Word: verkhoyansk
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...woods, plunged into a suburban swimming pool and splashed madly back and forth before finally being rescued by amused firemen. While Moscow shivered under cold blasts from the north that plunged temperatures into the mid-30s and brought topcoats out of summer storage, the Siberian city of Verkhoyansk-the coldest spot on earth, with temperatures in winter dipping to -140°-sweltered in 86° heat...
...Boer War, Talbot went back again as war correspondent. A slow-healing love affair drove him to Siberia, where he shot an ovis nivicula (mountain sheep), and a new species later named in his honor ovis cliftoni. He was stabbed by a drunken Cossack servant, rested a while at Verkhoyansk, coldest spot on earth. A fellow-traveller, Scientist Hertz, sent him some frozen flesh of a mammoth he had found. Talbot "ate it thoughtfully, for was it not about 8,000 years...
...Russkoye Ustye began to pall after a time. Zenzinov had been given permission to move around anywhere in the district. Again with the idea of eventual escape, he set out to Verkhoyansk, "the pole of cold." This village was many miles to the south but set in a basin where cold air settles and few winds blow. Zenzinov one day in January, 1913 noted a temperature of 95.4° below Zero. In Verkhoyansk, says he, if "you take a glass of water and dash it high into the air, the liquid will come down in the form of ringing crystals...
Zenzinov left Verkhoyansk by reindeer sled in a last attempt to escape; had it not been for the alcohol he carried with him he might have succeeded. Encamped one night with a Chukchi herder Zenzinov foolishly gave him some alcohol to drink. The Chukchi liked it so much he kept Zenzinov a prisoner until a Russian trader came along, rescued him. By that time the authorities had their eye on Zenzinov again; he gave up hope, served out his term...
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