Strange Connections

Just recently, I’ve been making connections between the Olympic Games, a small corner of Warwickshire and a remote area of Siberia.  I’m sorry – that’s just how the Gerry Shedd brain works.  Here’s how:

Anyone tuned in to the Olympics will probably have heard mention of the previous Games held in London – the so-called austerity games of 1948 and the 1908 games when Great Britain won a record haul of 146 medals, including 56 golds.

It was the mention of the 1908 Olympics that reminded me of another momentous but largely forgotten event that took place in that year.

On 30 June 1908, in Tunguska, a remote area of Siberia, north-west of Lake Baikal, an enormous explosion occurred.  It was probably around 1000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima at the end of World War 2; and it remains the largest explosion ever recorded on Earth. Had it occurred in London, it would have totally destroyed the city and killed the whole population (including, of course, the Olympic athletes assembled there).  As it is, there were no known human casualties.  Just a lot of dead reindeer.  As many as 80 million trees were uprooted.

Even now, no-one is completely sure of the cause of the explosion.  The most likely explanation is that it was a comet that entered our atmosphere and exploded.  There is no massive crater, which suggests that the explosion took place in the air before impact. 

What intrigues me especially about the Tunguska event is the effect it had further afield.  For days after the explosion, the night skies in Europe and Asia were aglow; and the sunsets were a spectacularly colourful salmon pink.  In England, so bright was the sky that there were midnight games of cricket and golf; and birds would start their dawn chorus at a ridiculously early hour.

Why am I interested in these strange phenomena?  The answer to that takes me to the Warwickshire hamlet of Darley Green near Dorridge. 

The day after the explosion, on 1 July, a baby was born to a working class couple there.  The proud father was the gardener and general odd-job man at nearby Packwood Hall.  The mother sometimes also worked (unpaid) at the Hall, because that was what her husband’s boss expected of her.  Those were different times.

No doubt the little baby, named Albert Ernest, was too preoccupied with the things that newborns do to be conscious of the strange phenomena around him.  But almost certainly his parents would have been aware of these odd happenings.  Maybe they wondered at the conjunction of a birth and unusual sights in the sky.

Don’t get me wrong.  There were no shepherds, no wise men and no star in the east.  Just an unnatural glow in the sky.  The baby wasn’t the only one born at that time and was no saviour of mankind. 

As it happens, though, he did grow up to be quite a special human being – kind, caring, funny and wise.  To me,  he was just my dad.