130 pages

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Nomad Press - Dodge Cummings Judy

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130 pages

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The energy released when volcanoes erupt, engines combust, or bombs explode both thrills and fascinates people. But this power also kills.Eruptions and Explosions: Real Tales of Violent Outbursts recounts the history of five blowups that continued to rattle the world long after the smoke had cleared and embers cooled. For example, in 1815, a mountain in Indonesia called Tambora erupted. This volcano unleashed a monstrous cloud of ash and gas into the upper atmosphere. For three years, the cloud played with the global environment, causing never-ending winters and famine that killed thousands.Some of the world's most devastating explosions cannot be blamed on nature, but on human failings. In 1865, the steamship Sultana exploded while transporting thousands of federal soldiers just freed from Confederate prisoner of war camps. The greatest maritime disaster in United States history was caused as much by greed as a faulty boiler.A discussion about explosions wouldn't be complete without mention of nuclear bombs. A desire to end the bloodshed of World War II led the United States to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. The bomb hastened the end of war, but also killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and launched the nuclear age. This nuclear age brought a catastrophic explosion at a power plant in the former USSR in 1986. When a reactor blew at a facility in Chernobyl, radioactive fallout spread throughout Europe, creating a contamination zone unfit for human life for centuries.Powerful forces lie within the Earth and people who try to extract that power pay a high price. In 2010, a series of errors led the Macondo oil well to rupture. For three months, millions of barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, destroying plant and animal life and devastating the economy of the region.This is the eighth book in a series called Mystery & Mayhem, which features true tales that whet kids' appetites for history by engaging them in genres with proven track records-mystery and adventure. History is made of near misses, unexplained disappearances, unsolved mysteries, and bizarre events that are almost too weird to be true-almost! The Mystery and Mayhem series delves into these tidbits of history to provide kids with a jumping-off point into a lifelong habit of appreciating history.The five true tales told within Eruptions and Explosions are paired with maps, photographs, and timelines that lend authenticity and narrative texture to the stories. A glossary and resources page provide the opportunity to practice using essential academic tools. These nonfiction narratives use clear, concise language with compelling plots that both avid and reluctant readers will be drawn to. Nomad Press books in the Mystery & Mayhem series introduce readers to historical concepts and events by engaging them in an extremely popular genre-real-life adventure and mystery. Readers ages 9 to 12 are fascinated with the strange-but-true tales that populate history, and books in this series offer compelling narrative nonfiction paired with concise language that appeals to both voracious and reluctant readers. Nomad's unique approach to the study of history uses tantalizing tales based in factual knowledge that encourage a lifelong curiosity in the historical events that shape our world.Titles in the series include: Pirates and Shipwrecks; Survival; Weird Disappearances; Daring Heists; Rebels & Revolutions; Great Escapes; Tomb Raiders; Eruptions and Explosions; Epidemics and Pandemics; and Earth, Wind, Fire, and Rain.

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Publié par	Nomad Press
Date de parution	01 février 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781619307230
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	133 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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ERUPTIONSAND EXPLOSIONS

Real Tales of Violent Outbursts JUDYDODGECUMMINGS

ERUPTIONSAND EXPLOSIONS

Real Tales of Violent Outbursts JUDYDODGECUMMINGS

Nomad Press A division of Nomad Communications 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright © 2018 by Nomad Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review orfor limited educational use. The trademark “Nomad Press” and the Nomad Press logo are trademarks of Nomad Communications, Inc.

ISBN Softcover: 9781619306318 ISBN Hardcover: 9781619306295

Educational Consultant, Marla Conn

Questions regarding the ordering of this book should be addressed to Nomad Press 2456 Christian St. White River Junction, VT 05001 www.nomadpress.net

Contents

Introduction . . . 1 Rumbles and Roars of Earth and Man

Chapter One . . . 5 Monster Awakened When Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, nobody suspected the effects of the explosion would linger for years and cause many deaths.

Chapter Two . . . 25 The Forgotten Tragedy After the Civil War, thousands of prisoners of war looked forward to going home. But a faulty boiler on the steamshipSultanagot in the way.

Chapter Three . . . 51 Countdown To bring an end to World War II, the United States dropped the ﬁrst nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Chapter Four . . . 73 The Ghosts of Chernobyl In 1986, a blown reactor at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, contaminated the area around it for years to come.

Chapter Five . . . 97 Treasure Lost—Blowout on theDeepwater Horizon A ruptured oil well devastated the Gulf of Mexico when it leaked millions of barrels of oil in 2010.

Glossary • Resources

Titles in theMystery & MayhemSeries

Check out more titles at www.nomadpress.net

Introduction Rumbles and Roars of Earth and Man

The universe began with a bang billions of years ago as space expanded, doubling in size every fraction of a second. Since then, eruptions and explosions have never stopped rocking the planet. Some of these blowups are natural growing pains as Earth stretches her legs and cracks her knuckles.

Others are manmade, the results of technology run amuck and humans hungry for power.

The energy released when volcanoes erupt, engines combust, or bombs explode is thrilling and fascinating. It is also deadly. This book tells the stories of ﬁve violent outbursts that impacted the world long after the smoke cleared and the scattered embers cooled.

Eruptions and Explosions

In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted. The blast unleashed a monstrous cloud of ash and gas into the upper atmosphere. For three years, the cloud drifted from one continent to the other, toying with the climate. Blizzards here, ﬂoods there, an occasional drought. Harvests failed and people starved as famine struck country after country.

Tambora gave the world a glimpse of the catastrophe climate change can bring.

Many explosions are caused by mankind’s folly. On April 27, 1865, a steamboat full of American soldiers headed up the Mississippi River. The American Civil War had ﬁnally ended, and these men were survivors of Confederate prison camps. Skeletonthin, sick, desperate to return to their loved ones, about 2,000 soldiers piled into theSultana, a vessel built for only 300 people. In the middle of the night, an overworked boiler burst, shooting burning men into the dark waters of the Mississippi River.

The greatest maritime disaster in American history, theSultanaexplosion is a mostly forgotten tragedy.

The bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, will never be forgotten. This ﬁrst use of a nuclear weapon helped end the bloodbath of World War II, but also killed tens of thousands of Japanese civilians. It introduced the world to the horrors of radiation and launched a nuclear arms race.

Rumbles and Roars of Earth and Man

Nuclear energy not only fuels bombs, it also powers factories. On April 26, 1986, engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union were conducting an experiment that went horribly wrong. A reactor exploded and tons of nuclear fuel and contaminated debris shot into the air. Authorities kept silent about the explosion for days as deadly radiation spread across Europe.

The area around Chernobyl will remain unﬁt for human life for tens of thousands of years.

The earth holds power in its core, a prize to whoever can extract it, but that prize can come with a high price. On April 20, 2010, a British Petroleum oil well in the Gulf of Mexico blew out, killing 11 people and gushing crude oil into the sea. For 87 days, experts struggled to plug the leaky well, which lay more than 5,000 feet below the water’s surface. Birds and ﬁsh died. Beaches along America’s Gulf Coast were closed. Fishermen went out of business and the nation struggled to ﬁnd someone to blame.

The explosions and eruptions of Earth and man bring tragedy, but also opportunity. Within every story of death and destruction hides a lesson. The planet rumbles and roars, “Fix this. Stop doing that. Change your path or bad things will happen.”

Read these stories and heed their warning.

Before it’s too late.

I N D O N E S I A

MOUNT TAMBORA

INDIAN OCEAN

1815 Mount Tambora erupts, affecting the climate around the world for more than a year. It inspires Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein in 1816.

ASH CLOUD

YOU ARE HERE

1800 The White House is ﬁrst lived in

1815 Mount Tambora erupts

Chapter One Monster Awakened

1818 The book Frankensteinis published anonymously

In the 1818 novelFrankenstein, a scientist named Victor Frankenstein toils in his laboratory. He is trying to discover how to bring the dead back to life. Frankenstein stitches together scavenged body parts, injects secret chemicals into the corpse, and on a dark and stormy night, the creature awakens. But something has gone horribly wrong.

Instead of a man, a monster rises from the table.

Gigantic and deformed, the hideous being has “yellow skin [that] scarcely covered the . . . muscles and arteries beneath.” Horriﬁed at what he has done, the scientist ﬂees. The monster escapes the laboratory and tries to enter society, but everyone hates and fears him.