The Death of History
The following AP story is so sad, I just want to reprint the whole thing.
A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it had survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3.5-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale’s age, estimated at 115 to 130 years. “No other finding has been this precise,” said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts
. The bomb lance fragment, lodged in a bone between the whale’s neck and shoulder blade, was probably made in New Bedford, Mr. Bockstoce said. It was probably shot from a heavy shoulder gun around 1890. The 49-foot male whale died when it was shot with a similar projectile last month; the older device was found as hunters carved it with a chain saw for harvesting.
We haven't made much progress in 115 years, have we?