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10A Friday, December 14, 2018
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com
HEALTH/SCIENCE
Scientists scour WWI shipwreck to solve mystery
Associated Press
The USS San Diego is shown Jan. 28,1915, while serving as flagship of the Pacific Fleet. Her name had been
changed from California in September 1914.
BY CHRISTINA LARSON
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A hundred
years ago, a mysterious explosion
hit the only major U.S. warship to
sink during World War I. Now the
Navy believes it has the answer to
what doomed the USS San Diego:
An underwater mine set by a Ger
man submarine cruising in waters
just miles from New York City.
That’s the conclusion of an
investigation by scientists, archae
ologists and historians convened
by the U.S. Naval History and Heri
tage Command. Last summer, the
researchers sent an unmanned
underwater vessel to inspect the
site off New York’s Long Island.
Their analysis ruled out a torpedo
and sabotage, two other possible
scenarios.
The San Diego was sailing to
New York on July 19, 1918, when
an external explosion near the
engine room shook the armored
cruiser. Water rushed into the hull.
Within minutes, the 500-foot war
ship began to capsize. Weighed
down with 2,900 tons of coal for a
planned voyage across the Atlantic
Ocean, the vessel sank in less than a
half hour. Six crew members died.
“The explosion felt like a dull
heavy thud,” Capt. Harley Hanni
bal Christy, commander of the USS
San Diego, wrote in a naval inquiry
commissioned shortly after the
warship sank. He had been stand
ing on the bridge of the ship, on a
clear day with light winds.
German naval records recov
ered after the war revealed that
U-boat 156 had sailed just off
the coast of New York, planting
explosives.
“We believe that U-156 sunk San
Diego,” said Alexis Catsambis, an
underwater archaeologist with
the Navy. He presented the find
ings this week in Washington at the
annual meeting of the American
Geophysical Union.
Today, the shipwreck of San
Diego is a rusting but well-pre
served sanctuary for fish and
lobsters. The researchers used
information from the underwater
vessel to create high-resolution 3D
maps of the wreck. They modeled
impact and flooding scenarios to
analyze how the ship might have
been attacked.
The flooding patterns weren’t
consistent with an explosion set
inside the vessel. And the hole
didn’t look like a torpedo strike.
“Torpedoes of the time carried
more explosives than mines — and
would have shown more immedi
ate damage,” said Arthur Trem-
banis, at University of Delaware
marine scientist who collaborated
on the study.
The mine was anchored at opti
mal depth to tear open a warship,
said Ken Nahshon, a research
engineer at the Naval Surface War
fare Center in Maryland, who also
assisted the investigation.
The underwater explosive hit an
unguarded lower part of the ship,
where the hull was only about a
half inch thick, said Nahshon. Had
it struck the warship’s armored
band, the 5-inch thick steel plating
would have minimized the impact.
After the blast, the commander
directed the ship’s gunners to “open
fire on anything resembling a peri
scope.” Between 30 and 40 rounds
were fired, in case an enemy subma
rine was nearby. The captain was
aware German U-boats may have
been operating in the area. As the
ship began to sink, Christy ordered
the crew to pile into life rafts and
dinghies. A passing whaleboat and
two steamships helped rescue most
of the San Diego’s 1,100 sailors.
On Christmas Eve, Santa delivers a few extra heart attacks
LUIS SINCO I Tribune News Service
Parents and their children line up for photos with Santa
Claus at Santa Monica Place in Santa Monica, Calif., on Nov.
BY KAREN KAPLAN
Tribune News Service
If you think of the night
before Christmas as a time
for hot cocoa, cozy fires
and Bing Crosby albums, a
new discovery by Swedish
researchers may well break
your heart:
The risk of suffering a
heart attack spikes on Christ
mas Eve.
That finding is based on
a comprehensive database
of hospital statistics that
includes 283,014 cases of
heart attacks over a period of
16 years. It was published this
week in the BMJ (formerly
the British Medical Journal).
The study would appear
to put Christmas Eve in the
same category as earth
quakes, hurricanes, stock
market crashes, wars and
high-stakes World Cup soccer
matches — after all of these
events, scientists have docu
mented that heart attacks are
more likely to occur.
27, 2015.
On Dec. 24, the risk of a
heart attack is 37 percent
higher than normal, the
researchers found. On Christ
mas itself, the increase in
risk dips to 29 percent. Even
on Boxing Day, it’s still 21 per
cent above normal levels.
For the sake of compari
son, Mondays are known to
be a time of increased heart
attack risk. But in Sweden,
the risk was only about 10
percent higher on the first
day of the workweek.
The BMJ study isn’t the
first to report an association
between the holiday season
and myocardial mayhem. A
2004 paper in the journal Cir
culation, for example, found
that deaths due to all kinds
of heart disease were higher
in the U.S. on both Christmas
and New Year’s Day.
Previous studies were
based on information from
death certificates, ambu
lance records and other kinds
of health data. They weren’t
able to say when, exactly, a
patient’s heart attack began.
A team led by Moman A.
Mohammad of Lund Univer
sity’s Department of Cardi
ology set out to fill that gap.
They relied on a nationwide
registry known as SWEDE-
HEART (short for Swedish
Web System for Enhance
ment and Development of
Evidence-Based Care in
Heart Disease Evaluated
According to Recommended
Therapies).
The registry includes “all
patients with symptoms of
an acute coronary syndrome
admitted to a coronary care
unit or other specialised
facility in Sweden,” the study
authors explained. Each
patient’s records indicate
when his or her symptoms
began, down “to the nearest
minute.”
To examine heart attack
risk on Christmas Eve, the
researchers tallied the num
ber of myocardial infarc
tions (the medical term for
a heart attack) on every Dec.
24 between 1998 and 2013,
as well as for the two weeks
before and after the holiday,
to provide a baseline. On
average, Swedes suffered
50.3 heart attacks per day
during the baseline period,
and 69.1 per day on Dec. 24.
With a little math, they
determined that the risk of a
heart attack was 37 percent
higher on Christmas Eve.
They were even able to pin
point the hour of maximum
risk: 10 p.m.
The team repeated the
analysis with a range of
other holidays. In addition
to Christmas Eve, Christ
mas Day and Boxing Day,
they found a significantly
elevated risk on New Year’s
Day (by 20 percent) but not
on New Year’s Eve, Eas
ter or Good Friday. (Heart
attack risk was 12 percent
higher on Midsummer, a
Swedish holiday on the eve
of the summer solstice that is
celebrated with food, drink,
song and maypole dancing.)
The researchers also
checked to see whether
Swedes experienced more
heart attacks during the
Olympics or major soccer
tournaments, like the FIFA
World Cup. They didn’t.
Mohammad and his co
authors said they didn’t
know why people would be
more prone to heart attacks
on Christmas Eve. Previ
ous studies have linked
“acute experiences of anger,
anxiety, sadness, grief, and
stress” with an elevated risk.
Of these, the team wrote that
stress is the emotion most
likely to come into play on
Christmas Eve.
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