Earthquake Creates New Island Off the Coast of Pakistan

by Anna Brones on

On Tuesday, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit Pakistan. In its wake, it has left over 350 people dead, 619 injured and 21,00 homes destroyed. Earthquake destruction is devastating to say the least. But it also gave birth to an island, just off the coast near the town of Gwadar, about 230 miles southwest of the quake’s epicenter.

It’s not really an island, it’s actually what geologists call a “mud volcano,” which is caused by the pressure of sediment breaking up out from underneath the seabed. Basically an island of sand and mud, the mud volcano could last for anywhere from a couple of months to a few years, meaning it’s not here to stay long-term.According to local reporter Bahram Baloch, the island is about 250 to 300 feet in length, and about 60 to 70 feet above the water. You can walk on it, visitors to the island have also said that it is emitting flammable gas.

Within half an hour of the earthquake, inquisitive locals flocked to the island, which according to Rashid Tabrez, the director-general of the Karachi-based National Institute of Oceanography, is the fourth in the region since 1945. Geologists attribute that to the continuing process of continental drift that originally brought the Indian subcontinent to collide with Eurasia. In fact, 700 kilometers to the east of this new mud volcano lies the Makran coast, an area characterized by high seismic activity, and home to several other mud volcanoes.

A Bear Walks Into a Bar in Juneau, Politely Leaves When Asked

by Anna Brones on

You have to be pretty rowdy and intoxicated to be asked to leave a bar. Or you just have to be a bear.

In Juneau, Alaska on Monday night a black bear walked into the downtown Alaskan Hotel & Bar. The bartender’s response? Ask it to leave of course.

RELATED: Pig in Australia Steals 18 Beers from Campers, Gets Drunk, Fights Cow

The hotel’s bartender Ariel Svetlik-McCarthy saw the bear, appropriately responded with a minor freakout and yelled, “No bear! Get out! No! You can’t be in here!”

Unlike raucous frat boys, the bear politely responded by turning around and leaving (you can watch the video of it doing so). Or maybe he just didn’t see his favorite IPA on tap.

The story is reminiscent of other animal-booze run-ins over the last couple of months. There was the beer-drinking pig in Australia, and another bear who hit up a bar in Colorado and was also caught on surveillance video. Sounds like animals are just in need of a cocktail right now.

All jokes aside, animal encounters of this kind are taken seriously; state officials have had to kill two bears in Juneau this year for causing a nuisance.

Spanish Cave Paintings Discovered to be Some of the Oldest in Europe

by Sean McLachlan on

Cave paintings at the Altxerri cave system in the Basque region of northern Spain are about 39,000 years old, making them some of the oldest in Europe, Popular Archaeology reports.

A team of French and Spanish scientists analyzed the paintings, which include images such as the bison shown here, as well as finger marks, a feline, a bear, an unidentified animal head and more abstract markings. This early dating of these images puts them in the Aurignacian Period, believed by most archaeologists to be the first flowering of modern humans in the region, although whether or not there were still Neanderthals in the area at this time is an open question.

A later set of paintings in another part of the cave system, which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, date from “only” 29,000-35,000 years ago.

By comparison, the art at Cauvet Cave in France is about 31,000 years old, although it is of a much higher quality. The beautiful paintings there were the subject of Herzog’s breathtaking 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

A full report on the cave paintings can be found in the latest issue of the Journal of Human Evolution.

Photo Of The Day: Hanalei Bay Rainbow

by Jake Thiewes on

Gadling Flickr Pool member Scott Slater says, “A brief rainstorm came by while I was swimming, and this rainbow appeared.” Where have you caught a brief moment of sun through the clouds — at the beach, the lake, the mountains?

We’d love to feature your photos and videos on Gadling, so please add them to our Flickr Pool (with Creative Commons licensing!), tag @GadlingTravel on Instagram or email us at OfTheDay@gadling.go-vip.net.

Hiring The Disabled: No Longer The Ultimate Fast Pass At Disney Parks

by Chris Owen on


Waiting in line at Disney Parks can be avoided by a number of legitimate strategies. Get to the park early, stay late, legally use a free system in place that speeds things up and more. But nothing quite beats the instant access to rides granted to the disabled, a practice that had wealthy park visitors hiring savvy wheelchair-bound “guides” to bypass everyone else.

Paying over $100 per hour — $1,000 or more for the day — able-bodied park visitors posing as relatives of a handicapped went straight to an auxiliary entrance reserved for those with special needs. “My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” said one mom in a New York Post article last May. Misuse of Disney’s Guest Assistance Card [GAC] program was so widespread that the theme park operator is discontinuing it in October.

In the new system, visitors with disabilities will be given an assigned return time equal to the estimated wait, one attraction at a time. Called the Disabled Assistance System [DAS], visitors with disabilities will still get “back door” access to attractions but will lose the time advantage they had under the old system vs. actually waiting in line.Does this sound a lot like Disney’s FastPass system? It’s not.

FastPass is a virtual queuing system that allows a limited number of guests per hour to go to the front of the line on certain attractions. Disability card users get a return time based on the actual wait time for the ride.