Original Hardy Boys E-Books

Here is something that home schoolers and those just interested in a bit of nostalgia might enjoy.  One of my sons stumbled across a site that has e-books of the original Hardy Boys books that have gone into the public domain in Canada (plus lots of other books). These are the original versions which started to be published in the 1920s and through the '30s, '40s, and into the 1950s before the publisher went back and edited and changed the stories, coming out with the blue spine copies that most of us are probably familiar with. I've read quite a few of these original stories: some are very similar to the blue spine versions; but others are very different stories. For instance, the original of The Disappearing Floor is a wholly different story, as is The Secret Of The Caves and The Missing Chums. Others have similar elements, but have been greatly changed such as Hunting For Hidden Gold and The Mystery of Cabin Island.

I believe the rewriting of the books in the 1950s wasn't just to update some of the technology and settings, but to also make the books align better with the prevailing attitudes of what books for children should be like, similar to the changes we saw as a result of the adoption of the Comic Codes Authority. While the Hardy Boys in the original books sometimes carried revolvers (and even used them on occasion, although never to kill a person) the updated versions have removed any such references. The original Hardy Boys were also a bit more rambunctious, had little respect for the Bayport police force, and were not above practical jokes and funny jibes. 

Project Gutenberg also has some of the books available.  

Weekend Reading #77

Some longer or more involved reading:

•  Jon Low has posted his mid-month Defensive Pistolcraft newsletter. A few points I found especially notable:

    First, Jon has some comments regarding an article I had linked to about trigger control, which I will repeat in full (the original in regular type and Jon's comments in italics):

     ". . . I don’t think exact digit placement matters so long as you can pull the trigger straight back with each shot."  

[I disagree.  Consistency is accuracy.  The center of the trigger should be in the center of your fingerprint.  Everyone has a whorl, loop, or arch fingerprint on the pad of their trigger finger.  The center of the trigger should be on the center of your fingerprint.  If your trigger is not in the correct position for this to allow you to press the trigger straight to the rear, get a gunsmith to move the trigger for you.  Yes, as a matter of fact, a competent gunsmith can move the trigger on any pistol.  (Moving the trigger position on 1911's is especially easy by replacing the trigger.)  
-- Jon Low ]   

I think there is a bit more nuance to this issue. It has long been recognized that while the center of the pad works the best for firearms with a lighter trigger, the distal crease (i.e., the crease at the first joint of the finger closest to the tip) is best for heavy trigger pulls such as you will get when shooting double action. Massad Ayoob calls this the "power crease". This is why I prefer a smooth trigger face on double-action triggers. 

    A second item that stuck out to me were some comments Jon had quoted from Gabe Suarez about striking versus takedown/ground fighting in a street fight. Suarez's comments were in response to a piece from Pete Blair at Tactical Science arguing that police should use take downs because they present better to witnesses or a jury; and Suarez taking the position that in fights on the street, take downs are too dangerous because of the environment or the possibility of the suspect stabbing or cutting you while you are tied up with him on the ground. Jon agreed with Suarez, writing: "I agree with Gabe.  Don't grapple.  You will pick up all kinds of nasty diseases, fleas, lice, feces, urine, and such.  They will bite you.  They will scratch you.  (Yes, it happened to me when I was working in the hospital emergency rooms.)  Strike and twist to disengage.  Separate and weaponize." I've been told and read the same from other sources as well. Leaving out the chance of your opponent having a weapon, the street or sidewalk or parking lot is not the same as the practice mats at a dojo: a street fight presents a hard surface with curbs, rocks and other debris (possibly broken glass or other debris that will cut), with only the Lord knows what else. And if you assailant has buddies, going to the ground leaves you at risk of being kicked or stomped by them. 

    Third, Jon links to a short video that I think is important for everyone, but especially for women, older men, and boys, on fighting against someone that has you in a grip (for instance, grabbing your jacket or shirt or grabbing one of your arms). Jon summarizes and comments:

     Don't fight the grip, fight the face [gouge eyes, finger through the ears into the brain (Oh yes, your finger is long enough to reach his brain, if you are a petite woman your fingers are thin enough to get through his ear canal.  And if you've got long sharp glued on finger nails, well . . .  Can't imagine yourself doing that to a human?  Well, I can assure you that he can imagine raping and sodomizing you, and will.  So decide.), or cup your hands and clap over his ears to break his ear drums with air pressure].  Don't wait for him to hit you.  Strike first.   

    Finally, Jon comments about a video Massad Ayoob recently posted about speeding up your pistol reloads, where Ayoob recommended using the slide release instead of pulling back on the slide (the sling-shot method) to release the slide. Jon raises a good point:

     I disagree.  The reason you MUST rack the slide instead of hitting the slide stop, is because the slide might not be locked back.  You must always use techniques that work in all conditions, not just the pristine conditions of your air conditioned indoor range.   

I can affirm Jon's reasoning, albeit from a slightly different factual pattern. I had been invited by a friend to go to a shooting match and, since I didn't have a handgun suitable for such matches at the time, my friend let me use a 1911-style 9mm he had. Up to that point, I generally used the slide release; but the problem I quickly discovered when I did my first reload was that I couldn't quite reach the slide release with my thumb, so I had to resort to the sling shot method (and thank goodness I had enough experience I could make the shift smoothly and quickly). I think the advantage of doing it the same way each time outweighs the marginal time savings from using the slide release--especially if you find yourself, like me, under time constraints and suddenly discovering that using the slide release is not a viable option. 

    Jon has a lot more, so be sure to check the whole thing out.

• It's the weekend, so that means that Greg Ellifritz has another Active Response Training Weekend Knowledge Dump.  Lots of good stuff this week, so it has been hard to pare it down to a handful that particularly stick out. But here goes:
• I've grown to like some of the African hunting stories, but Greg links to one that is a bit unusual: an African hunting guide that used a MAC-10 submachine gun to deal with a large troop of baboons that had killed a village child and otherwise become a dangerous nuisance. 
• An article with good advice for concealed carry shooters entitled "Top 6 Things Every Concealed Carry Holder Should Know." Because there is much more to concealed carry than just knowing how to draw and shoot your handgun.
• But you need to be able to shoot accurately when it comes down to it as the tale of the mad dog illustrates. 
• A detailed article on getting appendix carry to work for men (or women, for that matter) with big bellies. 
• A good article explaining the difference between competition shooting and tactical/combat training. Key bit: "Tactical training isn't trying to win a match. It's trying to solve a lethal-force problem while minimizing unnecessary risk to yourself and others. A doorway on a competition stage is simply part of the course design. A doorway in a hostile structure may be a fatal funnel requiring an entirely different solution." However, if you don't care about winning a competition, you can approach it from a more combat oriented perspective.
• A detailed article from Swift Silent Deadly on putting together a more realistic bug-out bag. 
• A piece from Off Grid on the many uses for a triangular bandage. 

• And now for something completely different: "How Did the Tesla Roadster Fly? Here’s How It Works"--Motor Trend. From the lede:

The most staggering technology introduced on the new Tesla Roadster is a propulsion system pulled directly from SpaceX—the rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company also owned by Elon Musk. In the Roadster shown at the event, four metal nozzles sit just above the rear bumper and look for all the world like the exhaust tips on your standard supercar (think C8 Corvette but spread farther apart). But this is an EV, so those pipes are not venting exhaust gases, but high-pressure air, primarily nitrogen, that’s stored in a massive black spherical tank that sits behind the roadster’s two front seats. The ball is a composite-overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV), and it’s connected by two pipes that feed the four nozzles, which function as cold gas thrusters (CGT).

• "Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter Is The Archetype The Right Must Embrace To Counter Left Wing Nihilism And Degeneracy"--Fandom Pulse. Not the character presented in the Disney movie, of course, but from Burroughs' novels. An excerpt:

    John Carter is a chivalric ideal, a man who embodies all the masculine virtues in their perfect Aristotelian mean—or at least comes close to it. He embodies duty but not weakness. He embodies strength but not cruelty. He embodies adventure but not recklessness. To put it bluntly, John Carter is a masculine hero in the truest sense of those words.

    He’s a man who knows what he wants and takes after it with every ounce of his being. He does not shirk from battle; in fact, he’s a fighting man. Battle is in his blood, and he’s called to it as his vocation. He’s a leader of men, at all times honorable and fair. He’s the kind of man who can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. You’d rather have no one else by your side and rather anyone else against you. John Carter embodies the archetype of the king, which I would argue is completely lost on the world today. 

    When was the last time you saw a man portrayed so favorably on television? When was the last time you saw a man like John Carter?

    Because I can tell you this, it certainly wasn’t in the John Carter movie.

    Now I don’t want to rag too harshly on this movie as he does still become the hero. But it does illustrate the trend media took over the 20th century. Our culture swung from strong men being strong men, to weak men becoming strong men, and finally to weak men being weak men. You can see this everywhere, even in Peter Jackson’s acclaimed Lord of the Rings movies. Aragorn is not a reluctant hero in the books. He doesn’t second guess himself. But for some reason, such a thing was incomprehensible to audiences (or rather Hollywood writers) in 2001. And it has only gotten far worse from there.

    You can visibly detect how masculinity has been increasingly portrayed more tragically as time goes on. When men are not outright evil, they’re to be demeaned as the fundamentally lesser of the two sexes. It is always the man who is less capable, less aware, less actualized. If the man is loving, he must also be bumbling and weak. 

[snip]

    Dissident literature, if it is to stand against Leftwing art, it must be uplifting to the soul—and especially to this masculine spirit. The heroic must awaken in men again. And while this does not mean all men are called to be warriors, all men are called to be as virtuous as John Carter, and as a man, to live life with that same vitality in whichever vocation he is called to. 

Read the whole thing. 

Dumb Firearm Training

In "Dumbest Ways We Train with Firearms," Richard Mann has some cutting remarks about popular drills and procedures. For instance, about the immediate action drills to clear stoppages, Mann writes: "I’m sorry, but if you’re in a gunfight and your pistol stops working, the most likely cause is that it is out of ammo. The standard immediate action of, tap, rack, and ready, will not sort this problem." 

A more practical approach to dealing with a pistol that will not go bang—while you are in the middle of shooting at something to save your life—is not to conduct some sort of action that requires you to determine the precise cause of the failure. Just reload the pistol. And by reloading the pistol I mean, eject the magazine that is in it, insert a new magazine, and fully rack the slide. If the pistol is out of ammo, this will fix it. If it has a stoppage, this will most likely correct it. If it is a type-3 stoppage, you will likely have to pull the magazine from the handgun, but you’ll realize that when it does not eject.

He also has some harsh words about scanning after shooting a target.  

The Great Replacement: Funded By Your Tax Dollars

Funded by your tax dollars going to liberal religious institutions. From the New York Post: "Two Christian groups were paid $62M to resettle tens of thousands of Somalis in Minnesota." The article relates:

    Two church non-profits have taken in at least $62 million to build the Somali community in Minnesota — leading to the rise of Ilhan Omar and the fraud scandals that have gripped that state, The Post can reveal.

    Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services were at the forefront of reshaping the frigid Land of 10,000 Lakes thanks to generous government contracts stemming back generations.

    “This is a very big pile of government money and a whole bunch of different groups have come to get their own slice of it,” Parker Thayer, an immigration expert at the Washington, DC-based Capital Research Center, told The Post.

    He added the total money pouring into Minneapolis resettlement programs alone is “in the hundreds of millions.”

    He noted that since 2021, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the body overseeing Catholic Charities, has received $140 million in migrant resettlement contracts from the federal government.   

[snip]

    The two church groups have resettled an estimated 29,000 Somalians into Minnesota since 1993, collecting a reported $2,500 per refugee to cover costs like food, initial housing and social workers.

    The population today is over 100,000 in Minnesota according to data, thanks to chain migration (also known as “family reunification”) and the state’s generous welfare system, which became a magnet for Somalis, including those initially placed elsewhere in the US.

    “They picked Minnesota because it had extremely generous state social safety net policies and welfare programs, which of course made resettling refugees there easier,” Thayer said. “Refugees from Somalia then moved to Minnesota after they were resettled elsewhere, in places like South Dakota.

The article includes some history of Minnesota being a dumping ground, noting that after WWII many refugees were resettled into Minnesota; and, later, the Hmong of Vietnam--who had assisted the CIA in the Vietnam war--were also resettled in Minnesota. It makes you wonder if the Somali groups being resettled now were, similar to the Hmong, also those groups which worked with the CIA.

Related:

• "Ilhan Omar Was 37 When She Entered Congress. Soon, She Became 36"--PJ Media. 
• "Why does an American state have Somali gangs?"--Washington Examiner.
• "Yes, Somali Immigrants Commit More Crime Than Natives"--City Journal. 

The SPLC And Debanking: Then And Now

On August 15, 2024, the Southern Poverty Law Center called "debanking" a "conspiracy theory". The SPLC's assertions did not age well. As reported by Yahoo! Finance: 

    The Comptroller of the Currency says the nation's nine largest banks denied financial services to customers based on their political, religious, or social beliefs, according to a regulatory review released Wednesday. 

 [snip]

    The federal banking watchdog determined that the banks' sweeping internal guidelines lacked objective, risk-based criteria, effectively shutting out legitimate customers and businesses based on ideological leanings rather than financial risk.

    The OCC said its findings reveal a systematic effort within the banking sector to restrict access for politically sensitive industries through both public and nonpublic policies.

    Federal regulators found that lenders restricted certain sectors' access to financial services, including oil and gas exploration; coal mining; firearms or ammunition manufacturing or distribution; construction or operation of detention facilities; and the manufacturing, distribution or online retail of tobacco or e-cigarettes.  

It is notable that, per this Life News article, the SPLC is indirectly implicated in "debanking" as at least some of the banking institutions relied on SPLC materials to discriminate against certain businesses. From the article:

    JPMorgan Chase’s WePay closed the account of a religious organization after it was designated an “extremist hate group” by the SPLC; internal notes described it as a “right wing religious conservative non profit with strong anti LGBTQ rhetoric.” WePay also closed an account used by a devout Christian to fund a legal challenge to anti-discrimination laws.

    PNC denied a line of credit to a media company in part because an owner funded Christian conservative groups the SPLC had labeled hate groups. Wells Fargo pressured a payment processor to end service to a religious nonprofit over its views on same-sex marriage.

    These actions followed the circulation of a report titled “Bankrolling Bigotry: An Overview of the Online Funding Strategies of American Hate Groups.” The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network emailed it to leaders at major banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank.

    Drawing on Southern Poverty Law Center designations, the report falsely listed pro-life and Christian organizations—Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel, the Family Research Council, the Ruth Institute, and the American College of Pediatricians—alongside white nationalist, white supremacist, and Holocaust denial groups. It urged platforms to restrict their access and recommended that Congress consider stripping them of tax-exempt status. 

And from a New York Post article about the OCC findings:

Banks regularly used hate group designations from the Southern Poverty Law Center to debank customers. The SPLC was indicted in April on federal fraud and money-laundering charges, with prosecutors alleging it defrauded donors of millions of dollars. FBI Director Kash Patel has described the non-profit as a “partisan smear machine.” 

Idaho's Proposition 1

The big political fight in Idaho's upcoming election will be Proposition 1 which will largely nullify Idaho's restrictions on abortion-on-demand. Idaho currently makes it a crime for a person (i.e., a doctor or other abortionist) to perform or attempt to perform an abortion except (i) during the first trimester of a pregnancy; or (ii) to prevent the death of the pregnant woman. The act does not make it illegal for a woman to obtain an abortion, however, which means she is free to go to another state. So really, all it makes illegal are abortions in the second and third trimesters except when to prevent the death of a pregnant woman.

    But this law has really pissed off liberal white women, particularly those who don't want a handicapped child or child with medical problems. For instance, this article at The 19th relates the following about one supporter of Proposition 1, Lisa Wirsching:

    On some days, it seems as if the campaign to overturn Idaho’s abortion ban has taken over Wirsching’s life. But just a year ago, this grandmother living outside of Boise would hardly have called herself a political woman. She supported abortion rights, she said, and mourned the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Still, she never thought the issue could shape her own life so intimately. 

    That changed when her youngest daughter, Abby Nichols, was pregnant with her first child.

    Near the end of her first trimester, Nichols learned her fetus had trisomy 18, a genetic anomaly that stunts development. Only 10 percent of babies born with the condition survive to their first birthday. When Nichols decided to end her pregnancy — which she felt would spare needless suffering — she couldn’t get help in Idaho. After contacting medical providers in Colorado and Washington, she finally found an appointment in Seattle. 

Note well, however, that Nichols learned about the condition in the first trimester and could have at that point obtained an abortion in Idaho. It's not clear from the article why she couldn't get help in Idaho--whether she waited too long to make a decision, her doctor refused to perform the abortion, or she wanted to keep the baby but her mother convinced her to have an abortion. 

    The article from The 19th suggests that this is wholly a homegrown effort, although it goes on to note that supporters of the proposition had received a $250,000 donation from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; and a few days ago the local Public Radio station reported that "[s]ince Sept. 1, Idahoans United for Women and Families has brought in nearly $2.5 million to support Proposition 1, according to state campaign finance records." That may not seem much for most states, but for a state with as small a population as Idaho, that is a lot of money. 

    But as with most things that are supported by liberals, the image they try to create are at odds with what they are actually pushing. You can read the text of Proposition 1 here, but a few points:

• It goes well beyond abortion and impacts all aspects of health care for women related to contraception, fertility treatment, prenatal and pregnancy care, childbirth, etc.  
• It creates a right of privacy which would extend to minors seeking care, meaning that parents could be left in the dark about any pregnancy care or abortion services provided to their children.
• Its definition of "reproductive health care" could probably be stretched to include transitioning children to a different sex.
• It allows abortion up to the point of "fetal viability" which is defined as the point when the physician determines that "the fetus has a significant likelihood of sustained survival outside of
  the uterus without extraordinary medical measures." What are "extraordinary medical measures"? It isn't defined, but my guess is that anything requiring serious NICU care would qualify. 

So, under Proposition 1, healthy babies could be aborted up to about 25 or 26 weeks (i.e., almost all of the way through the second trimester which ends at 27 weeks) and babies with severe medical issues potentially longer, perhaps even up to birth. 

    In other words, although the Left is framing the debate around women supposedly unable to get an abortion to deal with a medical emergency, the intent of the bill is to allow unrestricted abortion up to the beginning of the third trimester; and to keep knowledge of teen pregnancies from parents. 

Ruger Guts Its Revolver Line

In addition to one or two models discontinued earlier this year, Ruger has announced it is discontinuing immediately or after the beginning of the new year an additional 19 models. Unfortunately, it sounds as though Ruger is gutting its revolver line up, with the video mentioning that Ruger is immediately discontinuing production of its LCR, SP101, GP100 and Bearcat revolvers; and, after the end of its 2026 production runs, discontinuing the Redhawk, Super Redhawk, Blackhawk, Super Blackhawk, Single-Series revolvers, and Vaquero revolvers. At that point, I believe that the only revolvers left in its line up will be the Wrangler and Super Wrangler revolvers. 

Ruger is also discontinuing some of its upper-end sporting rifles (the No. 1, 77-Series rifles, Hawkeye and Ruger Precision Rifle) and pistol caliber carbines.  

• See also "Ruger to Discontinue Several Major Models"--American Rifleman.

 As the cited article notes:

With this shift, Ruger's handgun product lines continuing into 2027 will consist of the company's LCP offerings, RXM, MAX-9, Security-380, Security-9, Ruger 5.7, Mark IV and 22 Charger. In its revolver line, Ruger will continue making its affordable Wrangler and Super Wrangler models. For rifles, remaining Ruger offerings will consist of the company's American Rifle and American Rimfire line, as well as the Ruger Precision Rimfire, Harrier, 10/22 and Mini-14 models. 

As for a reason, the Company indicates:

"These decisions reflect our review of consumer demand, evolving market preferences, manufacturing complexity and the long-term profitability of each product family," Clary said. "The goal is to focus our resources on the products consumers want most today while creating capacity for future product development and manufacturing modernization."

The producer/host of the video, below, floats the idea that most of the products--particularly the revolvers--take skilled workers that just might not be around anymore. Another issue might be declining sales, not helped by the fact that Ruger revolvers have become as expensive as offerings from other major players like S&W and Colt. And when you look at what remains in their lineup, it is primarily the budget and mid-price range offerings. If the Mini-14 had not seen a surge in popularity recently, I wonder if it would have been facing the chopping block as well. 

VIDEO: "Ruger Discontinues / Suspends Production of 20 Different Models..."
The Turkey's Opinion (10 min.)

Distance and Reaction Time

You all have heard of the Tueller drill. It presupposes an attacker armed with a knife rushing a defender with a holstered handgun. Through the drill, it was determined that the shortest distance the average police officer could draw his handgun and fire on the attacker was if the attacker was 21 feet. But what about shorter distances? 

    In "Understanding the distancing and reaction time continuum" by Brian K. LaMaster at Buckeye Firearms Association, the author notes that most attackers will probably be initiating an attack at 10 feet or less. "On the average," he relates, "reaction times can vary from .4 seconds to .8 seconds. This means you have very little time to perceive their movement and react to it. Alright, you have about three-fourths of a second to react to someone who is moving towards you at ten feet away. If your reaction time is one half to three-fourths of a second, that leaves you with little or no time to react!"

    Unfortunately, the author continues, lateral movement does not create as much additional space (and time) as you might think. He conducted some tests, the gist of which is that at distances closer than 21-feet, even when attempting to create space, the defender was generally able to react fast enough to draw his handgun. For instance, moving the attacker to a 10 foot distance from the defender:

... The attacker made the first move and within one second the attacker was on the victim and had cut him at least once. After that, we had the defender move laterally by sidestepping. About one-half second into the attacker's movement the defender started his lateral movement. On the average, the defender was only able to cover about four feet of ground. Moving laterally does not created distance away from the attacker fast enough in order to survive especially when using the sidestepping method of footwork. In some instances the defender drew their gun only after being cut multiple times by the attacker.

A more experienced gunman did better, able to get off at least one shot even with the attacker at 5-feet. This was because:

When moving laterally the defender used cross-stepping method of footwork which kept the defender ahead of the attacker and out of reach for the most part. The defender was able to create about ten feet of ground before finally getting cut. I might ad that for the most part the defender only received cuts on his free side arm since he was drawing and shooting one handed! All of this happened in just a little over one and one-half seconds and it took that long only because the defender was able to create so much distance by cross-stepping.

Also, the experienced attacker was familiar with pre-attack indicators which gave him an edge. 

    At 5-feet starting distance, none of the inexperienced defenders could even get their gun out and the experienced gunman could not get a shot off. The foregoing was in normal lighting conditions. In dim light, even if a handgun could be drawn, the defenders were not able to hit their target.

    What the experiments did show, however, is that if the defender resorted to unarmed combatives first in order to give them time to create distance, and then to drawing their firearm, they did much better. 

In short, responding with unarmed combatives [to a knife wielding attacker] will keep you in the fight longer than by going straight for your gun. Going straight for your gun most of the time is not going to be a wise idea. And, if you move laterally or other directions with a step-n-drag method of footwork, you will not create enough distance to survive!

Related: But what about someone armed with a firearm? "Get to cover? A requiem for common sense." by Aaron Cowan. A good discussion of what is or is not cover (along with illustrations) with an emphases on what cover is offered by different parts of a vehicle.

House Dems Announce How They Will Screw Us Over If They Win

From the AP: "House Democrats plan a first 100-days agenda if they sweep to power in midterm elections." Per the article:

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is in line to become House speaker if the party wins power, said the Democrats will be united “right out of the gate” on reinstating Affordable Care Act tax breaks [i.e., effectively subsidies for health insurers], reversing Republican Medicaid cuts [i.e., taxpayer funded health care for illegals], holding votes against the Iran war [i.e., posturing for the press] and undoing President Donald Trump’s tariff regime [i.e., helping out China and making it cheaper to ship jobs overseas]. 

Point Nemo

An interesting piece at Atlas Obscura entitled "The Most Remote Place on Earth Has Space Junk and a Sea Monster." The most remote place--i.e., the farthest point from any dry land--is called Point Nemo and is located in the South Pacific at 48°52.6’S 123°23.6’W. Because it is so remote, it became a favorite place for Russia and a few other countries to use as a crash site for decommissioned satellites and such, including the Russian Mir space station. Thus, the reference to space junk in the title. 

    And the sea monster reference? That has to do with Cthulhu and the fictional sunken city of R’lyeh. From the article:

    Decades before Point Nemo was named, and before satellites started raining down, H.P. Lovecraft used these lonely waters as the setting for R’lyeh, a “nightmare corpse city (…) built in measureless eons beyond history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars”.

    In The Call of Cthulhu (1928), R’lyeh is described as “a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror … loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours”.

    The sunken city is the prison of the giant monster Cthulhu, part octopus, part human, part dragon: “There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults”. His followers pray for his regeneration, repeating the phrase: Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn (“In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”).

    Remarkably, Lovecraft placed his lost city at 47°9′S 126°43′W, just 205 miles (330 km) away from Point Nemo. August Derleth, co-creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, placed Rlyeh at 49°51′S 128°34′W, also in the general neighborhood. Clearly, both were looking for the furthest place from land, but without the benefit of modern satellites and computing.