bus 9 for the paradise

Petralona Cave

Petralona Cave was discovered by Filippos Chantzaridis from Petralona, a goat shepherd who heard the sound of water from a hole in the rocks.
In 1959 some men from Petralona went to this place and dug a seven meter deep hole in the search of water. What they found was a cave.

In 1959 Ioannis Petrocheilos, a Greek speleologist, found numerous bones of animals in the cave, many of them covered with cave coral.
One year later a human skull was discovered by Christos Sarijannidis. The skull was hanging at the wall about 30cm above ground, where it was held by sinter.

The skull of an Archanthropus, a transitional type between Homo sapiens and Homo

erectus, was a scientific sensation. The discovery of the Archanthropus, the first one in Greece, showed that this cave was inhabited approximately 700,000 years ago.

This discovery was to make many scientists revise their views concerning the prehistoric inhabitants of Europe.
Researchers estimate that the Archanthropus skull, complete except for the lower jaw making it the oldest European. It is the skull of a man who died aged 32, a ripe old age by the standards of the time.

In the same cave were also found fossilised traces of the oldest fire ever lit by human hand, dated to about 1,000,000 years ago. The ancient hominids of Petralona lived here about a million years ago. They first entered the Petralona cave when the climate began to get colder, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, 1,700,000 years ago. The cave offered them shelter from the cold, as it has a constant temperature of 17ο C.

Visits to the cave & museum

The cave also contained bones from various animals including bear, hyena, rhinoceros, lion, deer, panther, 25 species of bird, 16 species of rodent and 17 species of bat. and other animals, are presented to visitors in the nearby Anthropological museum.

The Petralona Cave and the Antropological Museum are located in Petralona near Nea Moudania, at 300 metres above sea-level on the west foot of Mt. Katsika in Halkidikiand approximately 50 kilometers from Thessaloniki.

Hachi: A Dog's Tale - Official Movie Trailer

Hachikō

In 1924, Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo, took in Hachikō as a pet. During his owner's life, Hachikō greeted him at the end of each day at the nearby Shibuya Station. The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno did not return. The professor had suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage and died, never returning to the train station where Hachikō was waiting. Every day for the next nine years the golden brown Akita waited at Shibuya station.

Hachikō was given away after his master's death, but he routinely escaped, returning again and again to his old home. Eventually, Hachikō apparently realized that Professor Ueno no longer lived at the house. So he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachikō waited for the return of his owner.
The permanent fixture at the train station that was Hachikō attracted the attention of other commuters. Many of the people who frequented the Shibuya train station had seen Hachikō and Professor Ueno together each day. They brought Hachikō treats and food to nourish him during his wait.

This continued for nine years with Hachikō appearing precisely when the train was due at the station.

Publication
That same year, one of Ueno's students (who had become an amateur expert on the Akita breed) saw the dog at the station and followed him to the Kobayashi home (the home of the former gardener of Professor Ueno — Kikuzaboro Kobayashi) where he learned the history of Hachikō's life. Shortly after this meeting, the former student published a documented census of Akitas in Japan. His research found only 30 purebred Akitas remaining, including Hachikō from Shibuya Station.
He returned frequently to visit the dog and over the years published several articles about Hachikō's remarkable loyalty. In 1932 one of these articles, published in Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, threw the dog into the national spotlight. Hachikō became a national sensation. His faithfulness to his master's memory impressed the people of Japan as a spirit of family loyalty all should strive to achieve. Teachers and parents used Hachikō's vigil as an example for children to follow. A well-known Japanese artist rendered a sculpture of the dog, and throughout the country a new awareness of the Akita breed grew.

Eventually, Hachikō's legendary faithfulness became a national symbol of loyalty.
Death
Hachikō died on March 8, 1935, and was found on a street in Shibuya. After decades of rumors, in March 2011 scientists settled the cause of death of Hachiko. The dog had terminal cancer and also a filaria infection (worms). There were also four yakitori sticks in Hachiko's stomach, but the sticks did not damage his stomach or cause his death.
His stuffed and mounted remains are kept at the National Science Museum of Japan in Ueno, Tokyo.

Bronze statues
In April 1934, a bronze statue in his likeness was erected at Shibuya Station , and Hachikō himself was present at its unveiling. The statue was recycled for the war effort during World War II. In 1948 The Society for Recreating the Hachikō Statue commissioner Takeshi Ando, son of the original artist, to make a second statue. When the new statue appeared, a dedication ceremony occurred. The new statue, which was erected in August 1948, still stands and is an extremely popular meeting spot. The station entrance near this statue is named "Hachikō-guchi", meaning "The Hachikō Exit", and is one of Shibuya Station's five exits.

SURVIVE - Andes Plane Crash Movie Trailer - Survival Stay Alive Canniba...

The Andes Accident

On Friday 13th October of 1972, an Uruguayan plane, which was carrying 45 passengers to Chile, most of whom were students and rugby players, crashed in the Andes Mountains.

BEFORE THE ACCIDENT

IN THE PLANE

Twelve of the people died in the crash. The survivors not only had to withstand the hunger and the fearful Mountains, but also 30 degree-below-zero temperatures during the night.

They tried to survive with the scarce food reserves they had until being rescued, but they lost their hope when heard that the search had ceased on the radio.

Desperate owing to the lack of food and physically exhausted, they were forced to feed themselves on their death partners to keep on living.(A meeting was held in the interior of the airplane and, because the meager food supplies had run out and there were neither vegetables nor anything else to eat, they decided to nourish themselves with the corpses of their companions. Canessa took the initiative although some others refused to eat.)

Finally fed up with the extremely low temperatures and the avalanche threats, as well as anguished by the continuos deaths of their partners and the bad rescue prospects, two of them decided to cross the huge mountains to reach Chile.

On 22nd of December of 1972, after being isolated for 72 days, the World found out and knew there were 16 survivors that beat Death in the Andes mountains.

Memories
On the 18th January of 1973, 27 days after the survivors rescue, a patrol made up by many members of the Andinian Help Corps and a Chilean priest, were taken by helicopter to the Fairchild remains. There, few metres away from the plane, they set up camp with the idea of spending there some days. They gathered all the body remains, that were round the Fairchild and the mountain, together.

80 metres away from the plane they found an area, which seemed to be out of avalanche risks and it also had enough land as to dig a grave. They dug a big hole helped with shovels and picks. There they buried the accident victims.
Near the grave they built up a rustic stone altar with an orange iron cross above it, in which lies the inscription:
“EL MUNDO A SUS HERMANOS URUGUAYOS” (the world to its Uruguayan brothers) on one side and “CERCA, OH DIOS DE TI” (close, oh God, to you) on the other.

In the end, the priest celebrated Mass and said a sermon to the people present. Later the Andinists went back to the Fairchild remains, sprayed it with gasoline and set it on fire. They decided that their work had finished, and encouraged by the threatening noise of the avalanches they agreed to live the place.

THE SURVIVORS