Tea at Trianon: Congo’s Nyiragongo Volcano

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, June 6, 2021

Congo’s Nyiragongo Volcano

From Atlas Obscura:

On the evening of May 22, 2021, Nyiragongo, a mountainous volcano in Democratic Republic of the Congo, suddenly erupted, killing dozens and triggering a pandemonious exodus of swaths of Goma, the city that sits on its flanks. As lava scoured anything it touched, the night sky itself hummed with deep crimson—the heavens themselves looked to be burning down.

The eruption appeared to be mercifully short-lived. Molten rock poured from fissures on Nyiragongo’s flanks and sped toward Goma, but ultimately missed the city proper. The lava, which began flowing on Saturday, stopped erupting out of the volcano sometime on Sunday morning, encouraging many to return to their homes. But that lava still left a trail of heartbreaking destruction in its wake: It ploughed through 17 villages, destroyed hundreds of homes, killed dozens, separated hundreds of children from their families, and cut off water pipelines and power supplies. The United Nations estimates that it left 20,000 without homes. (Read more.)