Nelson Daily Stories

                                             TALES OF WHALES AND  PLAGUES It is what I hoped would not happen. More whales died . " Pilot whales Tasmania: Almost 400 die in Australia's worse stranding " - that was the headline to the article on the BBC website this morning September 23, 2000. "Strand" means to leave a sea creature aground on a shore. Hundreds of pilot whales were found beached on Tasmania's west coast on Monday,  Fifty whales were saved by late on Wednesday. Another 30 remained. The article said, "The stranding, one of the largest recorded globally , eclipses a previous national record of 320 set in Western Australia in 1996." On Monday the first rescuers saw about 270 whales stranded, but on Tuesday they saw another 200 nearby as they flew over the area in a helicopter. The huge creatures, 22ft (7m) long and we...

                                                   George Bizos  - he played many roles! He was a South African man with a Greek heritage, an anti-apartheid activist who represented Nelson Mandela in the Rivonia trial (October 1963 to June 1964) that led to Mandela's conviction and imprisonment on charges of sabotage. George Bizos, the reknown Greek South African human rights lawyer and social activist died September 9, 2020. This man, who fled "his native Greece as a refugee from the Nazi occupation"  was eulogized by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the Special Official Funeral for him. He was remembered as "a man of humility, integrity, and above all as an advocate with a passion for justice." A report by Rebecca Davis in the Daily Maverick  17 September 2020 said Bizos "lived 92 extraordinay years of life" and was described as "a friend to man...

In 2004 a 300 meter wide space rock flew past our planet, Earth. It was discovered by Roy A. Tucker, David J. Tholen and Fabrizio Bernandi, astronomers at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, USA. They were able to observe the space rock for two days. On June 24, 2005 the space rock was given the number 99942.  On July 19, 2005 its discoverers gave it the name "Apophis". Apophis was the name of an ancient Egyptian god who embodied chaos and evil. He appears in art as a giant serpent. He is the enemy of the Egyptian Sun god Ra.   Reports are that in December (2004) the space rock "caused a brief period of concern" because initial observations indicated a probabillity of up to 2.7% that it would hit Earth on April 13, 2029." Has Apophis passed by our Earth since 2004? Yes, it has. Reports are that it passed within 14.45 million km (8.98 million miles) of Earth in 2013. The closest approach of Apophis to Earth at that time was on January 9, 2013....