Funeral for a Glacier, Helium's Accidental Discovery, and the Lost Colony

Funeral for a Glacier, Helium's Accidental Discovery, and the Lost Colony

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Episode description

Funeral for a Glacier, Helium’s Accidental Discovery, and the Lost Colony

On 18 August 2019, around a hundred people gathered on a bare Icelandic mountainside to mourn Okjökull, the first glacier in Iceland to lose its official status. The ceremony included a plaque addressed to future generations, asking whether humanity acted on what it knew about climate change. The episode also explores three earlier events from the same date: Pierre Janssen’s 1868 discovery of helium in the sun’s spectrum during a solar eclipse in India, John White’s 1590 return to the deserted Roanoke Colony to find only the word ‘Croatoan’ carved into a post, and Antonio de Nebrija’s 1492 presentation of the first Spanish grammar to Queen Isabella, foreshadowing centuries of imperial expansion. Each story examines how humans mark loss, make accidental discoveries, confront unsolved mysteries, and codify power through language.

Chapters

  • Intro Clara opens with the striking image of a funeral held for Okjökull, a glacier that once covered fifteen and a half square kilometres of Iceland and is now gone.
  • Funeral for a Glacier: Okjökull, 2019 On 18 August 2019, scientists, activists, and Icelandic officials held a memorial ceremony for Okjökull, which lost its glacier status in 2014 after nine hundred years. A plaque was installed addressing future generations, asking whether humanity acted on climate knowledge. Iceland expects to lose all its glaciers by 2200 if current trends continue.
  • Helium’s Accidental Birthday: Pierre Janssen, 1868 During a total solar eclipse in India on 18 August 1868, French astronomer Pierre Janssen identified an unknown yellow spectral line. English astronomer Norman Lockyer named the element helium after the Greek word for sun. It was not found on Earth until 1895, when William Ramsay isolated it from uranium mineral.
  • The Silence at Roanoke: John White, 1590 Governor John White returned to Roanoke Colony on 18 August 1590 after a three-year absence to find the settlement abandoned. The word ‘Croatoan’ was carved into a post, indicating a possible destination, but no cross suggesting distress. White never discovered what happened to the hundred and fifteen colonists, including his daughter and granddaughter Virginia Dare.
  • The First Grammar of Spanish: Antonio de Nebrija, 1492 On 18 August 1492, scholar Antonio de Nebrija presented Queen Isabella of Castile with the first grammar of the Spanish language. He proposed that standardised language would serve as an instrument of empire. Spanish is now spoken by around five hundred million people as a first language across twenty countries.
  • Outro Clara reflects on how history places the enormous and intimate side by side, asking us to hold world-changing events and heartbreaking mysteries in the same moment.

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