Sunday, December 11, 2016

The Explorers' Club, № DXXVII

Operation AXIOM: The World War
13 December 1916: "White Friday"—An avalanche on Mount Marmolada crushed almost three hundred Austro-Hungarian soldiers; weather conditions were ideal for avalanches—heavy snowfall followed by rapid warming—but both the Austrians & the Italians also fired artillery into the others' snowpacks to induce avalanches, killing as many as 10,000 on both sides throughout December.





Lest we forget.

Commentary: As the glaciers in the Alps shift & recede, corpses & materiel from the First World War are occasionally found, churned up after a century entombed in the ice & the snow.

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