Word: compassion
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Without benefit of compass, Viking sailors of the 9th century managed to ply their watery routes of conquest and commerce, navigating by stars at night and by sun during the day. No matter what the weather, according to ancient Scandinavian sagas, the sun could al ways be located with the aid of magical "sun stones." Summarizing sunstone lore in a recent article in the archaeology magazine Skalk, Danish Archaeologist Thorkild Ramskou lamented that none of the sagas clearly describe the sun stone. "But there seems to be a possibility," he wrote, "that it was an instrument which in clouded weather...
...with a clue supplied by a young archaeology enthusiast, Ramskou has discovered the secret of the sun-seeking stones of the ancients. To the ten-year-old son of Jorgen Jensen, chief navigator of the Scandinavian Airlines System, the instrument described in Skalk sounded much like the twilight compass used by his father on flights at high latitudes, where the magnetic compass is unreliable. The twilight compass is equipped with a Polaroid filter that enables a navigator to locate the position of the sun-even when it is behind clouds or below the horizon-by the sunlight polarized...
Putting cordierite to the test, Ramskou accompanied Navigator Jensen on an SAS flight to Greenland, keeping track of the sun with his stone while Jensen used the twilight compass. His observations were accurate to within 21° of the sun's true position, and he was able to track the sun until it had dipped 7° below the horizon. "I now feel convinced," Ramskou concludes, "that the old Viking sailors with the aid of their sun stones could navigate with enormous accuracy...
...socked in blind by icy mists. Even though it is daylight almost round the clock along that route in summer, there are few landmarks to use as checkpoints. As Pilot Stiber says, "Any man who doesn't completely understand dead-reckoning navigation [using only charts and compass] had better stay home...
...Load per man for a two-day mission: Claymore mine and 240 rounds of ammo; four canteens of water and three meals of dried meat with rice; compass, flare gun, signal mirror, orange-and-cerise panel to signal for help; morphine for wounds, pep pills for drowsiness, codeine to kill coughs that might betray a position, antidysentery pills; tape to ward off leeches by closing off wrists and ankles of uniforms...