Word: chinguetti
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...Mauritania, at the western end of the Sahara -hiring the few available trucks, renting plots of land and even booking rooms in an old French Foreign Legion post. Told that the strangers are there to watch the moon black out the sun, some believers in the oasis town of Chinguetti-the seventh holiest city of Islam-are incredulous. "How can you tell the sun will darken?" a herdsman asks. "Only God can know that...
...herdsman's faith may soon be shaken. Chinguetti lies directly in the path of totality* of a major solar eclipse that will be visible across northern Africa on June 30. Although solar eclipses are not rare-at least two occur every year-this one will be unusual. Where the borders of Mali, Algeria and Nigeria meet, totality will last 7 min. 4 sec., making the eclipse the second longest in 1,433 years; the only longer one -7 min. 7 sec.-took place in 1955. A comparable eclipse will not occur again until the year 2150. Thus scientists from...
...board discuss the fine points of the event overhead. The best view should be obtained by seven French, British and American scientists. On June 30, they will board a supersonic Concorde jet in Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, fly south and intersect the path of totality near Chinguetti. Then they will race the moon's shadow across some 1,700 miles of Africa at nearly Mach 2 speeds (1,300 m.p.h.). Traveling at times only slightly slower than the shadow itself, they will see the blackout for some 80 minutes, longer than anyone has watched a total eclipse...
...Meteorites strongly urge the Soviet Government to make further study of the Siberian fall of 1908, heaviest fall of meteorites in history, which scorched trees for miles around, annihilated 1,500 reindeer, dammed the Ognia River. The French Government was also urged to push thorough examination of the Chinguetti, an iron meteorite 325 ft. long and weighing possibly a million tons, which a French expedition stumbled on in 1921 in the wilds of Western Africa...
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