{"id":4662,"date":"2014-02-13T20:21:52","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T02:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4662"},"modified":"2021-07-02T21:48:56","modified_gmt":"2021-07-03T02:48:56","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-february-13-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4662","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for February 13, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Frozen Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

In what is quite possibly the most bizarre result of\u00a0global warming\u00a0yet, a melting glacier in the Northern-Italian Alps\u00a0is slowly revealing the corpses\u00a0of soldiers who died in the First World War. After nearly a century, the frozen bodies appear to be\u00a0perfectly mummified from the ice. With the remains\u00a0also comes the story of the highest battle in history\u2014\u2018The White War\u2019.<\/p>\n

The year is May 1915. The newly unified Italy decides to join the Allied Forces in the First World War, which by then is 10 months underway. Italy, eager to expand its borders, decides to wage war against Austria in an effort to annex the mountain areas of Trentino and Southern Tirol. The conflict results in what is now known as \u2018The White War\u2019:\u00a0a cold, four-year-long standoff between Italian mountain troops, named \u2018the Alpini\u2019, and their Austrian opponents, \u2018the Kaisersch\u00fctzen\u2019. The battle was fought at high altitude, with special weapons and infrastructure\u00a0like ice-trenches and cable transports. Often the sides would use mortar fire to try and incur avalanches\u2014\u2018the white death\u2019\u2014on each other\u2019s camps, claiming thousands of lives.<\/p>\n

Now, thanks largely to decades of global warming, the Presena glacier running through the battleground is slowly melting away. And with that melting the remains of the White War are slowly emerging. Remarkably well-kept artifacts have been streaming down with the melting water of the glacier since the early 90s: A love letter dated from 1918, to a certain Maria that was never sent. An ode to an old friend, scribbled down in a diary. A love note picturing a sleeping woman, signed, in Czech, \u201cYour Abandoned Wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, after almost a century, the bodies are following suit. Because of the cold, the remains often surface completely intact, still wrapped in their original uniforms. Last September, two Austrians emerged from the ice, aged 17 and 18, both blue-eyed and blonde\u2014with bullet holes in both of their skulls.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing I thought of were their mothers,\u201d Franco Nicolis from the local Archeological Heritage Office told\u00a0<\/span>the Telegraph<\/em>. \u201cThey feel contemporary. They come out of the ice just as they went in. In all likelihood the soldiers\u2019 mothers never discovered their sons\u2019 fate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The local community has been laboring for years now to reveal the remains of this largely forgotten war. In 2004, Maurizio Vicenzi, a local mountain guide and head of the Peio\u2019s war museum, discovered the bodies of three soldiers hanging upside down from an ice wall at an altitude of 12,000 feet\u2014victims of one the highest front lines\u00a0in history. Multiple findings followed. In one rare find, a team discovered a hidden ice tunnel, that, after being melted open with huge ventilators, turned out to house an enormous wooden structure used as a transportation station for ammunition and supplies<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span>\"unnamed<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\"unnamed\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All bodies that have since emerged pass through the office of Daniel Gaudio, a forensic anthropologist tasked to trace the identities of the war victims. Despite the fact that in most cases he\u2019s able to extract the DNA from the corpses, he rarely succeeds. They’re missing contextual information, he says, that is necessary to\u00a0determine the possible whereabouts of the families of the war victims.<\/p>\n

To date, more than 80 bodies have appeared from the depths of the\u00a0glacier. And more will surely follow. On the Italian side alone more than 750,000 soldiers died in battle, according to historian Mark Thompson, author of\u00a0The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919<\/a>\"\". Next summer, archeological teams will continue their search for more remains of icy melee. And the bodies are certain to keep on coming\u2014climate change looks certain<\/a>\u00a0to continue, even accelerate, the thaw.<\/p>\n

For now, it\u2019s winter. Not far from the place where the soldiers were first discovered lies Peio, a ski resort where Italians, Austrians, Germans and Russians are once again sharing the same mountain. They do so\u00a0more peacefully now.<\/p>\n

Culled from: Motherboard
\n<\/a>Generously submitted by: Bethaney<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Frozen Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In what is quite possibly the most bizarre result of\u00a0global warming\u00a0yet, a melting glacier in the Northern-Italian Alps\u00a0is slowly revealing the corpses\u00a0of soldiers who died in the First World War. After nearly a century, the frozen bodies appear to be\u00a0perfectly mummified from the ice. With the remains\u00a0also comes the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4662"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7643,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662\/revisions\/7643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}