saved, babbo dear,” she said. “But indeed it came near being the other way.”
“Again Heaven be praised!” said Don Riccardo.
“Heaven and this gentleman,” Hera amended, turning to Mario. “The Honourable Forza—my father.”
“Your hand, sir!” cried Don Riccardo, going around her horse to where Mario stood. “Believe me, you have saved my life as well. My debt to you is so great that I can never hope to pay.”
Mario told him that it was not such a big debt. “In plain truth,” he added, “I was obliged to save Donna Hera in order to save myself. So it was the sort of activity, you see, that comes under the head of self-preservation.”
[Pg 17]
“Ah, is it so?” returned Don Riccardo, genially. “Nevertheless, sir, I shall look further into your report of the affair. To-night I shall sound it. In your presence we shall have the testimony of an eyewitness. At least we shall if you will give us your company at dinner, which, by the way, is waiting.”
“I am sorry, but to-night I cannot.”
“Then to-morrow, or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?”
“Wednesday I should be glad.”
“Good! On Wednesday, then, we shall tarnish your fame for veracity, and, if I mistake not, brighten it for modesty.”
The final tones of the sunset’s colours had given way to deepest shadow. At Hera’s side, listening to her account of the river episode, stood Don Riccardo’s companion of the motor car—a dark, bearded man of middle height, whose face was hard and cruel, and seemed the more so in the grim flare of the machine’s lamps.
“Signor Tarsis!” Don Riccardo called to him. “Let me present you. The Honourable Forza. Probably you have met.”
Tarsis, drawing nearer, gave Mario no more than[Pg 18] a half nod of recognition, while he said, in a manner of one merely observing the civilities:
“I have to thank you for the service I hear you have rendered my affianced wife.”
There was a pause before Mario replied that he counted it a great privilege to be at hand in the moment of Donna Hera’s need. The last word was still on his lips when Tarsis turned to Don Riccardo and asked if he were ready to go back to the villa, and the older man answered with a bare affirmative. Presently the car was brought about; as it shot away Hera and Mario followed. Now and again the highway bore close to the river’s margin, and the splash of the rampant water sounded in the dark. A little while and they stopped at the Barbiondi gates, where their ways parted—hers up the winding road to the house, his onward to the nearest bridge, that he might cross and ride back to Viadetta.
“I regret that I cannot be with you to-night,” he told her. “An hour and I must start for Rome.”
“Until Wednesday, then?” she said, giving him her hand.
“Until Wednesday.”
She spoke to Nero and was gone. A moment[Pg 19] Forza lingered, looking into the darkness that enveloped her. Once or twice, as she moved up the road, he caught the sparking of her horse’s steel. At a turn in the way she passed into the light of the motor car’s lamps, and he gained one more glimpse of her, and was content. Then he set off for the Bridge of Speranza.
Title: The sword of wealth
Author: Henry Wilton Thomas
Release Date: July 2, 2022 [eBook #68448]
Language: English
Produced by: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans of public domain works put online by Harvard University Library's Open Collections Program.)
Author: Henry Wilton Thomas
Release Date: July 2, 2022 [eBook #68448]
Language: English
Produced by: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans of public domain works put online by Harvard University Library's Open Collections Program.)
7.02.2022
ES POTONG JADUL
Bahan yang dibutuhkan :
- ½ bks tepung hunkwe
- 400 ml santan
- 100 gram gula pasir
- ¼ sdt garam
- ¼ sdt pewarna (pilih sesuai selera)
- 100 gram tape ketan hitam / bubur kacang hijau / vanilla / coklat bubuk (pilih sesuai selera)
- tusuk es krim secukupnya
Cara membuat :
- Larutkan tepung hunkwe bersama santan, gula, garam dan pewarna, masak menggunakan api kecil sambil di aduk-aduk hingga mendidih.
- Tambahkan tape ketan hitam / bubur kacang hijau / vanilla / cokalt bubuk, aduk rata.
- Angkat dan tuang ke dalam loyang.
- Masukan kedalam plastik ukuran es lilin.
- Simpan dalam freezer hingga beku.
- Potong-potong, dan tancapkan tusuk es krim.
8.01.2017
Wow, Honda NSX Balap Seharga Rp 7,2 Miliar
Honda mengumumkan siap memproduksi NSX GT3 dengan performa tinggi untuk memenuhi kebutuhan konsumen yang menyukai kecepatan. Sedan sport ini mulai siap dipesan mulai 2018 mendatang.
Rancang bangun bodi NSX GT3 dibuat khusus di Ohio, Amerika Serikat. Sementara proses perakitannya, Honda menggandeng JAS Motorsport di Milan, Italia.
JAS Motorsport juga bertugas untuk memberikan program balap untuk konsumen di Asia, Eropa, dan Amerika Latin. Sedangkan urusan mesin akan diracik oleh Honda Performance Development (HPD) dan Mugen yang berbasis di Jepang.
Dilansir dari Carscoops, Honda NSX GT3 sudah memenuhi syarat berkompetisi pada lebih dari dua lusin ajang bergengsi FIA di seluruh dunia. Beberapa diantaranya adalah GT Blancpain, Nurburgring 24 Hour Race, Super GT GT300 Class di Jepang, Pirelli World Challenge dan IMSA SporCar Series di Amerika Utara, dan Seri Blancpain GT Asia serta kejuaran GT Asia.
Honda NSX GT3 akan didukung dengan mesin V6 3.500 cc twin-turbo yang dikolaborasikan dengan gearbox khusus balap enam percepatan untuk mengirimkan tenaga ke roda belakang. Meski mesin yang digunakan tidak berbeda dengan versi produksi massal, tapi para teknisi sudah memberikan sentuhan khusus untuk mengoptimalkan tenaganya.
"Kami sangat bangga bisa meluncurkan NSX GT3 Customer Racing Program. Dengan dukungan dari pelanggan, JAS Motorsport, Mugen, dan HPD kami harap bisa melihat NSX berkompetisi untuk menang dalam ajang balap bergengsi GT3 di dunia pada 2018," ucap Robert Watherston, Head of Motorsport Honda Motor Europe.
Honda menawarkan NSX GT3 dengan harga mencapai 465.000 euro atau sekitar Rp 7,2 miliar. Selain mendapatkan NSX dengan spesifikasi siap tempur di lintasan balap, JAS Motorsport juga dikabarkan memberikan beberapa pilihan menarik lain untuk konsumen.
5.07.2017
4 Tanda Pria Selingkuh Dilihat dari Ponselnya
Selingkuh menjadi permasalahan utama dalam sebuah hubungan, dan banyak faktor yang menjadi latar belakangnya. Tanda-tanda selingkuh ini ternyata bisa dilihat dari kebiasaan pasangan menggunakan ponsel. Inilah 5 tanda selingkuh dari ponsel, seperti yang dikutip dari lifehack.org, Jumat (5/5/2017) dalam lama Liputan6.com.
Selalu Menyembunyikan Ponselnya
Tanda selingkuh pertama adalah pasangan mulai mengunci semua aplikasinya. Bahkan ia tidak ingin memperlihatkan ponselnya di hadapan Anda. Bila sudah melihat adanya perubahan kebiasaan ini, tentunya hal mencurigakan seperti selingkuh menjadi perhatian pertama pada lelaki Anda.
Suka berbohong ketika menjawab telepon atau pesan singkat
Apabila si dia mulai menjauh untuk menjawab telepon ketika sedang bertemu, atau pura-pura menghindar ketika ponselnya berbunyi, bisa jadi ini merupakan tanda dimulainya perselingkuhan. Tanyalah kepada hati kecil Anda, jika dirasa masih aman dan biasa saja, maka percayalah.
Terlalu lengket dengan ponsel
Selalu menggenggam ponsel, atau selalu mengalihkan pandangan ke ponsel ketika berbicara, bisa jadi tanda-tanda selingkuh. Sang lelaki tentunya ingin menjaga rahasia, namun bila terus-terusan di hadapan Anda? Tentunya hal ini menjadi pertanda buruk pada hubungan.
Mulai menyalahkan Anda ketika menyinggung ponsel
Pasangan mulai tersulut emosinya ketika Anda singgung mengenai ponselnya. Hal ini bisa berlanjut dengan emosi yang makin tinggi dan menyalahkan Anda dengan berbagai hal yang tidak masuk akal. Bila hal ini terjadi, tentunya lampu merah sudah menyala dan menjadi pertanda adanya masalah, termasuk persoalan selingkuh.
4.27.2017
10 Lubang Neraka di Bumi
Surat kabar berbahasa Finnish yang berjudul ‘Ammennusatia’ pernah lama ini mengungkap kejadian yang misterius. Disebutkan satu tim geologi yang menangani penggalian lubang dengan kedalaman 14,4 Km pada kerak bumi di Siberia (negara pecahan Uni Soviet) mengaku telah mendengar jeritan manusia dari perut bumi. Para ilmuwan khawatir bahwa mereka telah meloloskan suatu ‘kekuatan jahat’ ke atas permukaan bumi. “Informasi yang kami kumpulkan sangat mengejutkan. Kami benar-benar khawatir apa yang mungkin kami dapatkan di bawah” jelas Dr. Dmitri Azzacov, manajer proyek di pinggiran kota Siberia.
Adapun yang termasuk lubang neraka di bumi ini, antara lain :
Chuquicamata
Chili
Chuquicamata adalah sebuah lubang terbuka penambangan tembaga di Chili. Ini adalah tambang dengan total produksi terbesar tembaga di dunia - meskipun bukan tambang tembaga terbesar. Tambang yang lebih dari 850 meter dalamnya.
Udachnaya Pipa
Rusia
Udachnaya Pipe adalah sebuah tambang berlian di Rusia. Pemilik tambang merencanakan untuk menghentikan operasinya pada tahun 2010 - yang mendukung pertambangan bawah tanah. Tambang ditemukan pada tahun 1955 dan lebih dari 600 meter.
Sinkhole
Guatemala
Pada tahun 2007, kedalaman mencapai 300 kaki , menelan selusin rumah di Guatemala - membunuh 2 orang dan menyebabkan ribuan orang dievakuasi. Lubang pembuangan itu disebabkan oleh hujan dan aliran limbah bawah tanah.
Diavik Mine
Kanada
The Diavik Mine adalah tambang di Northwest Teritori Kanada. Tambang dibuka pada tahun 2003, menghasilkan 8 juta karat atau sekitar 1.600 kg (3.500 lb) berlian setiap tahun.
Mirny Diamond Mine
Siberia
Mirny Diamond Mine dalamnya mencapai 525m dan memiliki diameter 1200m. Ini adalah yang pertama, dan salah satu yang terbesar, tambang berlian di Uni Soviet. Sekarang ditinggalkan. Sementara itu masih beroperasi, itu akan memakan waktu dua jam untuk truk untuk kendaraan dari atas ke bawah tambang.
Great Blue Hole
Belize
Great Blue Hole adalah lubang pembuangan air di lepas pantai Belize. Lubang mencapai 1.000 meter dan lebar 400 meter. Itu dibentuk sebagai gua kapur selama iceage terakhir.
Bingham Canyon Mine
Utah
Bingham Canyon Mine adalah tambang tembaga di pegunungan Oquirrh, Utah. Tambang adalah 0,75 mil (1.2 km) yang mendalam, 2,5 mil (4 km) lebar. Ini adalah buatan manusia terbesar di dunia penggalian.
Monticello Dam
California
Monticello Dam adalah bendungan di Napa County, California, Amerika Serikat yang paling terkenal karena katup bulat besar dengan laju 48.400 meter kubik per detik.
Kimberley Diamond Mine
Afrika Selatan
Kimberley Diamond Mine (juga dikenal sebagai Big Hole) menjadi tangan terbesar menggali lubang di dunia. Dari 1866-1914 50.000 penambang menggali lubang dengan memilih dan sekop, menghasilkan 2.722 kg berlian. Upaya-upaya sedang dilakukan untuk memilikinya terdaftar sebagai situs warisan dunia.
Darvaza Gas Crater
Turkmenistan
Pada tahun 1971, ahli geologi menemukan deposit bawah tanah secara besar-besaran gas alam di situs ini. Sementara menggali lubang untuk tekan gas, rig pengeboran ambruk meninggalkan lubang besar. Untuk mencegah gas beracun dari keluar, lubang diizinkan untuk dibakar. Itu akan terus menyala hingga hari ini dan telah melakukan hal itu tanpa henti. Anda dapat melihat klip video itu terbakar di sini.
4.25.2017
Danau Mematikan dan Berbahaya di Dunia
Danau Kivu, Rwanda (Foto: picgrove)
Danau Kivu, Rwanda
Danau Kivu terletak di perbatasan antara Republik Demokratik Kongo dengan Rwanda, di Afrika Tengah. Danau Kivu bermuara ke Sungai Ruzizi, yang ke selatan mengalir ke Danau Tanganyika.
Danau ini memiliki luas 2700 kilometer persegi dan berada di ketinggian 11.460 meter diatas permukaan laut. Kedalamannya sendiri mencapai 480 meter, menjadikannya danau terdalam ke-18 di dunia.
Danau Kivu sebenarnya adalah kumpulan dari danau-danau air tawar kecil. Beberapa diantara danau kecil ini adalah danau yang dapat meledak, karena fenomena geologi. Permukaan danau ini juga mematikan, karena ada kandungan gas berbahaya, yaitu karbon dioksida yang diproduksi oleh bakteri yang ada di dasar danau.
Bila aktivitas volkano bereaksi dengan gas-gas berbahaya yang ada di danau ini, bisa terjadi sebuah bencana ledakan yang dapat membahayakan orang yang berada di sekitar danau. Di sekitar danau ini sendiri hidup setidaknya dua juta penduduk.
Boiling Lake, Dominika (Foto: tourismontheedge)
Boiling Lake, Dominika
Danau Boiling Lake, terletak di Taman Nasional Morne Trois Pitons, Dominika. Danau ini diisi dengan gelembung air biru keabu-abuan yang biasanya diselimuti awan uap, membuatnya terlihat seperti danau mendidih.
Suhu danau ini berkisar 82-91,5 derajat celcius di sepanjang tepinya. Diperkirakan suhu tengah danau mencapai 100 derajat celcius atau titik didih. Kedalaman danau diprediksi mencapai 59 meter. Sangat berbahaya untuk menyelam danau ini, karena Anda bisa mati terebus.
Tidak ada jalan langsung menuju ke danau. Danau ini berjarak sekitar 13 kilometer kenaikan ke danau dari jalan terdekat, melewati mata air belerang, di atas gunung dan melalui ngarai sepanjang jalan.
Danau ini adalah mata air panas terbesar kedua di dunia. Yang terbesar adalah Danau Wajan, terletak di Lembah Waimangu dekat Rotorua, Selandia Baru.
Danau Rakshastal, Tibet (Foto: tibettour)
Danau Rakshastal, Tibet
Danau Rakshastal adalah sebuah danau air asin yang berada di Tibet. Letaknya dekat dengan Danau Manasaroval, salah satu danau yang juga populer di negara tersebut. Danau ini diyakini mengandung racun yang mematikan.
Dari namanya saja, danau ini berarti "danau para iblis". Menurut legenda setempat, danau ini diyakini dihuni oleh iblis berkepala sepuluh dalam mitologi Hindu, Ravana. Di dalam danau ini tidak hidup tanaman air ataupun ikan, membuatnya semakin diyakini beracun.
Danau Manasarovar yang berada di sebelah danau ini terlihat sangat kontras dengan Danau Rakshastal. Danau Manasarovar berair sangat jernih dan cantik.
Kedua danau yang berdampingan ini adalah salah satu tempat wisata terkenal di China dan Tibet. Area sekitarnya dikelilingi padang rumput, jalanan bebatuan putih serta perbukitan.
Danau Karachay, Rusia, yang mengandung radiasi nuklir tinggi (foto: happytimeblog)
JANGAN coba-coba mengunjungi, atau bahkan berenang di danau ini. Pasalnya, danau-danau berikut ini merupakan danau yang memiliki kandungan berbahaya yang dapat mematikan! Simak ulasannya berikut ini, seperti dikutip dari Listverse:
Danau Karachay, Rusia
Berwisata di tepi danau indah di tengah Rusia dengan harga murah, siapa yang tidak mau? Tapi konsekuensinya, selepas berwisata kemungkinan besar Anda akan terserang penyakit yang cukup parah.
Jika Anda mencari wisata danau yang murah, sebuah vila di tepi Danau Karachay, Rusia, adalah pilihan tepat. Namun hati-hati, karena area sekitar danau ini mengandung radiasi tinggi. Pada 1990, berdiri di tepi danau ini selama satu jam saja dapat membunuh Anda.
Danau ini berada di sebelah barat daya Rusia, dekat perbatasan Kazakhstan. Danau ini berada di lokasi Mayak Production Association, salah satu pabrik nuklir terbesar di Rusia.
Mayak adalah salah satu pabrik nuklir paling penting di Rusia, dan awalnya area ini dilarang dimasuki orang asing selama 45 tahun. Namun pada 1992, area ini dibuka untuk umum dan para ilmuwan yang menelitinya mengatakan bahwa ini adalah area paling tercemar di Bumi.
selama 45 tahun tertutup oleh umum, para teknisi nuklir di Mayak membuang kebocoran nuklir dan limbah radioaktifnya ke sungai dan danau di sektiar situ. Limbah-limbah ini tak dapat larut dalam air, dan bertahan di sana selama puluhan tahun.
Kini, Danau Karachay mulai mengering dan memperlihatkan ampas radioaktif di dasarnya. Tingkat bahayanya masih belum diketahui, meski diyakini masih belum cukup aman untuk wisatawan berlama-lama di sini. Sayang sekali, padahal pemandangan sekitar danau ini sangat indah dengan pegunungan-pegunungan yang tertutup salju.
Sumber : okezone.com
10 Ikan Raksasa Berwajah Aneh dan Langka
Fenomena ikan laut yang berwajah aneh tampaknya menjadi suatu penelitian tersendiri bagi ahli untuk menemukan penyebabnya. Baru-baru ini Ikan-ikan berukuran superjumbo alias raksasa seantero dunia jumlahnya terus berkurang. Sungai Amazon di Amerika Selatan dan Sungai Mekong yang melintas di enam negara; China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Kamboja dan Vietnam; menjadi lokasi utama ikan-ikan punah raksasa dan 'berwajah aneh' itu.
Ikan-ikan yang masuk dalam daftar ukuran jumbo dan punah itu yakni.
1. Dog Eating Catfish
Ikan yang dari keluarga lele ini dijuluki sesuai namanya, pemakan daging anjing. Pada zaman dulu, ikan berkumis ini dipancing warga sekitar Sungai Mekong dengan umpan daging anjing.
2. Ikan Mas raksasa atau Giant Carp
Ikan Mas raksasa ini dulu kerap ditemui di Sungai Mekong bagian Thailand. Ikan berbobot sekitar 600 pon ini merupakan salah satu jenis yang mengalami jumlah penurunan populasi yang drastis di Asia Tenggara.
3. White Sturgeon
Telur ikan ini merupakan makanan mewah kelas atas, telur kaviar. Ikan ini disebut-sebut hidup lebih lama dari dinosaurus. Populasinya di laut pasifik bagian barat daya dan Kanada semakin berkurang.
4. Hiu Gergaji
Ikan ini merupakan gabungan hiu dan gergaji, sesuai namanya. Ikan laut ini kerap menyangkut di jaring nelayan, maka itu jumlahnya terus menurun.
5. Pari raksasa
Ikan pari ini pernah ditangkap seorang nelayan di Sungai Mekong wilayah Kamboja. Seperti 'koleganya' di laut, ikan ini tetap berbahaya dan mematikan.
6. Arapaima gigas
Ikan berukuran luar biasa jumbo ini masih 'keluarga jauh' ikan arwana. Di Taman Akuarium Air Tawar (Taman Mini Indonesia Indah) dan Sea World, Ancol, Jakarta Utara, ikan ini masih dijumpai.
7. Lele rakasa
Ikan ini pernah dijuluki sebagai ikan air tawar raksasa terbesar.
8. River Yeti
Yeti merupakan julukan monster bigfoot di Amerika. Nah, ikan raksasa ini dianalogikan seperti sesosok monster. Ikan yang juga memiliki nama Bagarius yarrelli pernah menghebohkan warga karena menelan manusia.
9. Chinese Paddlefish
Ikan gajah raksasa ini juga memiliki nama China Swordfish. Secara resmi pemerintah Cina telah melarang penangkapannya, baik besar ataupun kecil sejak tahun 1983.
10. Alligator
Ikan jenis ini berpenampilan mirip buaya atau aligator. Jelek. Tetapi merupakan salah satu ikan dengan harga yang tinggi di pasaran. Untuk ukuran kecil ikan jenis ini kerap digandrungi di pasar ikan hias.
Sumber : Vivanews.com
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)
