Category: Fact Checking

On the evening of August 21, 1986, Ephraim Che, a farmer from the highlands of northwest Cameroon, heard a great rumbling in the distance like rolling thunder. Emerging from his hut, he peered down the mountain to the moonlit waters of Lake Nyos, a small but deep body of water nestled in the crater of an extinct volcano. Though a strange white mist now hung over the lake, otherwise everything looked normal. Suddenly overcome by a feeling of illness, Ephraim returned to his hut and went to bed. The following morning, Ephraim rose and began making his way down the mountain. It was not long before he realized something was amiss. The waterfall that cascaded out one end of the lake had suddenly gone dry, while the waters of the lake itself, normally crystal blue, had turned an ugly rust-brown. Then, he noticed the eerie silence: not a single bird was singing, or insect buzzing. Spooked, Ephraim began running down the valley. He soon came upon Halima Suley, a cowherd, shrieking in grief and horror. Scattered around her were the bodies of more than 30 family members and 400 head of cattle. Around 9 PM the previous evening – the same time Ephriam had heard the distant rumble – a great wind had roared down the valley through Suley’s house, causing all the people and animals around her to suddenly lose consciousness. They never woke up. But worse was yet to come. In the nearby village of Nyos, all but two of the 1,000 inhabitants perished in the night, felled where they stood, sat, or lay. Hundreds more were killed in villages up to 25 kilometres away. Those who survived remained unconscious for up to 36 hours before coming to. Many, upon seeing the bodies of their dead loved ones strewn about them, chose to commit suicide. In all, 1,746 people died that night, along with 3,500 head of cattle and countless birds, insects, fish, and other wild animals. It was only days later that wildlife finally returned to the area, when vultures and other scavengers arrived to feast on the corpses.

But what had caused this horrifying catastrophe? Almost immediately, rumours and speculation ran rampant. Some pointed to secret government weapons experiments, toxic waste dumped by corporations, or even ancient legends of evil spirits said to haunt the area. Others suspected toxic gases from a volcanic eruption. But as experts from around the world descended on Cameroon, a more surprising picture began to take shape. The invisible killer, it turned out, was Lake Nyos itself.

Lake Nyos lies in the Oku Volcanic Plain, part of the Cameroon Line of volcanoes stretching 1,600 kilometres northeast from the Gulf of Guinea to Lake Chad. As with all the volcanoes in the Cameroon Line except for Mount Cameroon, the volcanoes of the Oku Massif are now extinct, with two of the craters having filled with water to form Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun. Such crater lakes are typically small in area but extremely deep, with Lake Nyos measuring only 1.9 kilometres long and 1.2 kilometres wide but bottoming out at 200 metres. Below this lies a tall volcanic pipe of porous debris from the last volcanic eruption, as well as a magma chamber 80 kilometres below the surface. While the crater is no longer connected to the magma chamber, gases from the magma can still percolate up through fissures in the rock into the bottom of the lake. And chief among these gases is carbon dioxide. Due to the lake’s great depth, the bottom is extremely cold, dark, and under high pressure – the perfect environment for storing large amounts of gas. Bubbles of carbon dioxide emerging from the rock below grow smaller and smaller as they rise through the water column, never reaching the surface as they are absorbed into the cold, high-pressure water. In most crater lakes this buildup is not an issue, as seasonal temperature fluctuations create convection currents that carry water from the bottom of the lake to the top, safely releasing the trapped gas into the atmosphere. In equatorial regions like Cameroon, however, the temperature is fairly stable year-round, and no such turnover occurs. Instead, carbon dioxide continues to build up for years or even centuries, forming a large supersaturated layer at the bottom of a lake. This gradual buildup creates a ticking time bomb – a bomb which went off on the evening of August 21, 1986.

No-one knows exactly what set off that bomb, with the leading theories being an underwater volcanic eruption, a landslide, or a small earthquake. Whatever the case, that disturbance triggered an upwelling of water from the lake bottom. As this plume rose, the change in pressure and temperature caused the carbon dioxide to bubble out of solution. These bubbles, in turn, entrained more water behind them, creating a positive feedback loop that caused all the carbon dioxide trapped in the lake to bubble out at once – a phenomenon known as a limnic eruption. This eruption unleashed nearly a billion cubic metres of carbon dioxide, creating a tsunami that flattened vegetation around the lakeshore and caused the lake’s water level to drop by a full metre. It also disturbed iron-rich sediments on the lake floor which oxidized as it reached the more oxygen-rich upper layers, producing the dramatic colour change observed by Ephraim Che.

Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide cloud grew to 100 metres high, spilled over the crater rim, and – being heavier than air – flowed down the mountainside and into the twin valleys below at 72 kilometres per hour, smothering everything in its path. The silent, invisible killer engulfed the villages of Nyos, Cha, Fang, Subum, and finally Mashi, travelling 25 kilometres before finally dissipating. Carbon dioxide is odourless and tasteless and produces unconsciousness at concentrations as low as 20%, so most victims died instantly and without warning – though some survivors reported smelling rotten eggs, indicating the presence of sulphur dioxide gas. Of the some 5,000 survivors, most were either standing on higher ground or in poorly-ventilated buildings, and thus inhaled only a sub-lethal concentration of gas. Nonetheless, many remained in comas for days, with 548 being admitted to hospital. Strangely, many of the victims’ bodies were found to be covered in rashes and blisters, which were initially believed to be caused by acidic volcanic gases. Later, it was theorized that the marks were instead bedsores from the victims laying comatose for long periods before finally dying or regaining consciousness. However, these symptoms largely remain a mystery to this day.

While the Lake Nyos disaster may seem like a freak occurrence, such incidents were not new to the region. Just a year before on August 15, 1985, a limnic eruption from the smaller Lake Monoun, 100 kilometres southeast of Nyos, resulted in the deaths of 37 people. Indeed, anthropologists believe that local legends of evil spirits haunting crater lakes, as well as the tradition of certain ethnic groups like the Bafmen of always building houses on high ground, derive from memories of past eruption events. Palaeontologists even theorize that limnic eruptions – albeit on a much, much larger scale – may have been responsible for several mass extinction events, such as the Permian-Triassic extinction of 252 million years ago which saw the disappearance of nearly 80% of all life on earth.

But if such eruptions have happened in the past, then they will inevitably happen again in the future – unless preventative measures are taken. Shortly after the 1986 disaster, an international team of geologists and other experts began examining means of safely releasing the carbon dioxide trapped in Lake Nyos to prevent another tragedy. One proposal involved dropping explosives into the lake to shock the gas out of solution, but this was quickly rejected as it could damage the lake’s thin walls, unleashing a deadly flood on the valleys below. Other proposed solutions included dumping vast quantities of calcium hydroxide or lime into the lake to neutralize the dissolved carbon dioxide, or digging tunnels into the bottom of the lake to drain out the gas-saturated water. However, all were rejected for being too expensive or logistically challenging. Instead, it was decided to sink a pipe to the bottom of the lake to allow the gas to escape gradually.

But while several experimental setups were tested in the 1990s, a permanent solution was slow to materialize, largely due to lack of support from the Cameroonian government and international disaster relief agencies. It wasn’t until 1999 that the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) came up with $433,000 to fund the project. In 2001- fifteen years after the disaster – a French engineering team rowed out to the middle of the lake in rafts and sank a 15 centimetre-diameter pipe 200 metres down to the gas-bearing layer. Immediately, a geyser of carbonated water shot out of the pipe at nearly 200 kilometres per hour and rose 50 metres into the air. Nearby Lake Monoun has three such pipes, one installed in 2003 and two in 2006, while solar-powered CO2 detectors installed around both lakes stand ready to warn the locals of any future gas releases. Yet despite these measures, experts remain wary. Some 5,500 tons of carbon dioxide seep into the lake every year, an influx the single vent pipe is just barely able to keep up with. However, no funding is forthcoming to install more pipes. As a result, there is still enough gas at trapped a the bottom of Lake Nyos to cause another major disaster, endangering the lives of more than 10,000 living around the volcano. There is also the flood risk posed by the lake’s fragile walls, while experts have speculated that the venting pipe might actually trigger a future eruption by inducing turbulence in the lake bottom. As of this recording, however, no eruptions have been reported since 1986.

But Lake Nyos and Monoun are not the only crater lakes susceptible to limnic eruption. There are 44 similar lakes in Cameroon’s northwest province alone, and many more around the world, including lake Quilotoa in Ecuador, Lake Ngozi in Tanzania, and Lake Monticchio in Italy. But most worrying of all is Lake Kivu, located on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa. Measuring 2,700 square metres in area and 480 metres deep, Lake Kivu is more than a thousand times larger and twice as deep as lake Nyos, and is thought to contain nearly 256 cubic kilometres of carbon dioxide and 65 cubic kilometres of methane – which, unlike carbon dioxide, is every flammable. Given that nearly 2 million people live near Lake Kivu, a Nyos-style eruption could trigger a natural disaster on a hitherto unheard-of scale. Even more frightening, studies of sediment layers suggest that the lake has already erupted between 7,000 and 8,000 years ago, meaning it might be due for another any day now. As a result, experts are closely monitoring the lake and developing strategies for safely bleeding off the gas – which, as a bonus, could be used to fuel a natural gas power plant. For now, however, the shadow of August 21, 1986 looms over Lake Nyos and other crater lakes across Africa, a constant reminder of how unpredictable – and deadly – nature can be.

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If you visit Pier 13 at the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland, you will find two very different historic cargo ships. One is the SS John W. Brown, one of nearly 3,000 cheap, quick-to-produce “Liberty Ships” built to haul cargo during the Second World War. The other, by contrast, is one of a kind. With a gleaming white hull and sleek, futuristic lines, she looks more like a luxury yacht than a cargo ship. But she was – and so much more. For sixty years ago, this glittering monument to mid-century modernism made history by becoming the first civilian ship to sail under nuclear power. For over a decade this cutting-edge ship sailed the world’s oceans, serving as a glittering symbol and global ambassador of the post-war dream of peace and prosperity through technology. She would, it was hoped, be the first of many, ushering in a bright new future. But it was not to be. Though she performed her mission well, shifting politics and public sentiment condemned her to be both the first and last of her kind, and today she survives as a lonely relic of this hopeful and optimistic period of human history. This is the story of the Nuclear Ship Savannah, the Atomic Age’s ship of dreams.

The story of the N.S. Savannah begins on December 8, 1953. On that day, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a speech before the United Nations General Assembly in which he warned of the growing threat of nuclear proliferation. By this time two other nations, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, had succeeded in developing their own nuclear weapons, shattering the American atomic monopoly. A global arms race had begun, threatening to push mankind to the brink of nuclear war:

“Should such an atomic attack be launched against the United States, our reactions would be swift and resolute. But for me to say that the defense capabilities of the United States…[would be] so great that an aggressor’s land would be laid waste… is not the true expression of the purpose and the hope of the United States.

…To stop there would be to accept helplessly the probability of civilization destroyed-the annihilation of the irreplaceable heritage of mankind handed down to us generation from generation–and the condemnation of mankind to begin all over again the age-old struggle upward from savagery toward decency, and right, and justice.

Surely no sane member of the human race could discover victory in such desolation. Could anyone wish his name to be coupled by history with such human degradation and destruction.

Occasional pages of history do record the faces of the “Great Destroyers” but the whole book of history reveals mankind’s never-ending quest for peace, and mankind’s God-given capacity to build.

It is with the book of history, and not with isolated pages, that the United States will ever wish to be identified. My country wants to be constructive, not destructive. It wants agreements, not wars, among nations. It wants itself to live in freedom, and in the confidence that the people of every other nation enjoy equally the right of choosing their own way of life.”

To this end, Eisenhower proposed a bold new vision of global nuclear policy, which became known as “Atoms for Peace”:

“It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace

…The United States knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future. That capability, already proved, is here-now-today. Who can doubt, if the entire body of the world’s scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material with which to test and develop their ideas, [they would] devise methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind. Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine, and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world. Thus the contributing powers would be dedicating some of their strength to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind.

…Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace.”

A keystone of this initiative would be the development of an International Atomic Development Agency, which would manage the world’s stockpile of fissile material and distribute it to nations on the condition that they only use it for peaceful purposes. This, in turn, would help build international trust and – hopefully – draw the Soviet Union into productive talks about global nuclear arms control.

But while presented as a radical departure from Cold War nuclear brinkmanship, in reality “Atoms for Peace” was anything but. Far from rejecting nuclear weapons, Eisenhower wholly embraced them, believing a large stockpile of nuclear weapons to be a more cost-effective deterrent to Soviet aggression than conventional military forces and a cure for ballooning defence budgets. This stripped-down, nuclear-centred policy became known as the “New Look”. But there was a problem: this new emphasis on building a massive nuclear stockpile risked frightening the American people. Atoms for Peace was thus conceived as the propaganda wing of the New Look, reassuring the public and allowing the U.S. military nuclear program to carry on under the cover of peaceful intentions. The policy also allowed the United States to project and maintain its global influence through the sharing of nuclear materials and technology. Prior to 1949, the United States had kept its nuclear capabilities a closely-guarded military secret. However, once the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, it was feared that they would share their atomic secrets with aligned nations and thereby increase their political influence. Eisenhower thus sought to head off the Soviets by sharing American nuclear technology first. Over the course of the Atoms for Peace Initiative, the United States exported over 25 tons of highly-enriched uranium to 30 countries, with many countries – including Israel and Pakistan – receiving their first research reactors and nuclear medicine installations through the program. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union ran a similar program which exported 11 tons of enriched uranium. As we shall see, this policy would have unexpected consequences which are still being felt to this day.

In addition to supplying nations with fissile materials, medical isotopes, and research reactors, Atoms for Peace also manifested in the training of foreign scientists and technicians in nuclear technology, the development of nuclear reactors for civilian electricity generation, as well as the absolutely batshit-crazy Project Ploughshares, which sought to find ways of using nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes like digging canals and stimulating petroleum production – and to learn more about this, please check out our previous video That Time the Soviets Tried to Extinguish a Fire with a Nuke for…Reasons. Another, decidedly less insane idea was Eisenhower’s 1955 proposal to build a nuclear-powered cargo ship. The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus, launched in 1954, proved that nuclear marine propulsion was safe and reliable, and it was hoped that this technology would make global commerce more efficient, cost-effective, and profitable. As with land-based reactor development, Eisenhower also hoped that an effective demonstration of peaceful nuclear marine propulsion would convince the private sector to invest in the technology, further reducing the government’s monopoly on nuclear technology.

The project was approved by Congress in July 1956 and placed under the joint administration of the Atomic Energy Commission or AEC; the United States Maritime Administration or MARAD; and the United States Department of Commerce. Design of the vessel was assigned to naval architects George G. Sharp Incorporated of New York City; and development of her reactor to Babcock & Wilcox of Lynchburg, Virginia, who had already designed marine reactors for the U.S. Navy. The vessel was dubbed the Nuclear Ship Savannah in homage to the SS Savannah, the first steam-powered ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean in 1819.

As originally envisioned, the N.S. Savannah project had five main goals. First, it would demonstrate to the world the United States Government’s commitment to the peaceful use of nuclear power; second, it would help convince the public that nuclear-powered shipping was safe and reliable; third; it would allow any practical issues with operating nuclear technology in a civilian and commercial environment to be worked out; fourth, it would experimentally introduce nuclear power into the maritime shipping industry; and fifth, it would stimulate the creation of new laws and procedures for accommodating nuclear-powered vessels into said industry. As President Lyndon B. Johnson would later state:

“The Nuclear Ship Savannah is more than a demonstration of American technology and engineering skill; she is also an expression of our belief that through the expansion of world trade and the exchange of ideas and materials, a better world can be created for the benefit of all mankind. She is a prophet of a brighter future, a symbol of hope for tomorrow. As her brave and tiny namesake was almost 150 years ago, the Savannah is a true pioneer, carrying swiftly across the seven seas proof that the mighty power which propels her, the atom, can help all men to enter a new era of peace, prosperity, and progress.”

However, Savannah’s unusual status as both technology demonstrator and global ambassador for peaceful nuclear power posed unique challenges for its designers. By the time the project was approved, the ship’s mandate had changed from simple bulk cargo carrier to combination freighter and ocean liner capable of carrying VIP passengers in style and luxury. This placed a much greater emphasis on safety and comfort. For balance and protection against collisions, the reactor had to be placed in the very centre of the ship; however, it also had to be easily accessible from the top to allow the core to be refuelled. Engineers at George G. Sharp Incorporated thus moved the superstructure farther back on the deck, giving the ship a distinctive profile. Indeed, the entire ship was designed for maximum visual impact, with clean, futuristic lines dripping in mid-century modern style. As we will see, however, this emphasis on style would severely impact Savannah’s effectiveness as a commercial vessel.

Construction of Savannah began in 1958 at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation shipyard in Camden, New Jersey. On May 22 – National Maritime Day – Savannah’s keel was laid down in an unusual ceremony presided over by Patricia Nixon, wife of then Vice-President Richard Nixon. As a large crowd looked on, Mrs. Nixon waved a special “atomic wand” containing a small amount of radioactive material, triggering a geiger counter. This, in turn, signalled a crane operator to swing the first keel section into position. The same “atomic wand” had been used by President Eisenhower on September 6, 1954 to initiate the groundbreaking of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Beaver County, Pennsylvania – another Atoms for Peace project and the world’s first full-scale nuclear power plant devoted entirely to peacetime uses. Construction of the hull was completed in a little over a year, Savannah being launched and christened by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower on July 21, 1959. Fitting-out, including reactor installation, fuelling, and initial sea trials, took another two and a half years.

The completed ship was a marvel of mid-century engineering and design. Measuring 182 metres long with a beam of 24 metres and a loaded displacement of 19,800 tonnes, Savannah was powered by a Babcock & Wilcox pressurized-water reactor driving twin de Laval steam turbines with a maximum power output of 20,000 shaft horsepower or 14.9 megawatts. This, along with her streamlined hull, allowed her to reach a maximum speed of 23 knots or 43 kilometres per hour. To provide a smoother ride at high speeds and in rough seas, Savannah was fitted with fold-out stabilizer planes – only the sixth such use of this technology in maritime history. The ship also featured a 750 horsepower or 560 kilowatt electric motor geared to the high-pressure steam turbine. Powered by a pair of emergency diesel generators, this provided the ship with rudimentary propulsion in case of a reactor shutdown.

Though it was originally intended to simply copy the reactor used aboard USS Nautilus, Babcock & Wilcox ultimately chose to design a brand-new reactor to civilian specifications. The finalized reactor was fuelled by 312 kilograms of low-enriched uranium oxide – enough power the ship for up to 3.5 years or 480,000 kilometres – that’s 14 times the circumference of the earth – without refuelling. 21 neutron-absorbing control rods arranged between the fuel elements could be raised and lowered to control the rate of the nuclear chain reaction. In an emergency, these rods could be lowered in 1.6 seconds to shut down or scram the reactor. A separate system allowed neutron-absorbing boron to be dumped into the core, but this option was reserved for dire emergencies only as the core would have to be completely dismantled and cleaned out to get the reactor working again. To protect against collisions and prevent radiation leakage, the reactor was surrounded by an elaborate containment vessel measuring 10 metres in diameter and 15 metres tall and composed of nearly two metres of steel, polyethylene, lead, concrete, and redwood planks. Radioactive wastewater was collected in a 38,000 litre storage tank, which, when full, could be pumped out by a special unpowered tender barge called the Nuclear Servicing Vessel or NSV Atomic Servant. Also featuring a lead-lined storage pit for reactor refuelling operations, the Atomic Servant could be made available anywhere in the world.

Befitting Savannah’s mission as a peaceful nuclear ambassador, the turbine compartment and reactor control room were fitted with large windows and an observation gallery so passengers and the visiting public could observe the miracle of nuclear power first-hand. This ran contrary to the United State’s typical policy regarding nuclear technology, prompting President Eisenhower to state:

“The ship’s design will not be secret. It will be possible for engineers not only of our own country, but of other nations, to view the nuclear power plant and see first-hand this demonstration of the great promise of atomic energy for human betterment.”

But what impressed passengers and visitors most about Savannah was her luxurious accommodations and futuristic style. The ship could accommodate up to 60 passengers in 30 air conditioned staterooms – each with its own private bathroom – and seat up to 100 in its lavishly-appointed dining room. This, in turn, was served by a large galley packed with all the latest gadgets – including a Raytheon Radar Range, the world’s first commercially-available microwave oven. This allowed the Savannah to host large banquets and other events while in port. Other amenities included a large windowed veranda with a bar; a swimming pool; a library, a barber shop; a well-stocked infirmary with a full surgical suite; and a lounge which doubled as a movie theatre, which showcased paintings by contemporary American artists and featured coffee tables cut from petrified wood and a television screen showing a live feed of the reactor compartment. All this was in turn decorated in a distinctive atomic-age style designed by Jack Heaney and Associates of Wilton, Connecticut, which left no doubt as to the ship’s revolutionary form of propulsion. Everything from light fixtures to dinnerware to the giant logo splashed across the ship’s superstructure bore an instantly-recognizable atomic motif; the wine rack behind the bar was modelled after a chart of nuclear decay chains; and one wall of the dining room was dominated by a curved wall sculpture titled Fission by artist Pierre Bourdelle. And at the other end of the room stood a golden model of the ship’s namesake, the pioneering steamship SS Savannah. Uniquely among passenger liners, Savannah could boast that her gleaming white paint job would never be smudged by soot, for her clean atomic power plant produced no smoke.

While largely advertised as a luxury liner, Savannah was also designed as a freighter and could carry up to 7,700 tonnes of cargo in 7 holds totalling 18,500 square metres: 4 forward of the superstructure and reactor compartment and three aft, with Hold #5 located beneath the swimming pool. Like every other aspect of the ship, the three cargo-handling cranes were specially designed to complement the Savannah’s sleek, futuristic appearance.

Following initial fitting-out, Savannah’s reactor first achieved criticality on December 21, 1961. Then, on January 31, 1962, Captain Gaston DeGroote took command of the ship and sailed her under temporary oil-fired power to Yorktown, Virginia for sea trials. These trials, attended by representatives of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Maritime Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the ship’s builders, culminated in the first full-power run on April 14, 1962, during which Savannah reached a maximum speed of 22 knots. Meanwhile, a corps of engineers were being specially trained to operate and maintain Savannah’s nuclear power plant. Drawn mainly from the United States Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point, New York, these men were put through an intensive 15-month course at Babcock & Wilcox’s headquarters in Lynchburg, Virginia, using full-scale mockups of Savannah’s reactor, turbine machinery, and control room. Once operational, Savannah sailed with a complement of 124: 35 engineers, 27 deck officers, 49 stewards, and 13 support staff, including one senior nuclear advisor and three health physics monitors.

At last, on May 1, 1962, Savannah was accepted by the Maritime Authority and handed over to her chosen operator, States Marine Lines Incorporated. On August 20th, she set sail for her home port of Savannah, Georgia, where she received a triumphant welcome complete with cannon salutes and fireboats spraying giant fountains of water. From here, she transited the Panama Canal and sailed up the Pacific coast to Seattle, where she spent three weeks as a popular attraction at the 1962 Century 21 Exposition – the same World’s Fair which introduced the city’s iconic Space Needle. She then sailed on to San Fransisco, Long Beach, and Los Angeles before crossing the Pacific to Honolulu, Hawaii. This was followed by stops in Portland and San Diego before Savannah once again transited the Panama Canal, docking in Galveston, Texas in early 1963 for much-needed maintenance.

But then, barely six months into her maiden voyage, Savannah’s career came to a screeching halt when her 35 engineers walked off the job. The strike had been triggered in November 1962 while Savannah was docked in Los Angeles, when a Government-appointed labour arbitrator awarded the ship’s deck officers pay raises which automatically set their salaries higher than those of the engineers. As a result, the engineers would be unable to negotiate higher salaries without also increasing the salaries of the deck officers. Disgusted and prepared to walk off the job immediately, the engineers were persuaded to remain aboard until Savannah reached Galveston.

The strike divided political opinion and placed the entire Savannah and Atoms for Peace project under increased scrutiny. Congressman Herbert C. Bonner of North Carolina called the affair “A national disgrace”, while Congressman Herbert Secretary of Commerce Luther H. Hodges painted the engineers as entitled prima donnas, pointing to their enviable salaries of $14,000-22,000 – equivalent to $140,000-22,000 today:

“The affair has] a strange Alice-in-Wonderland character that the average American would find hard to believe…[these youngsters] have put their petty pride and their concern for wage status…ahead of any concern for the public interest.”

Meanwhile, Jesse M. Calhoun, president of Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, defended the engineers, seeing the strike as symptomatic of deeper problems with the Savannah project:

“This whole affair is a disgrace all right, just as Congressman Bonner says – but not for the reasons he thinks. The real disgrace is that the Savannah, nearly four years after its launching, has made only one trip – from the East Coast to the West Coast and back to Galveston. The real disgrace is that Savannah, far from being a suburb example of advanced maritime technology is not even a first-rate modern ship.”

As for the engineers themselves they maintained that the strike had far less to do with money than with the overall state of affairs and work culture aboard Savannah. As one senior engineer revealed:

“We all felt very proud and lucky to be in on the ground floor of the new era of nuclear shipping….many of us had been chief engineers on other ships – a few had even done nuclear engineering – before we joined the Savannah program. We were appalled at the limited knowledge of the instructors who were supposed to be qualifying us for jobs we already knew more about than they did….More important was the way we felt about the ship itself. We made suggestions for improving the reactor – and especially the standard ship equipment. All we got for our pains was resentment, Even when the shipyard agreed with a suggestion it would soon disappear in a snarl of red tape and that would be the last we’d hear of it. We lost some of our brightest recruits in those early days. They simply quit in disgust.”

According to the engineers, the Maritime Authority had initially intended for the Savannah to be designed first and the reactor designed to fit the ship. However, the Atomic Energy Commission forced a reversal of this plan, turning the ship into a mere appendage of the reactor. As a result, while funds were lavished on reactor development, comparatively little of the budget was allocated to the design of the ship. This was further compounded by the 1956 Suez Crisis, which increased global demand for cargo vessels and caused shipbuilding costs to skyrocket. Furthermore, the Soviet Union’s announcement that they were building their own nuclear-powered civilian ship – the Icebreaker Lenin – placed increased pressure on George G. Sharp Incorporated to finish Savannah first.

All this resulted in a ship that, while outwardly impressive, was riddled with serious flaws. As another senior engineer put it:

“The Savannah is like a man who has a bright smile and a great coat of suntan. He looks healthy and vigorous. Then you talk to his doctor and find out he has diabetes, high blood pressure, and a stomach ulcer. That’s the way it is with the ship. She looks beautiful on the outside. But inside she’s full of substandard and obsolete equipment that keeps breaking down.”

The strike brought to light a whole laundry list of flaws plaguing the Savannah, running the gamut from merely annoying to potentially dangerous. For example, the original telephone system was so defective it had to be replaced at an additional cost of $50,000. The air conditioning system often failed and sometimes leaked, ruining the expensive carpets in the passenger staterooms. The bridge deck lacked adequate drainage and often filled with water during rainstorms, while the ship’s machine shop was full of outdated equipment. More serious problems included a faulty gyro stabilizer, which during one test cruise failed and caused the ship to roll violently, knocking passengers to the deck and nearly emptying the swimming pool.

Even the reactor was not free of faults, in spite of the care and funds lavished on its development. For instance, wastewater production greatly exceeded the ship’s storage capacity, forcing Savannah to dump over 440,000 litres of radioactive water into the sea during its first year of operation. This, in turn, rendered the support barge

The steam generator feed pumps constantly broke down and had to be rebuilt three times, while the AEC insisted upon the installation of two auxiliary boilers as a safety feature. However, these boilers proved inadequate for the task, with one of them even exploding while the ship was underway. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. But the most serious flaw of all was with the hydraulic system for raising and lowering the control rods, which could leak and catch fire while the reactor was powered up. This forced the builders to install a complicated and expensive system to keep the containment vessel flooded with 3500 cubic metres of nitrogen and prevent fires from breaking out. This further complicated operations, as all that nitrogen had to be pumped out before anyone could enter the containment vessel to perform maintenance.

Several of these problems made themselves apparent during Savannah’s maiden voyage. While sailing from Yorktown, Virginia to Savannah, Georgia, a sensor error caused the reactor to automatically scram. This, in turn, caused the air conditioning system to fail and the temperature in the staterooms to soar. With only a small electric motor for emergency propulsion, the crew raised a pair of black balls on the ship’s mast – the universal maritime signal for “We are out of command, we have no power, keep clear of us.” After two frantic hours the reactor was finally restarted, and Savannah belatedly steamed into its home port. Ironically, in spite of all these cut corners, Savannah did not even succeed in beating its Soviet counterpart to sea. Lenin was launched in 1957 and entered service in 1959 – a full three years ahead of Savannah.

In response to the strike, States Marine Lines took its case to court, but its appeal was denied. Eventually a settlement was worked out, but the Department of Commerce chose instead to end its contract with States Marine Lines and turn operation of Savannah over to American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines. This allowed the hiring and training of a new, non-union crew – igniting a lingering debate over the future operation of nuclear-powered commercial ships.

By 1964 Savannah was operational once more, and embarked on a global tour that took her all along the U.S. Gulf and East Coasts and across the Atlantic to Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Rotterdam, and Southampton. During this tour, more than 150,000 people toured the ship. The following year, however, American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines discontinued passenger operations to reduce operating costs and converted Savannah to all-cargo use, closing off the passenger areas and removing 1,800 tons of ballast. However, the many compromises which had been incorporated into Savannah’s design greatly hampered her effectiveness as a freight carrier. Her sleek, streamlined hull limited her cargo capacity to 7,700 tonnes of cargo – significantly less than conventional cargo ships of equivalent size. Her cargo holds were also awkwardly shaped and laborious to load and unload – especially Cargo Bay #5, which was covered by the swimming pool and could only be accessed through narrow side ports. Worse still, Savannah’s cargo handling booms, designed more for aesthetics than functionality, proved inefficient and awkward to operate. These were all serious handicaps, especially in an industry increasingly dominated by automated, containerized shipping systems.

Nonetheless, Savannah continued to operate as a commercial freighter and nuclear ambassador for another six years, with a brief pause in 1968 for refuelling in Galveston. In 1969, she became the first nuclear vessel to dock in New York Harbour and served as the centrepiece of a special event called Nuclear Week in New York, which featured various events including a presentation by Dr. Glenn Seaborg, the discoverer of Plutonium and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission; and two special segments on The Tonight Show. By 1970, however, Savannah’s dubious economics had finally caught up with her. Not only could she carry less cargo less efficiently than other ships her size, but she needed a crew a third larger who required special training and cost $2 million more per year to operate than a conventional oil-fuelled freighter. With costs piling up, the Maritime Administration decided to retire Savannah at the end of 1971. Ironically, had MARAD waited just a few years, Savannah might actually have made something of a comeback. While fuel oil cost only $20 a ton in 1971, the 1973 oil crisis caused this price to quadruple, meaning Savannah would have been no more expensive to operate than a conventional oil-fired ship. But it was not to be, and in 1975 Savannah’s reactor was decommissioned and de-fuelled, bringing her unique career to an end.

Over her brief service life, N.S. Savannah travelled 830,000 kilometres – equivalent to 20 times the circumference of the earth – carried 848 passengers, visited 45 domestic and 32 foreign ports, and was visited by 1.4 million people worldwide – all without a single major safety incident. At the same time, however, she cost $47 million to build – nearly $500 million in today’s money – was constantly beset by technical problems and labour disputes, and never turned a profit for its operators. Nor did she usher in a new age of nuclear merchant shipping, with only three more nuclear-powered civilian vessels ever being constructed: the experimental West German freighter Otto Hahn, launched in 1968 but converted to diesel power in 1979; the Japanese oceanographic research vessel Mutsu, launched in 1970 but converted to the conventionally-propelled RV Mirai in 1996; and the Soviet lighter aboard ship carrier Sevmorput, launched in 1988 and still in service today. The Soviet Union and later Russia have also launched 12 nuclear-powered icebreakers including the Lenin, but these are largely operated by the government and are not considered commercial vessels.

Yet despite all this, N.S. Savannah cannot really be deemed a failure. After all, her designers never intended for her to be commercially competitive. From the outset, her mission was to demonstrate the feasibility and safety of commercial marine nuclear propulsion and serve as a global ambassador for the Atoms for Peace initiative – roles she performed with admirable success. In this sense she was very much like her namesake, the SS Savannah, which despite the technological advancement she represented never succeeded in turning a profit; her primitive steam engine consumed so much wood that there was barely any space left aboard for cargo. That N.S. Savannah failed to turn a profit or launch a new industry has more to do with external economic factors and administrative errors than any flaw in the Savannah’s technical design. As former MARAD inspection officer Robert J. Bosnak stated:

“The Savannah performed well from an operational point of view, but in my opinion her designers condemned her to a short life by her hybrid design as a passenger-cargo vessel. Neither function of the ship proved to be economically viable, and MARAD (Maritime Administration) chose not to spend additional monies to convert her to an all cargo, or an all passenger vessel, but instead removed her from service. I regret that this happened.”

Indeed, Savannah was arguably among the most successful aspects of the entire Atoms for Peace program, whose overall results were largely mixed. For while the program succeeded in creating a commercial nuclear industry, failure to invest long-term in reactor design, improvement, and maintenance led to industry stagnation and public disillusionment with nuclear power, especially following high-profile accidents like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. And while dozens of countries benefited greatly from American assistance with research reactors and nuclear medicine, in a few cases the program encouraged the very nuclear proliferation it was designed to curtail. For example, the nuclear weapons programs of India and Pakistan, which achieved their first successful detonations in 1974 and 1998, respectively, were greatly accelerated by technical and material assistance provided through Atoms for Peace.

Following her decommissioning, Savannah was acquired by her namesake city and home port with plans to convert her into a floating hotel, though investors never materialized. After briefly being stored in Galveston, in 1981 the ship was acquired by the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, who opened her up for public tours. She was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, declared a Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1983, and named both a Nuclear Engineering Landmark and a National Historic Landmark in 1991, with the customary 50-year age requirement for the latter designation being specially waived due to her historic significance.

Sadly, Savannah proved far less of a draw than Patriot Point’s other ships – especially the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown – and in 1994 the museum chose to terminate the ship’s charter. Over the following decade Savannah was shuttled between Baltimore, Maryland; Newport News, Virginia; and Norfolk Virginia for various repair and preservation work. Finally, on May 8, 2008, she was towed to Baltimore and docked at the Canton Marine Terminal’s Pier 13 beside the WWII Liberty Ship SS John W. Brown, where she remains to this day.

Since its retirement and defuelling in the 1970s, Savannah has been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – the successor to the AEC – who regularly monitor radiation levels and fund the ship’s maintenance to the tune of $3 million per year. However, in 2008, following Savannah’s arrival in Baltimore, the NRC announced its intention to fully decommission the ship’s nuclear power systems and terminate its license, allowing the ship to be preserved, scrapped, or otherwise disposed of. Pre-decommissioning work took place at the Philadelphia Naval Yard between September 2019 and February 2020, while in November 2022 the main reactor vessel was removed and shipped to a nuclear repository in Utah for disposal. Remaining areas of radioactive contamination are gradually being cleaned up, with full decommissioning to be completed no later than 2031. Once that happens, the ship’s ultimate fate will be up in the air. While the hope is to convert the ship into a museum or other public attraction, no investors have yet materialized. If no funds can be secured, there is a real possibility that N.S. Savannah may wind up in the shipbreaker’s yard. In the meantime, the ship remains in a state of limbo, diligently maintained by a dedicated group of volunteers and occasionally opened up for tour groups and special events. Time will tell what fate awaits this retro-futuristic gem – a gleaming relic of a more wide-eyed, optimistic age.

Expand for References

In early August 2024, an Algerian female boxer at the 2024 Paris Olympics named Imane Khelif was forced into American culture wars over allegations she was a man identifying as a woman to cheat her way to the top. The news cycle began after Khelif’s unusually short victory over Italian boxer Angela Carini.

On Aug. 1, 2024,  Khelif faced Carini in an opening bout of the women’s welterweight boxing tournament at the 2024 Games. Forty-six seconds into the bout, Carini ended the fight early after being punched a few times, delivering an unusual win to Khelif.

Carini later said she ended the fight due to severe nose pain following one of Khelif’s blows. Video showed her sobbing after her loss and not shaking Khelif’s hand when offered to her. “I have never felt a punch like this,” she said after the fight.

Anti-trans activists and social media pundits immediately painted this fight as an example of the alleged unfairness and danger of allowing trans women to fight against those assigned female at birth.

The author J.K. Rowling, for example, described the match on X as “a young female boxer” having “everything she’s worked and trained for snatched away because [the International Olympic Committee] allowed a male to get in the ring with her.”

The virulently anti-trans X account Libs of TikTok also weighed in, describing Khelif as “a man … being allowed to compete in women’s Olympic boxing in Paris.”

The problem with these arguments was Khelif is not trans. Khelif was born, and has lived her entire life, as a female. The sanctioned International Boxing Association (IBA) alleged in a confidential report she did not meet the World Boxing Championship requirements for female competition in 2023, despite having competed as a woman in that same competition for many years prior, winning silver in 2022.

Khelif’s eligibility was challenged only after she beat a Russian opponent to advance to the World Championship quarterfinal round in 2023. The IBA was once recognized by the IOC as the official governing body for boxing — but that title was rescinded in April 2023 following, among other things, allegations of corruption and ties to Russian money. As a result, the IOC, not the IBA, sets the rules for Olympic women’s boxing.

Who is Imane Khelif?

Khelif is an Algerian boxer who has competed, as a woman, at the international level for years. She has always identified as a woman, and as a UNICEF ambassador has discussed the role that being a young girl in a tiny rural village has had on her development as a boxer:

When Imane Khelif, 24, one of Algeria’s top female boxers is asked what achievements she is most proud of, she says, “It’s being able to overcome the obstacles in my life.”

Imane recalls how at 16 she managed to excel in football in her rural village in Tiaret in western Algeria despite football not being seen as a game fit for girls. Moreover, the boys in her village felt threatened and picked fights with her. Ironically it was her ability to dodge the boys’ punches that got her into boxing.

She came in 17th at the 2018 IBA World Boxing Championships and 33rd in the 2019 IBA World Boxing Championships. She represented Algeria in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In those games, she lost to the tournament’s bronze medalist, Ireland’s Kellie Harrington. Her presence did not generate any controversy. She went on to win silver in the 2022 World Boxing Championships.

What Happened in 2023?

Khelif also competed in the 2023 IBA World Championships in New Delhi — that is, until she beat a Russian boxer. On March 22, 2023, Khelif “dominated“ Russian boxer Amineva Azalia with a 4-1 victory, securing her a position in the quarterfinals scheduled to begin a few days later.

On March 24, however, the IBA disqualified Khelif, suggesting a “failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition.” In 2023, the head of the IBA told the Russian news agency TASS that DNA tests had “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded from the sports events.” XY chromosomes are typically associated with males.

Responding to controversy a year later, however, the IBA more generally claimed that Khelif was “subject to [a] … recognized test” but that “the specifics remain confidential.” The IOC had suggested the 2023 disqualification was due to her testosterone level, but the IBA pushed back on that claim.

Can Women Have XY Chromosomes or Elevated Testosterone?

Gender testing for women’s sports remains controversial. The rationale is that the process of going through puberty as a male imparts significant physical advantages over females that could make competition between the sexes dangerous. The controversy, historically at least, has largely been over how these tests should work and how to handle cases complicated by the natural genetic diversity of human life.

There are genetic conditions, termed differences of sexual development, in which biological females are born with XY chromosomes but possess female anatomy, or that affect how a biological female regulates and reacts to testosterone, causing levels typically associated with males. Though there is no independent confirmation that Khelif has these conditions, people born this way would legally be considered female or intersex.

Debates over these issues in the context of women’s sports have nothing to do with a purported “woke” or “trans agenda,” because such instances involve women who were born as women, identify as women and have not undergone any sex reassignment surgery or procedure to change this fact. That is what IOC spokesperson Mark Adams meant when he clarified to the press “this is not a transgender issue.”

Gender-reassignment procedures require significant financial and medical resources. The notion that a woman from a rural western Algerian village who sold scrap metal to support her boxing career would have had the ability to undergo such a procedure in a deeply conservative Muslim country that prohibits the practice is extremely unlikely, at best.

IOC Responds

On Aug. 1, 2024, the day Khelif defeated Carini, the IOC released a statement defending both Khelif and another boxer facing similar accusations, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting:

We have seen in reports misleading information about two female athletes competing at the Olympic Games Paris 2024. The two athletes have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women’s category, including the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, International Boxing Association (IBA) World Championships and IBA-sanctioned tournaments. …

The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure – especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years. Such an approach is contrary to good governance. Eligibility rules should not be changed during ongoing competition, and any rule change must follow appropriate processes and should be based on scientific evidence.

The IOC stated that both boxers have met the IOC eligibility requirements for competition as a woman in boxing.

Angela Carini Was Not Making a Political Statement

Social media accounts falsely attempting to make this story about transgender athletes attempted to paint a sorrowful picture of Carini’s loss, describing her dreams as having been crushed by a man pretending to be a woman and suggesting that photos of the fight and of Carini’s tearful reaction evoked images of domestic violence. Carini’s tears and her not shaking Khelif’s hand were used to support this narrative.

But according to The Associated Press, Carini was not making a political statement at all, and did not intend to refuse to shake Khelif’s hand:

“All this controversy makes me sad,” Carini said. “I’m sorry for my opponent, too. … If the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision.” Carini was apologetic for not shaking Khelif’s hand after the bout.

“It wasn’t something I intended to do,” Carini said. “Actually, I want to apologize to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke. I don’t have anything against Khelif. Actually, if I were to meet her again I would embrace her.”

It is not uncommon for athletes of any gender to shed tears after losing a shot at a medal in the Olympic Games, nor is it uncommon for a punch to the head from an Olympic boxer to cause pain. Boxing is a sport in which two people try to punch each other hard enough to cause a knockout.

Bottom Line

The only purported evidence for the claim that Khelif is trans comes from an undisclosed test performed by an allegedly corrupt sports governing body that may have shown she has a DSD condition. The IOC has said Khelif meets its requirements for participation, with Adams, the IOC spokesman, specifically clarifying, “This is not a transgender issue.”

Because Khelif is not transgender, claims attempting to make her victory against Carini an issue about transgender rights or “woke” politics are without basis.

Snopes reporter Jordan Liles contributed to this report.

On Aug. 5, 2024, the @TrumpDailyPosts X account — a user who reposts former U.S. President Donald Trump’s posts from his Truth Social platform — shared a 64-second video clip showing U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris answering a question about fixing inflation. The post (archived) displayed only a video and did not feature any text. We did not locate the same video on Trump’s Truth Social feed on the same day.

Under the video, the @TrumpDailyPosts post displayed the name of conservative journalist and podcaster (archived) Breanna Morello. Morello’s account hosted the version of the video shared by @TrumpDailyPosts.

In Morello’s post (archived), she wrote, “Bidenomics is working, but Kamalnomics will be EVEN better. How do I know? Take a look at this video of Kamala Harris detailing how the regime is combating inflation.”

We emailed Morello to ask whether she edited the video clip or if she found it already edited somewhere else. We also asked whether she was aware of the existence of the longer question and answer before making her post. Further, we inquired about her policy regarding offering corrections to her followers.

In response, Morello posted on X. She mentioned in a public post (archived), in part, addressing her followers about this reporter’s email, “He’s reaching out because a video I shared was apparently shortened. He wants to know if I will offer you all a ‘correction’ because no one wanted to play the full word salad Harris served up.” She also shared a screenshot of our questions and made other statements, all of which are available in her post.

Harris’ Full Answer About Fixing Inflation

While researching the origins of the video, we noticed under the @TrumpDailyPosts post a draft community note not yet publicly displayed. The draft community note linked to a YouTube video published by Forbes showing the full exchange, lasting just over four minutes. The link revealed Harris’ answer dated back nearly three years — a fact not mentioned in the posts on X.

According to The Associated Press and WhiteHouse.gov, Harris fielded the question during a four-day trip to France, specifically at the Intercontinental Paris Le Grand hotel in Paris on Nov. 12, 2021. The official White House transcript noted then-Bloomberg journalist Jennifer Jacobs raised the question during the news conference.

We checked the transcript against the video and published the question and answer in full below. (The bolded portion below indicates the only part of the question and answer included in the video clip shared on X in August 2024.)

JACOBS: Ma’am, the U.S. is experiencing record inflation — the worst in 30 years — way beyond expectations. OPEC didn’t increase oil production. Can you tell us a little bit about how you would prevent the new spending in your Build Back Better agenda from exacerbating the problem? And also, what else are you going to do to fix this problem with inflation?

HARRIS: All right, thank you. Well let’s start with this: Prices have gone up. And families and individuals are dealing with the realities of, of — that bread costs more, that gas costs more. And we have to understand what that means. That’s about the cost of living going up. That’s about having to stress and stretch limited resources. That’s about a source of stress for families that is not only economic but is, on a daily level, something that is a heavy weight to carry. So, it is something that we take very seriously. Very seriously.

And we know from the history of this issue in the United States that when you see these prices go up, it has a direct impact on the quality of life for all people in our country. So it’s a big issue, and we take it seriously.

And it is a priority, therefore. So we have addressed it in a number of ways. One of the issues that we know is related to this is the supply chain issue that we just discussed.

And so, on a domestic level, in terms of domestic policy, one of the approaches we have taken is to work with labor unions and to work with municipalities in opening back up and extending the hours of our ports. There are actually three I have in mind: Los Angeles, Long Beach and Savannah. And, in fact, part of the infrastructure bill benefit is, most recently, what we will do to assist Savannah in broadening their ability to be an active port.

And we’ve seen a reduction in the container ships off of the Long Beach and LA ports because of what we’ve done, which is to extend, as you know, the 24 — or to extend the hours to now 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But there is also a point that is important to make on the Build Back Better framework. One, it is designed to make it less expensive for working people to live. It was specifically designed to bring down the cost of child care and increase accessibility and availability; designed to bring down the cost of elder care and make it available to all those working families that need that support and need that help.

And Build Back Better is not going to cost anything; we’re paying for it. So when we can get Build Back Better passed — and we are optimistic that we will — the American people will see costs actually reduced around some of the most essential services that they need to take care of their basic responsibilities, including issues like child care and elder care, and also preschool. And that’s an important point to mention also.

And, in fact, I had some conversations here in France, including with the minister of education in France, about the, again, global impact of the pandemic on child care but also on education, and in particular for our youngest children.

Universal pre-K — when we’re able to do that — 3 and 4 years old — getting education at no cost, what that is going to do in terms of not only supporting working families who otherwise can’t afford to put their kids in a private situation and have — and otherwise don’t have it available — that’s going to have a huge impact on lowering the cost for families.

So that is a big part of our agenda. And I think it’s important to also stress that it’s not going to cost anything for the American taxpayer.

For further reading, we previously reported on a popular and misleading copied-and-pasted Facebook post claiming to list store closings for prominent American businesses, purportedly directly caused as a result of U.S. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan.

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has launched a new general election ad that falsely labels Vice President Kamala Harris the “border czar” and falsely suggests that 10 million people illegally crossed the southern border on her watch and are still “here.”

As we’ve written before, Harris was specifically tasked with leading efforts to address the root causes of migration from three countries in Central America. She was not put in charge of U.S. border security, as the “border czar” title implies. That is the responsibility of the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Also, during the Biden-Harris administration, there have been nearly 7 million apprehensions of those trying to cross the southern border illegally through June, according to the most recent figures available from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Another 1.1 million people arrived at legal ports of entry without authorization to enter the U.S. There may have been nearly 2 million who illegally crossed and were not caught.

But data on the initial action taken at the border, available only through March, shows that in about 3 million cases, the encountered individuals were either quickly removed or denied entry.

The Trump campaign released the 30-second ad, titled “I Don’t Understand,” on July 30 and said it “will run across six battleground states.”

Not the ‘Border Czar’

The ad begins with a video of Harris dancing while a narrator says, “This is America’s border czar and she’s failed us.” But the claim that Harris is the “border czar” is false.

Not long after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Harris to head up the “Root Causes Strategy,” an effort to “improve security, governance, human rights, and economic conditions” in Central American countries. The strategy included a number of actions designed to “address the root causes of migration” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, specifically. The synopsis released by the White House said that the strategy would focus on tackling economic insecurity and inequality, confronting corruption, and reducing violence, among other things.

Biden did not put Harris in charge of issues at the border. (Another Trump ad claims that “Biden made Kamala Harris border czar to fix immigration.”)

Harris addressed her role in a June 2021 NBC News interview with Lester Holt in Guatemala. A clip from that interview is featured in the campaign ad embedded above.

“Well, Lester, here’s the thing,” Harris began, as she explained why she had said that migrants should not come to the U.S. illegally. “I’ve been working on this issue for a very long time, and the kind of violence and danger that is associated with that trek, especially when we are talking about from Guatemala through Mexico to the United States. It’s extremely dangerous, and the reason that I am in Guatemala is to address the reasons people leave home, flee. … They want to stay. They don’t want to leave, but they need opportunity, they need assistance, they need support and we have the ability to give them that.”

Later in the interview, when Holt pressed her about not having gone to the U.S.-Mexico border by that point in her vice presidency, Harris said that she believed the border and the underlying reasons for illegal immigration are both important.

“I care about what’s happening at the border,” she said. “I’m in Guatemala, because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration. There may be some who think that that is not important, but it is my firm belief that if we care about what’s happening at the border, we’d better care about the root causes and address them. And so that’s what I’m doing.”

About two weeks after that interview, Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did travel to part of the border in El Paso, Texas. In remarks made at a press conference during the trip, Mayorkas talked about the administration’s plan to address a surge in migration and who would take on what role.

“The vice president is leading our nation’s effort to tackle the root causes of migration — why people leave their home in the first place,” Mayorkas said. “I and my colleagues in the Cabinet have been directed to execute the rest of the plan: to build safe and legal pathways for people who qualify for humanitarian relief under the laws our Congress has passed; to rebuild our country’s asylum system that was dismantled under the prior administration; in an orderly and just way, to remove those whose claims for relief do not qualify.”

He went on to say that he and DHS had the “responsibility to secure the border.”

Border Crossings

The ad also gives the false impression that, during the Biden-Harris administration, 10 million people entered the U.S. illegally and remain in the country.

A graphic on screen reads, “over 10 million illegal border crossings.” Meanwhile, the ad’s narrator says, “under Harris, over 10 million illegally here.”

But all the people who were encountered at the border are not still here; millions were removed or denied entry, almost immediately.

From February 2021 to June 2024, there were nearly 7 million apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally, according to CBP data. There were another 1.1 million instances of individuals who showed up at a legal port of entry but were “inadmissible,” meaning they did not have legal permission to enter the country. Also, based on an average annual apprehension rate of 78%, according to DHS, there were an estimated nearly 2 million “gotaways” who illegally entered the country and avoided being detected by authorities.

Adding those all together gets to 10 million border crossings, although each one does not necessarily represent a different person because some people may have been encountered more than once due to repeated attempts to gain entry into the country.

However, for the people encountered at the border, many of them did not get to stay.

We have comprehensive data on what happened after initial border evaluations only through March. For the nearly three-year period of February 2021 through March 2024, there were about 3 million removals or repatriations by CBP, according to monthly figures from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics.

Another 3.3 million were released into the country with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the future, or other classifications, such as parole. There were also 414,900 transfers to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for unaccompanied children who cross the border without adult family members or legal guardians, and about 910,000 transfers to ICE. The transfers to ICE include those who are then booked into ICE custody, enrolled in “alternatives to detention” (which include technological monitoring) or released by ICE. So, we don’t know how many of those were released into the country with a court notice and how many are still in ICE custody.

Also, these figures are for the initial dispositions of migrants encountered at the border, as we’ve explained before. Some of the people released into the country still may be removed later, if they do not qualify for asylum or another form of protection from removal. That would further subtract from the “10 million” the ad falsely suggests have stayed in the country.

Fentanyl and ISIS

The ad also says that there have been 250,000 deaths from fentanyl “on Harris’s watch,” suggesting that those deaths are connected to illegal immigration. Then the ad goes on to say, “ISIS now here,” citing a news story about men who entered the U.S. through the southern border and were later arrested because they may be connected to the Islamic State terrorist group.

First, there is not an exact count of deaths from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is lethal in small doses, a spokesperson for the National Center for Health Statistics told us in an email.

The NCHS does report overdose deaths from synthetic opioids other than methadone, a category that includes deaths due to fentanyl or fentanyl analogs. In 2021 and 2022, there were a combined 144,439 overdose deaths from synthetic opioids other than methadone, according to finalized NCHS data based on death certificates for U.S. residents. There were an additional 74,702 estimated deaths from the use of those drugs in 2023, according to NCHS provisional data released in May.

Although not official, that’s a total of 219,141 overdose deaths, which could exceed 250,000 once the final figures for 2023 and 2024 are known.

Overdose deaths from non-methadone synthetic opioids have been rising for several years, including during the Trump administration. The estimated deaths for 2021-2023 are about 44% higher than the 152,676 deaths over Trump’s four years as president, and the total under Trump had increased about 306% from the 37,642 deaths during Barack Obama’s last four years as president.

Furthermore, as we’ve written, the vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the U.S. by American citizens coming through legal ports of entry — not people illegally crossing the border between those ports.

As for ISIS being “here,” according to the ad, that’s based on a June 14 CNN article about eight Tajikistan nationals who entered the U.S. through the southern border seeking asylum. They were screened by border officials and allowed into the country, but they were later arrested for potentially having ties with the terrorist group.

CNN reported: “Though there is no hard evidence indicating they were sent to the US as part of a terror plot, at least some of the Tajik nationals had expressed extremist rhetoric in their communications, either on social media or in direct private communications that US intelligence was able to monitor, three officials said.”

The arrests “heightened concerns among national security officials that a dangerous affiliate of the now-splintered terror group could potentially carry out an attack on US soil,” CNN said.

But the story noted that the men would be held in federal custody on immigration charges until they are deported after a counterterrorism investigation is completed.

It’s not clear if all eight men entered the country illegally, as at least one of them reportedly used the CBP One app, which launched in January 2023 to accept appointments for migrants who are in Mexico and want to request asylum or parole in the U.S.

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There have been no small number of rather bizarre accidents from humans humaning, everything from that time the City of Boston almost literally drowned in molasses to how humans drilling a 14 inch hole accidentally created a 1,300-foot deep saltwater lake out of a formerly 10-Foot deep freshwater one (more on this hilarious event in the Bonus Facts later.) But yet another curious such event was that time a rather large portion of the Reforma district of Guadalajara, Mexico just up and exploded one day for reasons… This is the story of one of the greatest urban disasters you’ve never heard of.

Guadalajara, located 300 kilometres northwest of Mexico City, is the capital of Jalisco state and, with a population of 3 million, the second-largest city in Mexico after the capital. The morning of April 22, 1992 was just like any other in Guadalajara, the largely Catholic population having just celebrated Easter. All was normal – all, that is, except for the smell. Four days before, residents of the Reforma district had noticed a strong gasoline-like odour- mainly those along Gante Street. At first, people ignored the smell, attributing it to annual cleaning at the nearby Nogalera gasoline storage facility. One of nearly 40 factories and storage facilities in the industrial, working-class neighbourhood Nogalera was owned by Petróleos Mexicanos or Pemex, Mexico’s national petroleum monopoly. Yet as days passed, the smell got progressively worse, causing eye and lung irritation and severe nausea. Residents even reported gasoline fumes streaming out of faucets.

In response to complaints, on Tuesday, April 21, Jalisco State Governor Guillermo Vidaurri cordoned off large sections of Reforma while dozens of members of the Guadalajara Fire Department, the State Civil Defense Unit, the local police, and the Intermunicipal Water and Sewer System or SIAPA descended on the district to investigate. Sampling of the water and air throughout the district soon revealed the source of the smell to be the industrial solvent Hexane. More alarmingly, vapour concentrations in many of the sewer lines had reached 100% explosivity – meaning that the slightest spark could potentially set off a massive explosion. Suspicion immediately turned to a nearby plant operated by the company La Central S.A., which used Hexane to extract cooking oil from seeds. Though an inspection of the plant revealed no solvent leaks, Jesus Doria, a member of La Central’s board, immediately ordered the facility shut down as a precaution. Meanwhile, the fire department opened manhole covers and flushed drains across the district in order to let the Hexane vapours dissipate. By 3:30 AM on April 22, explosivity levels had dropped from 100 to only 15%. Believing the problem had been solved, the firefighters and other government workers returned home.

By 9 o’clock, however, explosivity levels had risen back to 100%, and members of SIAPA met with Governor Vidaurri and Guadalajara Mayor Enrique Dau Flores to discuss evacuating residents from the Reforma district. These officials, however, chose to ignore their warnings, and throughout the morning firefighters and SIAPA workers continued to assure Reforma residents that there was nothing to worry about.

Then, just past 10 o’clock in the morning, all hell broke loose.

28-year old Alberto Pulido was driving to work down Violeta Street when the first explosion occurred. He watched in horror as, like in a scene from a supernatural horror film, the ground suddenly opened up beneath him:

“I thought a car had hit me from behind, and then I saw the earth was opening up and my car was sinking. I prayed to God. I thought I was going to die.”

Miraculously, despite having a semitrailer roll over onto his car, Pulido escaped unscathed.

Meanwhile, Gonzalez Cervantes was at home watching television when the ground began to shake beneath him:

“There was a huge boom. I came outside, and there were cars on roofs and clouds of dust everywhere. People were crying. They were hysterical. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The first explosion took place around 10:06 near the intersection of Gante and 20 de Noviembre. This was followed barely 5 minutes later by another explosion near Violeta. Surging south along the sewer main that ran beneath Gante street, three more major explosions followed, the last occurring around 2:20 PM near the intersection of Rio Alamo and Rio La Barco-Gonzalez Gallo. According to disaster sociologist Benigno Aguirre, residents had almost no warning of the surreal wave of destruction speeding towards them:

“The only indication of warning [was]…people looking down the streets and seeing a rapidly disintegrating landscape advance towards them. Those who survived turned away from the center of the street where the drainage pipe that blew up was located.”

The five explosions demolished or damaged more than 1,500 homes and businesses and reduced eight kilometres of city streets to gaping ravines 5 metres deep and choked with 230,000 tons of rubble. Hundreds of cars, buses, and other vehicles were swallowed up by the ground, while several were struck by flying manholes and launched into the air, sometimes landing upside down atop buildings. Inside at least one flying car was a newborn infant, who miraculously survived. When the smoke finally cleared over 200 people lay dead, 1,800 injured, and 500 trapped beneath the rubble. A large proportion of the victims were children, home from school for the Easter break. Wednesday was also market day in La Reforma, and thousands had been out on the streets when they collapsed beneath them. A further 25,000 people had to be evacuated from the area, while the disaster inflicted an estimated $3 billion in physical damage.

As first responders, Red Cross personnel, and civilian volunteers raced to rescue survivors from the rubble, firefighters re-opened manhole covers and pumped soapy water into the sewers to neutralize any remaining fumes. Later, trenches and pumping wells were dug to drain off liquid gasoline and prevent it from contaminating the aquifer beneath the city. Despite these precautions, however, a further two explosions rocked the neighbourhood early the following morning. The sheer number of victims soon overwhelmed local hospitals and clinics, so temporary accommodations for the injured and homeless were set up in two local sports stadiums, while makeshift morgues were established in gymnasiums and other public buildings.

Meanwhile, an investigation as to the causes of the explosions began – as did the inevitable finger-pointing. Pemex pushed the initial theory that the solvent leak had come from the La Central oilseed facility. However, the plant had been shut down for the Easter weekend and had not suffered any leaks in its Hexane storage tanks. Furthermore, the capacity of said tanks was far below that needed to fuel an explosion the size of the Guadalajara disaster. Finally, investigators determined that the explosions had been caused not by pure Hexane but rather ordinary gasoline – of which Hexane is only one component. Suspicion thus shifted to Pemex’s Nogalera gasoline storage facility. The investigation soon revealed that 8 days before the disaster, Nogalera had registered a pressure drop in a pipeline carrying gasoline from a refinery in Salamanca to the Guadalajara depot, indicating a rupture in the pipe. This rupture was quickly traced to a spot less than 1 kilometres from the depot. Here, a section of zinc-plated copper pipe from the municipal water distribution system had been laid close to the steel gasoline pipe in violation of local building standards. The two dissimilar metals in close proximity created an electrolytic reaction, causing the gasoline pipe to corrode through and leak into the ground, with the fuel eventually finding its way into the municipal drainage system. The poor design of the sewer system itself also contributed to the disaster. A new line of the subway system had recently been installed, requiring the main sewer to be diverted around it. City engineers accomplished this by building a U-shaped inverted siphon – rather like the S-bend in a toilet – under the subway line. However, siphons like this only work with fluids of uniform consistency. With a mixture of different fluids – like water and gasoline – only the densest fluid passes through the siphon, leaving the lighter fluids trapped upstream. This caused gasoline fumes to gradually accumulate in the sewer line, creating the perfect conditions for an explosion. What exactly set off the vapours is unknown, though given the high explosivity measured in the sewers just before the disaster, it could have been almost anything, from two pieces of metal striking each other and creating a spark to someone carelessly tossing a cigarette butt down a manhole.

In light of these revelations, several Pemex executives were arrested and interrogated in an attempt to determine who bore responsibility for the disaster. Disturbingly, this was not the first time fuel had leaked from the Nogalera facility and ignited, a similar incident having occurred less than a year before in October 1991. Thankfully, only a few manhole covers were blown off and nobody was hurt. Nor was this the first time negligence on Pemex’s part had resulted in mass casualties. In the early morning hours of November 19, 1984, a ruptured pipe at the company’s San Juan Ixhuatepec storage facility caused over 10,000 cubic metres of liquefied petroleum gas to go up in flames, triggering a series of massive explosions that destroyed 150 homes, killed 450 people and severely injured 5,000 more. It was one of the largest industrial disasters in history and one of the most powerful manmade explosions ever recorded, the shockwave from the blast registering 0.5 on the Richter scale.

But the irresponsible behaviour doesn’t stop there. In June 3, 1979, Ixtoc I, an exploratory well drilled by the Pemex in the Gulf of Mexico, blew out and released 3 million barrels of crude oil into the ocean – the largest oil spill up to that point and the second largest in history after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. And if that weren’t bad enough, recent investigations have determined that over 95% of the industrial wastes produced by Pemex facilities in Mexico City are dumped directly into the municipal wastewater system.

Yet despite this long and sordid history, Pemex has almost never faced justice for its negligence. The 1992 Guadalajara explosions were no exception, with all of the arrested executives being cleared of all charges. Why? Allegedly because Pemex is, quite simply, too large and powerful to touch. With assets valued at over $100 billion, Pemex is the single wealthiest entity in Mexico and its largest source of public funds, contributing a whopping 40% of the Federal Government’s annual revenue. Unsurprisingly, such vast fiscal power allegedly breeds rampant corruption, allowing Pemex to operate as an independent state-within-a-state. Indeed, about the only person indicted for their part in the disaster was Guadalajara Mayor Enrique Dau Flores, who subsequently resigned from office. Meanwhile Pemex quietly funded the reconstruction of the shattered neighbourhoods and established a $40 million fund to help the victims of the disaster. However, the company has vehemently insisted that this is a donation and in no way implies responsibility for the incident.

But given the sheer extent of the devastation, even $40 million doesn’t go very far, and in the wake of the tragedy survivors formed a group called La Asociación 22 de Abril en Guadalajara to fight for fair compensation for the injuries inflicted and the lives, homes, and livelihoods destroyed by the 1992 explosions. 30 years on from the disaster, the streets, buildings and sewers of Guadalajara may have been rebuilt, but the scars of the horrific day still run deep.

Bonus Fact:

Going back to the story of how drilling a relatively small hole set off a sequence of events creating a giant salt water lake out of a small freshwater one- Lake Peigneur is located in Louisiana near the Gulf of Mexico. Before 1980, it was an approximately 10-foot deep fresh water lake with an island in the middle. Next to it, and partially under it, Diamond Crystal Salt Company maintained a salt mine, with salt being mined near the lake since 1919.

Around large underground salt domes, you can often find oil. As explained by one Dr. Whitney J. Autin, “…salt moves upwards and it pierces through surrounding strata… and this piercing produces faults and folds within the surrounding sediments producing an ideal mechanism to trap oil.”

As such, Texaco was doing some drilling in the lake. On November 20, 1980, crews on the oil rig in the lake ran into a problem. At just over 1,200 feet, their drill seized up. Not a major problem normally, they worked to get it loose. In the process, they heard several loud pops then the oil rig tilted like it was going to collapse. The men got off the rig and to shore as quickly as possible. Not a moment too soon. Just 19 minutes after their drill had seized up, they watched from the shore as the huge platform (150 feet tall) overturn and sank into the 10 foot deep lake…

Next, the astounded drillers watched as a whirlpool slowly formed, soon reaching a quarter mile wide and centered over the site of the oil drilling.

Whoopsadoodle.

At the same time the oil workers were watching their $5 million drilling rig disappear into the lake, workers in the salt mines below the lake noticed something was wrong as well; a stream of water was found flowing along the floor of the mine shaft at about the 1,300 foot level of the mine, which went down to about 1,500 feet at its deepest. As water wasn’t supposed to be in the mine, the evacuation alarm was raised. Foreman Randy LaSalle then drove a cart around to the regions of the mine where the alarm signal could not be seen, making sure everyone knew about the evacuation. By the time those from the deepest areas of the mine made it to the elevator, they encountered knee-deep water. Despite the fact that the mine was rapidly filling with water and the exit elevator could only take up to eight people at a time, all 55 miners were evacuated successfully.

It wasn’t clear to the miners what had happened at the time, but from the evidence at hand, the theory is that the drilling crew miscalculated their location and instead of being several hundred feet from the salt mine, they had instead been directly over a portion of it and penetrated the salt dome. The initial hole resulting from this mistake was only 14 inches wide, but water spraying in at extremely high pressure quickly widened the hole. The water also dissolved the salt pillars that supported the ceiling of the mine, causing the shafts to collapse.

The widening of the hole and the collapse of the mine gave strength to the whirlpool on the surface of the lake, which caused major damage. Docks, another drilling platform, a 70 acre island in the middle of the lake, eleven barges, vehicles, trees and a parking lot near the lake were all sucked into the mine below. The pull of the whirlpool was so strong that it reversed the flow of the 12-mile-long Delcambre Canal that drained the lake into the Gulf of Mexico.

Three hours after the first signs of trouble, the three to four billion gallons of water that had made up the lake were almost all gone, having dropped into the mine below, leaving a gaping crater. The backward-flowing canal formed a 160 foot waterfall that gradually refilled the lake, this time with salt water from the Gulf.

The 10-foot deep freshwater lake was now a saltwater one, approximately 1,300 foot-deep in a good sized portion of it.

Amazingly, there were no deaths or serious human injuries as a result of the disaster, though the ecosystem of the lake was forever changed. Further, three dogs died in the event. Many lawsuits were filed, all settled out-of-court, costing Texaco about $45 million in damages, with about $32 million of that going to Diamond Crystal.

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While often overlooked, unless you drive an electric car, there is likely a seemingly humble metal can attached to your exhaust pipe that is an absolutely incredible piece of chemical engineering, a product of a herculean but now largely-forgotten feat of politics and industrial research and development that some scholars have compared to the Apollo Program. This is the fascinating story of the catalytic converter, perhaps the most underrated automotive component of all time.

Catalytic converters are designed to reduce an engine’s emissions by converting harmful exhaust products like unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides into more benign compounds like carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapour. As the name suggests, this is accomplished through the use of a catalyst, a substance which speeds up the rate of a chemical reaction but takes no part in the reaction itself. Catalysts work by allowing reaction pathways with lower activation energies, reducing the energy barrier required for a reaction to take place. For example, a catalyst may adsorb the reactants onto its surface, making it easier for them to bond, or may form intermediate compounds with the reactants that can more easily react with one another. In either case, at the end of the reaction the catalyst is left unaltered, allowing it to be reused almost indefinitely.

Older catalytic converters are known as two-way models, as they only catalyze two oxidation reactions. First, they break down unburned hydrocarbons into hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, then recombine these elements into carbon dioxide and water; and second, they convert carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide. The year 1981, however, saw the introduction of three-way converters, which can also catalyze reduction reactions converting nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide – precursors to photochemical smog and acid rain – into harmless nitrogen gas.

While catalytic converters did not begin appearing on cars until the mid-1970s, the technology is significantly older. As early as 1909 – just a year after the introduction of the Ford Model T – French chemist Michel Frankel gave a speech at the 7th International Congress on Applied Chemistry in London in which he proposed “…supplementary combustion in the exhaust box, with the aid of a catalytic agent” to help reduce future emissions from these newfangled automobiles. While this proposal was certainly prophetic, at the time air pollution was nothing new. Indeed, London’s infamous “pea soup fog” was not actually fog but rather a noxious smog resulting from the burning of coal which could – and often did – prove lethal when inhaled. Coal smog became such an issue in the UK that in 1845 Parliament passed the Railway Clauses Consolidation Act, one of the first pieces of legislation in history to regulate transport emissions.

However, the true father of the modern catalytic converter was another Frenchman: a mechanical and chemical engineer named Eugéne Jules Houdry. Houdry was born in 1892 in Domont, France, scion of a French steel-making family. He studied engineering at Paris’s École des Arts et Métiers, graduating top of his class and receiving a gold medal from the government before joining his family’s steel firm in 1911. With the outbreak of the First World War, Houdry joined the French Army, serving first in the artillery and later France’s first tank company. During the Second Battle of the Aisne in 1917, Houdry was seriously wounded while trying to repair his tank under heavy fire – an action for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour.

After the war, Houdry returned to the family firm and took up auto racing as a hobby, driving a Bugatti race car in his spare time. His obsession with increasing engine performance eventually led him to develop the catalytic cracking process for refining crude oil and coal into high-performance automotive fuel. This process was far more efficient than the older thermal cracking process and promised to meet the increasing demands of the ever-expanding automotive industry. In 1927, with the support of the French Government, Houdry built a pilot catalytic refinery in St. Julien de Peyrolas. Unfortunately, the plant’s output was far lower than expected and, unable to secure further support from the Government or Industry, Houdry moved to the United States, settling in Paulsboro, New Jersey in 1930. Here, he worked with Socony Vacuum and Sun Oil to develop improved versions of his catalytic process, with the first full-scale refinery opening in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, in 1937. By 1942, fourteen “Houdry Units” were operating across the United States, producing large quantities of high-octane aviation fuel which proved decisive in the final Allied victory in the Second World War.

After the war, Houdry turned his attention to another problem: air pollution, which even in the 1940s was becoming a serious problem in commuter-heavy cities like Detroit and Los Angeles. Though the link was as yet unproven, Houdry suspected that automobile emissions were responsible for a recent spike in lung cancer rates, and he set out to invent a device to clean up exhaust gases. In 1948, he formed a company called Oxy-Catalyst Inc. in Wayne, Pennsylvania, establishing a laboratory and office in a converted ballroom and horse stable. Within two years, Houdry developed a catalytic converter for use on factory smokestacks. This consisted of a metal box containing a bundle of porcelain rods over which exhaust gases would flow. These rods, in turn, were coated in aluminium oxide and platinum, the latter of which acted as the catalyst to convert unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide into water and carbon dioxide. He later developed a smaller version – the “catalytic muffler” for use in automobile exhaust systems, for which he was awarded the Society of Chemical Industry’s prestigious Perkin Medal. An amazingly-written 1955 article in Popular Mechanics breathlessly explained to readers just how this clever new device worked:

“A catalyst is like a heckler who prods two other guys to fight. A cat never does much fighting himself – he’s needed to keep things stirred up.

“In your car’s exhaust pipe the trouble is that nobody wants to fight. The waste hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide coming down from your engine aren’t hot enough to mix it up with oxygen – in other words, burn. Like snakes on a cold day they are too lazy to fight.

“So Houdry throws in a cat, and – wham! – a fight starts. Oxygen from the air leaps with a snarl at the smelly stuff. While the cats glow with the heat of the fight, oxygen rips the hydrocarbons apart. The hydrogen joins some of the oxygen to form water (H2O). And the widowed carbon is swallowed by other oxygen, burning into harmless carbon dioxide (CO2). Deadly carbon monoxide (CO) gets the business, too. Attacked by oxygen, it also burns to (CO2).”

Who said science writing had to be dull?

Houdry was particularly proud of his creation, boasting:

“Put them on all cars and watch the lung cancer curve dip.”

Unfortunately, this was not to be – at least, not in Houdry’s lifetime. For one thing, public concern over air pollution was nowhere near intense enough to convince automotive companies to adopt such a new, potentially expensive device. But there was an even bigger, more practical problem. At the time, gasoline contained tetraethyl lead to boost its octane rating and prevent engine knocking, and lead residue in the exhaust tended to coat or “poison” the catalyst, rendering the catalytic converter useless after only a year or two of regular driving. Consequently, Houdry turned away from regular automobiles and instead began developing catalytic converters for forklifts and mining machinery used in confined spaces, where carbon monoxide levels could quickly build up to lethal levels. Such machinery typically ran on low-grade, unleaded fuel, eliminating the catalyst poisoning problem. Eugène Houdry died in 1962 at the age of 70, his dream of curbing automobile emissions unrealized.

However, that same year saw the publication of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s classic exposé of the dangers of synthetic pesticides like DDT. This book helped launch the modern environmental movement, which by the late 1960s had grown so large and influential that politicians and industry were forced to take notice. By 1969, smog over Detroit, Los Angeles, and other cities had gotten so bad that residents sometimes couldn’t see the sun at noon, parents were wary of letting their children play outside, and buildings had to be repainted every few years. This crisis spurred the government of then-California governor Ronald Reagan to pass sweeping state emissions regulations. The Federal Government quickly followed suit, and on January 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act. Less than a year later, he established the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA, whose first Administrator, Assistant Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus, immediately ordered the mayors of the heavily-polluted cities of Cleveland, Atlanta, and Detroit to clean up their waterways within six months or face legal action. And before the year was out, President Nixon signed a massive expansion to the 1963 Clean Air Act, which set national standards for automobile emissions. Specifically, it called for automobile manufacturers and oil companies to reduce exhaust emissions – particularly smog-causing nitrogen oxides – by 90% and to eliminate leaded gasoline from all major service stations by 1975.

As you might imagine, this did not go down well with automakers. The Government had just thrown down what science writer Tim Palucka once called:

“…a gauntlet similar in spirit to President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 challenge to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Both were bold strokes that placed a burden squarely on the shoulders of the nation’s scientists and engineers. And both looked impossible.”

Indeed, in order to get cleaner cars rolling off the assembly line by the 1975 model year, manufacturers would have to complete the necessary research and development work within only 2-3 years – an absurdly short turnaround for technology nobody knew was even possible. Ernest Starkman, vice president in charge of the environmental-activities staff of General Motors, balked that:

“The cleaner the car is from a pollution standpoint, the harder it is to make it run well.”

While then Ford president Lee Iacocca claimed that to comply with the regulations, the auto industry would have to flat-out stop producing cars for several years:

“No matter how much we spend and how many people we assign to the task, we do not think we can do it by Jan. 1, 1975. Under this bill we would be directed to reduce all emissions by 90 percent even if nobody knows how to reduce emissions by 90 percent.”

But the EPA refused to back down, forcing Big Four in Detroit to attempt the impossible. Even EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus later admitted that the Clean Air Act was overly ambitious, stating in 1985 that:

“We thought we had technologies that could control pollutants, keeping them below threshold levels at a reasonable cost, and that the only things missing in the equation were national standards and a strong enforcement effort…All of the nation’s early environmental laws reflected these assumptions, and every one of these assumptions is wrong.”

With the clock ticking, the automakers decided to tackle the problem of emissions on two fronts: at the source using improved carburetors, pre-combustion chambers, and dual spark plugs to promote more complete combustion of the fuel; and at the exhaust end using catalytic converters to clean up any remaining emissions. At first, most research focused on pre-combustion emission reduction, as Rodney Bagley, an engineer at Corning Glass Works later recalled:

“Hanging a chemical reactor under a car was not something the auto companies wanted to do. They thought that it would be a short-term stopgap until they could design an engine that would reduce emissions using a precombustion chamber or some other gizmo.”

In the decade since Eugène Houdry’s death, catalytic converter technology had advanced significantly, with companies like Corning in New York, 3M in Minnesota, and Englehard Industries in New Jersey all developing more sophisticated alternatives to Houdry’s porcelain-rod design. However, all were stymied by the same lead-poisoning issue, which would have forced motorists to change their converters – or at the very least the catalyst within – every year. However, the 1970 Clean Air Act’s requirement that leaded gasoline be eliminated by 1975 suddenly made these designs feasible.

The first company to develop a production catalytic converter was GM, which at the time was not only the world’s largest automaker but also its single largest employer. After assigning over 5,000 workers to the task, including former DuPont chemist Richard Klimisch, GM came up with a pelletized catalytic converter containing hundreds of aluminium-oxide beads coated in platinum and palladium catalysts. While GM had tested dozens of cheaper metals like copper and iron, these were unable to withstand high exhaust temperatures. According to GM promotional material, each converter used less than 1/10 of a troy ounce – around 3 grams – of catalyst, yet was able to reduce tailpipe hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions by over 90%. Furthermore, thanks to modifications made on the combustion end, the new converter-equipped GM models achieved 15% more miles per gallon than their predecessors – proving that Ernest Starkman’s concerns about cleaner cars being less efficient were entirely unfounded. To ensure that drivers didn’t destroy their catalytic converters, 1975 GM models featured a smaller gas-filling port that wouldn’t fit older leaded-gas nozzles.

But while several other companies like AMC and Toyota opted to license GM’s pelletized catalytic converter, the design was soon found to be fundamentally flawed. For one thing, vibration caused the pellets to grind against each other and gradually wear off their catalyst coating, eventually rendering the converter useless. Worse still, carbureted engines tended to swing wildly between lean and rich combustion, resulting in high exhaust temperatures that could melt the catalytic converter. And while GM marketing had boasted that with their design, drivers need only replace the pellets and not the whole converter, in reality drivers were unwilling to pay for this kind of regular maintenance, and GM was forced to look for alternative designs.

Meanwhile, Ford and Chrysler opted for more sophisticated designs developed by 3M, Englehard Industries, and Corning Glass Works. 3M and Englehard had developed a ceramic material made of zirconia and mullite which could be extruded into corrugated sheets and rolled into a cylinder, creating a monolithic honeycomb structure with a huge internal surface area that would not wear down over time like GM’s pelletized converter. Corning’s design, however, was even more sophisticated. Corning had experimented with dozens of methods for producing a strong, stable honeycomb substrate, such as rolling up sheets with glass nibs or ridges to separate them, stacking together circular or triangular tubes, or extruding thin alumina “noodles” into something resembling a bird’s nest. However, all these structures turned out to be too expensive to manufacture or too fragile to stand up to regular road use. It was then that engineer Rodney Bagley hit upon an elegant solution: why not extrude the substrate through a die, creating a tough, monolithic honeycomb with thousands of tiny channels running front-to-back? While simple in concept, implementing this process proved to be a major engineering challenge. If the die wasn’t designed exactly right or the ceramic formulated just so, the tiny channels would immediately collapse after extrusion like, as Bagley put it, “a wet newspaper.” The wrong ceramic would also expand and warp when exposed to the heat of an automobile’s exhaust, causing it to clog up and disintegrate. However, after months of feverish work and 100-hour weeks, Bagley and his colleagues developed a practical extrusion process and a substrate material composed of methylcellulose and synthetic cordierite – a mixture of talc, aluminium silicate, and aluminium oxide. This yielded a stable, solid honeycomb structure with walls as thin as two thousandths of an inch or 0.05 millimetres. On November 9, 1971, the Corning team filed a patent for their design, which was finally granted in February 1974.

But Corning wasn’t out of the woods yet. With the 1975 deadline fast approaching, they would have to build a catalytic converter factory before their converter design was even finalized. It was a huge gamble, but a necessary one. Not only did Corning stand to reap a $100 million windfall in catalytic converter sales if their design reached the market first, but the fate of the American automotive industry now rested in their hands. If they failed, Ford, Chrysler, and other companies would effectively be forced to shut down until an effective catalytic converter could be developed. In the end, the race to the 1975 deadline proved to be a close-run thing. In June 1975, a massive flood severely delayed construction at the factory site in Erwin, New York, while in 1973 the Corning was hit by a triple-whammy of technical issues. Prototype converters kept shaking loose on the test track, problems with the crystal structure of the cordierite substrate caused the honeycombs to warp, and – most worrying of all – the EPA made a disturbing discovery: catalytic converters would combine sulphur contaminants from gasoline with hydrogen and oxygen to form sulphuric acid. As one Corning engineer recalled:

“I had two elements of the agency pitted against each other. The Mobile Source people were basically engineers, and the other side of the coin was represented by the health scientists. The latter group argued that catalytic converters would emit a fine aerosol of sulfuric acid, so that anyone standing alongside a Los Angeles freeway would essentially be inhaling a sulfuric acid mist, which was extremely damaging to health. This was a very tough decision to make. I came down on the side of the catalytic converter, which, in hindsight, seems to have been the right decision.”

Indeed, testing revealed that sulphuric acid emissions were not a major hazard, and the project was pulled back from the brink of failure. The other issues were also eventually worked out, and by the time the 1975 model year rolled around, the Big Four automakers had done the impossible: meeting the EPA’s stringent guidelines in less than five years. It was a spectacular achievement, and one of the greatest feats of industrial research and development in history. As Rodney Bagley later recalled:

“Having a major breakthrough is very rare in any company. In the catalytic converter we had two major breakthroughs: a new process and new materials that didn’t exist before.”

For his historic role in reducing global emissions, in 2002 Bagley, along with his colleagues Irwin Lachlan and Ronald Lewis, were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Yet, despite this triumph, automakers resented the Government meddling in their business and expended considerable effort trying to paint catalytic converters as a useless passing fad. Indeed, Alan Loofbourrow, Vice President of Engineering at Chrysler, called the catalytic converter “the dumbest thing to ever happen to the automobile”, while today it is suspected that the reason GM held on to its problematic pelletized design for so long was to give catalytic converters as a whole a bad name. Other companies found ways of getting around the regulations altogether. For example, since the Clean Air Act mandated catalytic converters for all vehicles under 6,000 pounds, in 1975 Ford introduced a new model to its F-series of pickup trucks that was just slightly heavier than the cutoff. Known as the F-150, it remains the best-selling pickup truck in the United States.

Yet despite this grumbling, the EPA held firm, and by the end of the 1970s catalytic converters became standard equipment on nearly all consumer vehicles. But there was still plenty of work to be done. The first generation of catalytic converters were so-called two-way models, which did nothing to reduce the nitrogen oxides responsible for photochemical smog. The EPA had removed NOx standards from its 1975 requirements to allow manufacturers to focus on reducing carbon dioxide and hydrocarbon emissions, but was due to reintroduce them for the 1976 model year. However, the 1973-74 oil prompted the EPA to extend the deadline to 1978; while in 1977 it extended it again to 1981. This time, it was Englehard Industries of New Jersey who provided the necessary breakthrough. Converting nitrogen oxides to plain nitrogen requires a reduction rather than an oxidation reaction, and Englehard discovered that rhodium, another member of the platinum group of metals, efficiently catalyzed this reaction. Englehard’s first design was a two-stage system, with one converter oxidizing carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons and another reducing nitrogen oxides. This system, however, was bulky, heavy, and expensive, and certain to prove unpopular with auto manufacturers. It was then that Englehard chemists John Mooney and Carl Keith came up with an ingenious solution: adding cerium oxide, which would either release or store oxygen by switching between its CeO₂ and Ce₂O₃ forms. This breakthrough allowed both oxidation and reduction to take place within the same catalytic converter. Introduced in 1973, such three-way converters soon became standard across the automotive industry, and remain in use to this day. In 2001, Keith and Mooney were awarded the prestigious Walter Ahlstrom Engineering Prize for their invention.

Modern three-way converters can remove up to 98% of toxic pollutants from a vehicle’s exhaust and are estimated to have kept some 800 million tons of pollutants out of the atmosphere since the 1970s. While the basic design of catalytic converters has changed relatively little over the last 50 years, they have benefited greatly from other advances in vehicle design such as oxygen sensors and fuel injection systems, which allow engines to run at an optimum stoichiometric ratio – that is, neither too rich or too lean – reducing emissions at the source and allowing catalytic converters to operate at peak efficiency.

Yet despite 50 years of development, problems still remain. For example, catalytic converters must reach a certain temperature to operate efficiently, meaning vehicles tend to emit larger amounts of pollutants in the first few minutes after startup – especially in cold climates. Manufacturers have come up with several solutions to this problem, including placing the converter close to the engine exhaust manifold, adding electrical heaters, or installing a smaller “pre-cat” ahead of the main converter – all of which significantly reduce the converter’s warm-up time and overall emissions. And while lead has been eliminated from gasoline, catalytic converters can still be poisoned by sulphur, phosphorus, and manganese found in gasoline and fuel additives. However, the reduction or elimination of sulphur and phosphorus from most gasoline blends has largely eliminated this problem.

But the biggest problem with catalytic converters is the very materials which make their alchemy possible: the precious metals platinum, palladium, and rhodium. Indeed, these metals were the focus of great controversy surrounding the initial adoption of catalytic converters, for in the 1970s most of the world’s reserves came from the Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa. Today, catalytic converters account for 40% of the world’s demand for platinum, 70% of the demand for palladium, and 80% of the demand for rhodium, with the global automotive industry spending more than $40 billion every year on these metals alone. In recent years, growing demands for emissions control – especially in China – has caused the prices of these metals to skyrocket has caused the price of platinum to skyrocket from $800 an ounce in 1986 to nearly $1,400 today. Similarly, the price of palladium has quintupled to $2,875 an ounce and rhodium to an eye-watering $21,900 an ounce – around 12 times the price of gold. This, in turn, has made catalytic converters a tempting target for petty thieves, with unscrupulous scrap metal dealers paying anywhere from $150 up to $500 for a single unit. In 2022, more than 64,000 catalytic converters were stolen in the United States alone, sticking the vehicles’ owners with repair bills often in excess of $2,000. The most commonly targeted vehicles are those with high wheelbases like pickup trucks and SUVs since they are the easiest for thieves to slip under, though hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius are also popular targets. This is because their engines run less often than regular vehicles, meaning their converters are often in better condition.

As electric vehicles become increasingly popular, demand for catalytic converters – and their theft – may eventually taper off. Until then, however, these ingenious devices will continue to play a vital – if often overlooked – role in keeping our air clear and breathable. So for now, just be careful where you park your car.

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Claim:

A photo posted on social media in late July 2024 authentically showed Britney Spears posing in front of the Eiffel Tower in 2000.

Rating:

On July 26, 2024, an X account posted a photo allegedly showing Britney Spears posing in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, in 2000.

“Britney Spears 24 years ago when she built the city of Paris so they could host the Olympics,” the caption read. The post had amassed more than 2.7 million views as of this writing.

“Today marks 24 years since britney spears built the eiffel tower,” another X account said of the image in January 2024.

Four months later, an Instagram user captioned the picture: “The eiffel tower posing behind britney spears, 2000.”

It was also shared to the /fakehistoryporn subreddit in 2021 in a post that read: “Today marks 21 years since britney spears build the Eiffel Tower.” 

The photo was, in fact, authentic and did show Spears posing in front of the Eiffel Tower in 2000. Therefore, we have rated this claim and picture as “True.”

We found numerous similar snaps on Getty Images of Spears wearing the same outfit and posing in front of the Parisian landmark in 2000 (see screenshot below).

(Getty Images)

The descriptions of Getty’s other images said the photographs showed Spears posing for a promotional photoshoot in Paris for the launch of her album, “Oops… I Did It Again,” in May 2000.

The comical nature of the social media posts at the top of the article appeared to reference a popular meme that humorously claimed Spears designed and built the Eiffel Tower. In August 2020, The Sun newspaper reported on the meme, saying many of her fans seemingly believed she helped design and build the tourist attraction. The meme often featured the in-question image.

Snopes has written numerous articles about Britney Spears. In July 2024, we investigated a photo that allegedly showed Taylor Swift attending a summer camp for underprivileged kids founded by Spears.

In February 2021, we debunked a false rumor that the lyric “my loneliness is killing me,” from Spears’ 1998 hit song “… Baby One More Time,” was an English translation of “ma solitude me tue, j’avoue que je continue de croire” in French author Alexandre Dumas’ novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

Sources

Claim:

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris cannot be president because her parents were not natural-born U.S. citizens, or naturalized citizens, at the time of her birth.

Rating:

Context

The requirements to qualify for the U.S. presidency have nothing to with the citizenship status of one’s parents. The individual must have been born in the United States or born to a parent who is a citizen of the United States.

When U.S. President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate in late July 2024, social media users questioned the latter’s eligibility for the presidency due to her parents being foreign citizens when she was born.

A number of posts on X repeated the claim that because Harris’ parents were not natural born citizens, or naturalized at the time of her birth, she was not qualified to run for president. This was not the first time such claims about Harris had spread online. 

(X user @01Funkytown)

However, the above claims were false. Harris was born in Oakland, California, in 1964. While she is indeed the child of immigrants, their citizenship status does not affect her eligibility for the presidency, according to the U.S. Constitution.

Article II Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states the constitutional requirements for the office of U.S. president:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

According to Merriam-Webster, “natural born” refers to having a specified status at birth, which in this case means the legal status of citizen or subject at birth. In this analysis in the Harvard Law Review, the term “natural born” refers to someone who is a U.S. citizen at birth:

All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born Citizen” has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time. And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that, subject to certain residency requirements on the parents, someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States.

As we have reported before, the requirements for president are simple and have nothing to do with the naturalization status of one’s parents:

• The individual must have been born in the United States or born to a parent who is a citizen of the United States;
• The individual must be 35 years of age or older;
• The individual must have been a resident in the United States for at least 14 years.

We also noted in previous reporting that Harris was born in Oakland, California, on Oct. 20, 1964, making her at least 35 years old and unambiguously a natural-born United States citizen. Any child born on U.S. soil is a citizen of the United States from birth, regardless of the naturalization status of the child’s parents. Harris did spend her high school years in Canada, but has been a resident in the United States since her time as an undergraduate at Howard University that began in 1982, and she has served in public office in the U.S. continuously since the 1990s.

Another claim around her eligibility questioned whether Harris’ mother was a diplomat, making Harris ineligible for U.S. citizenship at the time of her birth. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS):

A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States is not subject to the jurisdiction of United States law. Therefore, that person cannot be considered a U.S. citizen at birth under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This person may, however, be considered a permanent resident at birth and able to receive a Green Card through creation of record.

However, Harris’ Indian mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was not a diplomat when she came to the U.S. She was a student scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, where she met Donald Harris, a Jamaican-born student. Gopalan went on to become a cancer research scientist while Donald Harris became an economics professor, according to a New York Times story on their relationship.

Arguments around the eligibility of presidential candidates often focus on candidates of color. Former U.S. President Barack Obama’s place of birth was repeatedly questioned by his opponents and conspiracy theorists, until he was forced to release his official birth certificate proving he was born in the U.S. state of Hawaii. 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump has also long amplified such “birther” conspiracy theories against Obama and even against Harris when she ran for the vice presidential seat in 2020. 

Sources

Despite all the veneration we often throw Ancient Rome’s way, the truth is the Ancient Romans built their empire on the backs of slaves, with an estimated 35% of the total population of that society in the 1^st century BCE comprised of slaves. So how did slavery start in this civilization and what was it actually like to be a slave in Ancient Rome?

As to the former question, it may or may not come as a surprise to you, but slavery in this region had been around as long as we have documented evidence of anything that happened there. Thus, by the time Rome became a thing it was already firmly established as a societal norm. For example, the 5^th century BCE legal code, The Twelve Tables, had laws relating to slaves and freed slaves. What was a little different in these earliest references, such as in The Twelve Tables is that there was a taboo against slaves taking part in religious rituals such as anointing corpses. This is odd considering that in later years slaves commonly helped high ranking priests with rituals important to the running of the state concerning augury and the Sibylline Books. What was not odd and seemingly pretty much par for the course in slavery the world over is that in The Twelve Tables, slaves often faced a harsher punishment for crimes than free people. For example, if a free person was caught stealing, part of his corporal punishment was flogging, while a slave well… let’s just say they would swiftly after being caught cease to continue breathing.

As for where the Romans got their slaves, these most commonly came from any peoples the Romans were at war with. Unsurprisingly from this, slave numbers ramped up significantly once Rome began their conquering ways. As Rome expanded its empire into Italy, and then out into the Mediterranean and beyond, captured peoples became slaves and were brought to Rome and other provincial cities. Sometimes these prisoners were sold to dealers during the campaign or taken by the soldiers themselves for use in their respective households. As an average Roman who wanted to buy slaves, you went to specific slave dealers depending on your needs. As to this, slave dealers sold slaves in different markets depending on what type of slave you wanted, with hardier ones sold in one area of the city, while domestic individuals sold in others.

All this said, the sale of war prisoners was not the only source of slaves in Rome. There was also a robust slave trade between the Romans and other cultures. This was commonly used to bring in slaves while bypassing certain restrictions. For example, it was illegal in the later empire to castrate slaves. One way around this was to import already castrated slaves from Eastern reaches such as Persian held Armenia. Piracy was also another source of slave stock as pirates commonly kidnapped and sold people, Roman or otherwise, into slavery. It is even known that pirates operated private slave prisons on the Italian peninsula where freeborn kidnapped citizens were held before being sold into slavery.

People could also be born slaves. Regardless of the father’s status, if a slave woman were to bear a child, even by her master, that child by default became her master’s slave. As such, pairing and breeding was encouraged by masters as a natural means to supply their estate with more slaves. It was also known for Romans themselves to enter slavery either within Rome, often after a civil war or the like, or as captives in the hands of an enemy. Abandoned children were also at risk of becoming slaves in the Roman Empire.

As for the legality of it all, legally, slavery was related to death in Roman codes. As far as the law was concerned, you existed in a state like death, and your owner owned you in body and soul, with almost no restrictions, save something like the aforementioned eventual ban on castration. You otherwise had no rights. You could own no property; you could not legally start a family and, again, any children you had belonged to your master. Slaves did sometimes have a limited pool of money to spend from called a peculium, but even though they may have accumulated those funds or possessions themselves in some way, that still technically belonged to their masters. Slaves with high status could even have underslaves who waited on and worked for them and were otherwise at their bidding, but the underslaves were still in effect owned by their master, not the higher-ranking slave.

Beyond this, physically abusing a slave in pretty much any way you please was very common and was usually the go-to response of an agitated master. Sexual gratification with a slave was also an accepted action for slaveowning men, and at times for women, although it was generally frowned upon for a woman to have sexual relations with her slave. In the end, as property, Roman slaves arguably had fewer rights than modern-day pets in many societies, since our pets are protected by some level of law, though of course pets can be castrated… So that’s one win for the Roman slave.,, Yet despite the ethical ramifications from a modern day lens, Romans saw slavery as a normal and regular facet of life. Even lower class individuals potentially owned a slave or two.

This all brings us to what slaves got up to when they weren’t polishing their master’s trophy. It turns out, saying concisely what a typical slaves’ day to day life was like in Ancient Rome is an effort in futility as this could be as diverse as the lives of their masters, save sans any rights to do as they pleased except where their master willed. In the general case, slaves simply helped in production and tasks both in rural and urban areas, but with the majority of slaves being in the countryside.

As for slaves belonging to lower class owners, they were often in charge of extremely diverse tasks from cooking, cleaning, stabling horses, going on deliveries, helping out in their masters’ business, etc., perhaps all on the same day. Even if one of these lower class owner slaves had specialized jobs such as weavers, they usually did more general tasks around the house such as cooking and cleaning. Basically they did whatever their master needed them to in a given moment.

Slaves in more well to-do households, however, tended to be much more specialized. For example, children of the elite generally had Attendant slaves, the title given to a slave whose job it was to do basically anything needed to care for the child, as well as do anything the child asked of them. They opened doors and windows for them, dressed them, fed them, washed them, walked them to school, and were otherwise addressed by their little charges by such fun terms as “boy”.

Beyond this, slaves of the elite could be dedicated maidservants, smiths, masons for repairing structures, ploughmen, shepherds, oil press workers, bakers, barbers, bailiffs, and much more depending on the size and wealth of the estate. There were also occupations that required more advanced training and learning such as treasurers, clerks, secretaries, and doctors. There were even artisanal slaves who worked as gold and silversmiths and pearl setters. A given slave might also be trained as a comic actor… pet child and… even a dwarf. No, really, those last three are found in records. In the end, basically any job a free person could hold, you could also find a slave trained and doing that profession for their master. Just about the only thing that slaves could not do was serve in the military.

There was even “job mobility” if you could call it that. Some slave jobs were meant to be grown out of such as hen keeping and gathering fodder, although older slaves could be assigned those roles later in life. You could also progress from one job to another, such as going from litter-bearer to cook. Some slaves were lucky and were allowed to pursue intellectual tasks, such as Timagenes of Alexandria who eventually became a historian.

It should also be noted that there were hierarchies of slaves, so not all slaves or their jobs were equal. As mentioned before, underslaves existed and served higher ranking slaves, although all involved belonged to one master. On this note, in general, urban slaves had a higher ranking than rural ones. The standing of one’s owner also counted in some ways; slaves belonging to a wealthier or more powerful owner were socially higher than those who belonged to poorer owners. Slaves with higher levels of responsibilities were also typically given more luxurious or spacious accommodations compared to lower ranking ones. Further, as alluded to, slaves could sometimes hold jobs that required great learning, and it is possible, although not thoroughly documented, that there is a career progression in those jobs. There were many such learned positions such as record keepers, tax-stewards, and assistants to priests. This all meant that there was no single class of slaves, there were several.

As you might imagine from this, slave rebellions didn’t tend to include all levels of slaves, as these different levels of slaves often competed and didn’t see themselves as one class of people. Further, some classes were more comfortable in their station than others. Combined with the fact that slave rebellions tended to be put down brutally, they weren’t common. For example, the events of a film you may have watched, Spartacus, started in 73 BCE, was the last major slave revolt for the rest of Rome’s existence. However, there were other ways to resist oppression, and a large-scale slave rebellion was just one form. Running away from your life as a slave was an occasional thing despite being punishable by death. However, some slaves lived such a poor quality of life that the possibility of death was preferable to continued mistreatment. Murder and conspiracy to murder were also not out of the question, and cases were recorded of slaves going postal and killing their masters and their master’s family. Some took, well… more imaginative approaches to resistance. In one case we know of, a slave took revenge on his mistress after she flogged his wife, via said slave then reporting his mistress’ cheating affair to his master. Much like in your soul crushing job, passive resistance was also a common thing, via slaves working as poorly as possible so as to just barely stay within acceptable means. This could mean doing your job slowly or incompetently, lying, and even sabotage; whatever negatively impacted the owner but didn’t result in much pain or consequence for yourself.

As to mistreatment, coercion was a large part of slave life. All were coerced to work for their masters, but some like bailiffs and overseers had the specific role of enforcing that coercion on fellow slaves in place of their masters. Failure to perform could mean demotion at best, physical or emotional harm such as beatings or separation from your “family”, and, in the end, death at worst.

On the flipside, there was a degree of independence depending on your job and position. Urban slaves could even end up working as managers in their owners’ businesses. They could run a bank or shop for their owners. A slave agent was even authorized to buy anything the owner required for their business such as cattle, tools, equipment, real estate, or other slaves. They could run inns, shops, and carry out money lending operations. This sort of agent was very common, and while it wasn’t necessarily just slaves that could be agents, it was common for slaves to be tasked with such. Freed slaves would even sometimes continue this agent work for their former masters after they were freed.

On this note of freed slaves, what happened after slavery? Well, usually death was the only release for the vast majority of slaves. But for some, manumission was possible, with slaves and their former masters then often having a client-patron relationship. In fact, inheritance laws made it so that former masters inherited their freedmen’s possessions if the former slave died without heirs.

Going back to life though, depending on the high status of your patron, you could get a boost in prestige and standing as a freed person from their household. Thus, a freed slave of a poor household held a lot less prestige than a freed slave of, say, the emperor. Depending on your patron, you could leverage that prestige to marry wealthy freed or free women and cement generational wealth for your free born children. Manumission did not always mean freedom from your old job, however. After all, you were trained in that job and may have done it all your life. Thus, as alluded to, many ex-slaves returned to their old jobs, simply now as free people, whether that was as secretaries, or as domestic servants. The difference being, of course, they could now accumulate their own wealth from their efforts, in some cases substantial if their trained trade was a lucrative one. These ultimately wealthy freed individuals sometimes had the airs of the nouveau riche, attempting to live like their masters, including with their own retinue of slaves. It was also possible for slaves to attain Roman citizenship, and even have descendants that achieved equestrian status. This social mobility away from slavery goes to highlight how diverse the slave experience was in Rome.

That said, as slaves made up upwards of 1 in 3 people comprising Rome’s population at any given time, there were rules about freeing one’s slaves. A rush of freed slaves, especially from larger estates which could have many hundreds of slaves could pose a risk to public order after all. As such, laws restricted how many slaves an owner could free upon his death depending on how big his retinue was.

But as for some of these freedmen, one of the elite remembered among them today is the aforementioned Timagenes of Alexandria, a historian and jurist. Originally a slave who was a cook, he was allowed to advance to a position where he could learn to read and write, ultimately becoming a noted historian. Unfortunately, his works did not survive primarily as he got on the wrong side of Augustus during his campaigns in Egypt, as Timagenes was thought to have helped Anthony and Cleopatra in the spat. In the end, he is thought to have been poisoned by Augustus in his home in modern day Albania.

A much more famous former slave was the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, born in 50 CE. Epictetus was a slave to Emperor Nero’s secretary Epaphroditus, himself also a freedman. While still a slave, Epictetus was allowed to study Stoic philosophy with Musonius Rufus, a prominent Stoic. We actually don’t have proof of Epictetus’ manumission, so for all we know he might have also died a slave. Nevertheless, he rose to prominence, teaching things like “Some things are up to us and some are not up to us… The things that are up to us are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; the things that are not up to us are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own… if you think that only what is yours is yours, and that what is not your own is not your own, then no one will ever coerce you… and no one will harm you, because you will not be harmed at all.”

It is easy to see this as the philosophy of a former slave, but this is in line with Stoic thought before Epictetus. Epictetus knew hardship under slavery, for example it’s thought he had some sort of physical disability from Epaphroditus, fascinatingly given he himself was a former slave, purposely breaking Epictetus’ leg, among other apparently brutal beatings.

Naturally, freedom was a theme in Epictetus’ work, but if you are expecting our modern sense of individual, political, or economic freedom, you would be mistaken. Epictetus taught of a spiritual freedom, the kind anyone can attain regardless of their condition. He is an important figure in the survival of Stoic philosophy because his works are some of the only complete texts to come down to us from this era.

In the end, the life of an individual slave in Ancient Rome could vary almost as much as the life of any free individual, with the exception of that the slave’s life was not their own in any way their master did not will. Thus, the world of a slave in Rome, as is the world of a slave in any society, was more often than not, a sad state of affairs. Considered quasi dead by the law, and with practically no protections, slaves were at the mercy of their masters. Sometimes those masters were benevolent and helped their slaves achieve success by affording them opportunities or even ultimately granting them their freedom. But often this was not the case. And, much like my basement dwelling writer monkeys, their day to day lives, and very life itself, was always at the whim of their master, with little hope of any way out, save the sweet release of death.

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