New Theory Claims Comet Killed Large Mammals in North America about 13000 Years Ago

May 30, 2007 — A large extraterrestrial object exploded over the heads of the first Americans about 13,000 years ago, wiping them out and making big mammals and other prehistoric creatures disappear, according to a new U.S. study.

Presented last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, the controversial research proposes that the extraterrestrial blast triggered a catastrophic millennium-long cold spell.

The dramatic climate change would have been the major cause for the sudden disappearance of mammoths throughout much of Europe and America and the demise of the Clovis people, the New World's most sophisticated hunters.

"The impact occurred precisely when the megafauna suddenly disappeared from North America. The Earth, which was warming from the last ice age, was plunged suddenly into a 1,000-year period of cooling known as the Younger Dryas," nuclear scientist Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, told Discovery News.

The article claims that the impact might have been just north of the Great lakes.  At any rate, if true, it affected all life in the Bay City area as well as most of North America. 

Tags: Clovis People, Comet, Laurentian Shield, Mammoth, Crater

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Abolitionists and Women's Rights

Bay City was never more central to the national stage than when James Birney, its' most promenent citizen, ran for President as a third party candidate. Although, he was older than most of the participants of the early women's movement and the movement to free the slaves, he know many of them and influenced how these movements were conducted. The link above will give more information on some of the people he knew.

Tags: Birney, James Birney, Abolitionists, Woman's Rights, Bay City, Michigan

The First Ghosts up Close Walk

You may not know that I work on the Bay County Historical Society's Trolley committee. We create and present different tours about various parts of the city:

 

East Lumber Boom Town(2pm on scheduled Saturdays)	goes through downtown Bay City and then gives riders the chance to see many of the lumbermen's homes up and down Center
The South End(2pm on scheduled Saturdays)	focuses on Portsmouth with its' heavy Polish, Irish, German background and the unique neighborhoods
The Westside(2pm on scheduled Saturdays)	highlights the homes and businesses in old West Bay City
Cemetery Tour(2pm on scheduled Saturdays)	Visits Potters Field (the first cemetery), Pine Ridge and Elm Lawn Cemetery pointing out individuals, customs, cemetery art and end-of-life traditions in Bay City.
Ghosts and Legends(2pm on scheduled Saturdays)	Retells the tales of Joe Fournier and Steve Madjai, lumberjacks and bad men of other eras. Lets travelers in on ghostly experiences of some local people and fills in the folklore of the city.
Ghosts up Close(at 4PM the first Saturday of the summer months-weather permitting)	Our first walking tour of downtown Bay City. Hell's Half Mile roars again as we talk about blind pigs, pretty waiter girls and the characters who walked Water Street. We walk in the very spots where murders took place and where some have experienced ghostly apparitions

 

The Trolley leaves from the Antique Center on Water Street every Saturday at 2PM for the hour and one half tour.

 

Well, as I mentioned, the first Ghosts up Close tour took place last Saturday, I conducted it as we talked about Dr. Walterhouse and the Bay City Hospital. We passed the old Pere Marquette station where so much had taken place. We stood in the spot where Floyd Ackerman's killer had walked and searched the horizon for Skull Island. A good time was had by all.

Tags: Bay City, BCHS, Trolley Tours, Ghosts, Joe Fournier, Paul Bunyan, Folklore, legends, elm lawn, pine ridge, birney, james birney, Henry Sage, cemetery art