Friday Comic Book Day
In the past I have shown some samples of the Impossible -- But True series featuring TV Detective Roy Raymond debunking outragous claims of supernatural occurances. The first few were done by Dan Barry, but after a while it became Ruben Moreira's regular contribution to Detective Comics. DC has a very good reprint series called Showcase Presents for this sort of thing, but unfortunately they have not yet collecte these (with or without the different but similar Dr. Thirteen series by Leonard Starr). Because Detective Comics is such a protected title it is hard to come by samples, but I have found a couple more.
At the time that “The Man in the Iceberg” was published, the limit to which one might dive in a suit was about 1000 feet. So it seems that Flint said “league” when he meant “inch”.
ReplyDeleteThe exact meaning of “league” varies, but it referred to distances of more than 2 miles. Thus, 10,000 leagues would be something more than 20 thousand miles, which would be more than 2½ times the diameter of the Earth.
(The title of Jules Verne's Vingt mille lieues sous les mers [Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas] refers not to the depth of the craft, but to the distance traveled while submerged.)
A 17th Century mariner would have been more likely to measure the distance to the bottom in fathoms than in leagues. But a fathom would be something more than 5 feet, so 10,000 fathoms would be something on the order of 9½ miles. Such depths are actually reached (and exceeded) in the Marianas Trench, though they would have been unfamiliar in the 17th Century, and no diving suit has yet been made that withstands the associated pressures.
A No Prize worthy explenation!
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