Black Hole of Calcutta

“ Then we cut a quantity of low scrub with our hunting-knives, and creeping into the hole, pulled it over us all, with the exception of Ventvögel, on whom, being a Hottentot, the heat had no particular effect. This gave us some slight shelter from the burning rays of the sun, but the atmosphere in that amateur grave can be better imagined than described. The Black Hole of Calcutta must have been a fool to it; indeed, to this moment I do not know how we lived through the day. There we lay panting, and every now and again moistening our lips from our scanty supply of water. ”

“ There wouldn't have been any more room for even a baby to sit down than there was in the Black Hole of Calcutta. In the crowd were old men, young men and boys, all poorly dressed; and old women, young women and girls, big and little. ”

“ When I pointed out to them that they would probably suffocate in this modern Black Hole of Calcutta, the little man proceeded to dance round the room, still shouldering his axe, jibbering the while: "I will not go to fight; I am an American. I will not be put in the front rank to be shot by the English, or made to dig trenches." The whole scene was so comic that I sat down and laughed, and the climax was reached when the cock-sparrow, who had always talked so big of what he was going to do and to say to the Boers, crawled under the old grand piano in the farther corner of the big room. ”

“ It lacked something of being a complete type, however, for in the Calcutta Black Hole there were no tender women, no little children and old men and women, no cripples. They were at least all men, strong to bear, who suffered. ”

“ Professor Hill, who has done more than anybody else to upset traditional ideas with regard to ventilation, tells us that “the deaths in the Black Hole of Calcutta, the depression, headache, etc., experienced in close rooms are alike due to heat stagnation; the victims of the Black Hole died of heat stroke.” ”

“ The unfortunate occupants of the Black Hole of Calcutta would have given all their worldly possessions to have had good pure air to breathe there, so that their lives could have been spared; and it would be just so with us, were the air monopolized; we would willingly pay the monopolists' own price for the use of the air, just as we now pay his price for the use of the land. But with our pioneers it is very different. The land with them is as free as the air with us. ”

“ One such is the Fly Chamber, in which swarms of house-flies seem to have settled on the walls and ceiling. Examination proves them to be so many crystals of black oxide of manganese. The Hanging Rocks, the Sheep-shelter, and the Victoria Crown are formations whose names suggest their shape. Immediately over El Ghor is Corinne’s Dome, nine feet wide and about forty feet high. The guide points out what he styles Suicide Rock, and when you innocently ask him “Why?” his ready reply is, “Because it hung itself.” The Black Hole of Calcutta is an ugly black pit on the left of the pass. ”

“ Holwell and his companions had, in the mean time, been carried to Murshedabad. The rains broke over Calcutta the day after its capture, and the wretched prisoners, journeying by boat, were given no shelter, but lay on a platform of bamboos at the bottom of the boat, exposed alike to the soaking rain and the scorching sun, laden with heavy fetters, covered with terrible boils the result of breathing the poisoned atmosphere during that night of agony in the Black Hole, and given only a little boiled rice for food. ”

“ RESPIRATION OF THE LARVA.
We well know, from the various melancholy accidents which have taken place, that unless human beings have a constant supply of pure fresh air they must perish. Many years ago, a number of unfortunate persons were shut up in a narrow cell, called the Black Hole, at Calcutta, where they could scarcely find room to stand, much less obtain air to breathe. ”

“ It was the ghastly episode of the Black Hole that maddened the British and brought Clive, that young military marvel, raging up from Madras; it was the seed from which sprung Plassey; and it was that extraordinary battle, whose like had not been seen in the earth since Agincourt, that laid deep and strong the foundations of England's colossal Indian sovereignty.
And yet within the time of men who still live, the Black Hole was torn down and thrown away as carelessly as if its bricks were common clay, not ingots of historic gold. There is no accounting for human beings. ”

“ The Black Hole, so called, crossed my mind.
"Who did you have in the Black Hole?"
"Black Hole! What Black Hole?"
"You can't come that. I know pretty much all about the old sugar-house and Cap, and the kind of a business you carry on there." ”

“ As will be explained below, black holes and gravity are manifestations of order and disorder in the universe.
Black holes contain dense matter with an enormous gravity. They attract hydrogen atoms, cosmic particles, and everything close to them. Since any charged accelerating particle creates an electromagnetic radiation, the black hole emits an enormous amount of electromagnetic radiation. A black hole is an area of space which appears absolutely black, as the gravitation in it is so intense that not even light can escape through it. ”

“ What happens to an object that passes through an event horizon is even more fantastic. If the black whole is not rotating, the object is pulled towards the center to a point called `singularity', and it will be squeezed out of existence. The state is called `zero volume state' where all the laws of physics break down. Time and space disappear. It is speculation that all that is sucked in is spilled out again on the other side of the black hole -- the other side being another universe. ”

“ DRESS REHEARSAL "The universe is expanding". There's cause for reflection and bound to do wonders for "who am I" queries. At this late moment on the Celestial Clock, man isn't sure if he's stumbled into a Black Hole or just the debris from the Big Bang Theory. Many of the earth's residents desperately want to be E.T.'s -- travellers with carte blanche passports welcomed in any galaxy. ”

“ The old Sonoranian told me it contained no more pockets. His theory about the blow-hole is by no means confined to his own wild imagination; a man by the name of Black, who is one of the most successful gold-hunters in the ravine, is guided, in his researches, by the same seemingly absurd theory. It is possible that these blow-holes, as they are called, were the vents of volcanoes, performing the same functions as those found beneath the shaking cone of Etna. ”

“ The roofs of the city were bathed in a purple light. The windows flashed with a thousand dazzling reflections. The whole was Calcutta on a perfect day in late summer; a city of brass and copper and gold, hard, shimmering, like the legendary town the Titans once forged out of the molten fragments of a forgotten world.
So the Kashmere steamed up that chained, or rather unchained, monster named the Hoogli, which every once in a while rises kittenishly, gnawing at the water front with sharp teeth, and strewing the surrounding landscape with the torn, battered carcasses of great ships.
Asia! ”

“ But the special glory of Calcutta is the Maidan, that vast green space which, unlike so many parks, spreads itself at the city's feet. One does not have to seek it: there it is, with room for every one and a race-course and a cricket-ground to boot. And if there is no magic in the evening prospect such as the sea and its ships under the flaming or mysterious enveiling sky can offer to the eye at Bombay, there is a quality of golden richness in the twilight over Calcutta, as seen across the Maidan, through its trees, that is unique. ”

“ It was first disclosed by Krakatoa. Before the occurrence of that eruption no one had the slightest suspicion that far up aloft, twenty miles over our heads, a mighty tempest is incessantly hurrying with a speed much greater than that of the awful hurricane which once laid so large a part of Calcutta on the ground, and slew so many of its inhabitants. Fortunately for humanity, this new trade-wind does not come within less than twenty miles of the earth’s surface. ”

“ And there were none on the space fronting Esplanade Row, West. Dalhousie Square and Old Court House Street were also very bare of trees—scarcely one to be seen. The loss of life amongst the natives was appalling, caused principally by the huge storm or tidal wave accompanying the cyclone, resembling a solid wall of water, which at Diamond Harbour rose to the height of 34 feet; when it reached Calcutta it was 27 to 28 feet, rushing up the Hooghly from the sea at the rate of 20 miles an hour, destroying and overwhelming everything it encountered in its wild and devastating career. ”

“ In this way was Calcutta founded, and such was the manner of the coming of Job Charnock to his last port—the spot where his bones were to lie beneath a stately mausoleum through the centuries, while the settlement he founded amid every circumstance of discouragement and discomfort grew and prospered till it became the capital city of the British Empire in India, such an Empire as the wildest dreams of the Great Mogul never compassed. ”

“ These being all taken at elevations lower than that of the Calcutta observatory, show either a diminished atmospheric pressure, or that the mean level of high-water is not the same on the east and west coasts of the Bay of Bengal: this is quite possible, considering the widely different direction of the tides and currents on each, and that the waters may be banked up, as it were, in the narrow channels of the western Sunderbunds. The temperature of the air was the same as at Calcutta, but the atmosphere was damper. The water was always a degree warmer than the air. ”

“ Nothing at Benares was more repulsive and disgusting than what one sees here. The deity most worshipped in Calcutta is the goddess Kali, who indeed gives name to the city, which is Anglicized from Kali-ghat. She delights in blood, and is propitiated only by constant sacrifices. As one takes his morning drive along the streets leading to her shrine, he sees them filled with young goats, who are driven to the sacred enclosure, which is like a butcher's shambles, so constantly are the heads dropping on the pavement, which is kept wet with blood. ”

“ On the arrival of the Madras fleet at Fulta, the troops under Clive's command were landed on the eastern or Calcutta bank of the Hughly, and marched up to Calcutta, while Admiral Watson sailed his ships up the river. ”

“ Its merchants are amongst the world's leaders of commerce; its trade touches the four quarters of the globe; it is the home of philosophies and religions and the headquarters of a political movement which is profoundly influencing the course of events in India. If the British had done nothing else in India the creation of Calcutta on what was little better than a swamp would be a conclusive testimony to the genius of the race for the successful management of alien peoples. ”

“ From supper the company were summoned by the discharge of a rocket at one o'clock, to view the illuminations and fireworks, "which were executed by artificers sent to Calcutta for the purpose from Lucknow and Murshedabad." Lord Valentia wrote rather disparagingly of the illuminations: "The populace stole much of the oil, and as it was impossible to light so great a range at one time the effect was inferior to what it ought to have been," but the rockets which were discharged from mortars on the Fort ramparts he considered superior to any he had ever beheld. ”

“ No substance so coarse as gravel occurs in any part of the delta of the Ganges and Brahmapootra, nor nearer the sea than 400 miles. Yet it is remarkable that the boring of an Artesian well at Fort William, near Calcutta, in the years 1835-1840, displayed, at the depth of 120 feet, clay and sand with pebbles. This boring was carried to a depth of 481 feet below the level of Calcutta, and the geological section obtained in the operation has been recorded with great care. Under the surface soil, at a depth of about ten feet, they came to a stiff blue clay about forty feet in thickness ”

“ We had great luck on our voyage till within the last sixteen days, and during that time we have not made 300 miles; still as long as we had any wind, even though we could not do more by constant tacking than keep our own ground, it was not so hot as in this stagnant calm; and this heat will have prepared us so well for Calcutta that we might almost be allowed to go there now. We are within six days’ run of it all the time, which is provoking. However we are all remarkably well, even to Mars, who has been very seriously ill since we left the Cape, but has rallied completely. ”

“ Clive had concluded a treaty with Shuja-ul-Dowlah, Nawab Vizier of Oude, by which the East India Company obtained the Dewanny of the three provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and his bill of expenses ran as follows:—
This celebration took place in Oude, and had more of the character of native rejoicings. In Calcutta "wild beasts" formed no part of any of the entertainments, in which, however, fireworks were generally introduced as a show which could be enjoyed by the populace at large. ”

“ Black holes are believed to be a product of stellar evolution. Stars do not burn indefinitely. They evolve through a life cycle which begins with hydrogen gas and ends sometimes with very dense rotating burned out stars. ”

“ It was, of course, a matter of extreme difficulty to arrive at any very reliable estimate of the number who perished, owing to the vast area of country over which the storm raged. Happily the death rate in Calcutta itself was, comparatively speaking, not so very great, and was confined more or less to the crews of small native craft plying on the river, such as lighters, cargo-boats, dinghees, budgetows, and green-boats. ”