I've let my inner History Geek out to play & want to share something interesting I read today:
The Day Niagara Falls Went Dry
On March 30, 1848, Niagara Falls stopped. No water would flow over the great falls for 30 or 40 hours. People freaked out. For many hours, nobody knew why the water stopped.
An American farmer out for a stroll shortly before midnight on March 29 was the first to notice something. Actually, he noticed the absence of something: the thundering roar of the falls. When he went to the river’s edge, he saw hardly any water.
Came the dawn of March 30, people awoke to an unaccustomed silence. The mighty Niagara was a mere trickle. Mills and factories had to shut down, because the waterwheels had stopped.
Was it the end of the world? Divine retribution for what some folks thought was a U.S. war of aggression against Mexico? Theological explanations abounded, because western New York state had been a Burned-Over District for half a century, with recurring waves of religious revivals and the rise of several new denominations and religions.
Thousands of people filled the churches to attend special services. They prayed for the falls to start flowing and the world to continue, or for salvation and forgiveness of their sins as the Last Judgment approached.
The telegraph had not yet been invented so news traveled slowly. Eventually, local residents learned that strong southwest gale winds had pushed a huge chunks of lake ice to the extreme northeastern tip of Lake Erie, blocking the lake’s outlet into the head of the Niagara River. The ice jam had become an ice dam. The flow of water had stopped.
You can read more at
http://tinyurl.com/ydsus7s.
[copyrighted by Richard Eastman, Eastman's Genealogical Online Newsletter]
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