No.2: The Hole in the Pole (Tales of the interconnected)
When Sir Edmund Haley, discoverer of the eponymous Comet, proposed to the Royal Society of London in 1692 the notion of an Hollow Earth, he opened (I believe this to be the appropriate modern day vernacular) a Whole Big Can of Worms.
For his announcement founded a string of such Theories, culminating in those, widely popularised, of American trader John Cleves Symmes after the war of 1812. 'I declare the earth is hollow,' Symmes said, 'and habitable within; containing a number of concentric spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in this undertaking.' A Later expedition in 1838, funded by Congress at a cost of $300,000 to the American Taxpayer found no evidence to support the Symmesian theory. Still this Theory, exceeding Attractive to your average American (given his desire, as we established to our satisfaction in the preceeding Tale, for territories Novel & Unexploited) never required much Fanning to keep it alive. Certain Isolated & Wierd reports have kept it going until our present day. Chief amongst these are the Alleged Diaries of Admiral Richard E. Byrd, who made the world's first flights over the North and South Poles in his Ford Trimotor aircraft in November 1926 and 1929 respectively. Two years after the death of the Admiral in 1959, one F. Amondeo Giannini wrote in his volume Worlds Beyond The Poles, that the good Admiral had flown into the Hollow Earth 1700 miles beyond the North Pole in 1947, and 2300 miles beyond the south pole in 1955: this Truth was covered up by the Government, and Byrd was sworn to secrecy on Pain of Death. In accompaniment and, as it were, counterpoint to this, there is an Certain Story about Byrd's widow having at the last moment, and Without Prior Warning, removed documents from the coffin where his Corpse was laid. These Diaries contain reports of 'radiant', 'disc shaped' craft following the latter expedition, craft marked with 'a type of Swastika'; of being taken into the Pole Hole and meeting an alien race, 'tall with blond hair'; the master of which race informed Byrd that , 'the dark ages that will come now for your race will cover the Earth like a pall', due to man's engagement with Power of the Atom. Now, Lest We Forget, the poor Admiral, being Deceased, has not the werewithal to refute any of these Exceeding Fabulous stories which have been imputed to him, and let us note that after his second crossing, his official report read thus: 'Surveyed nearly 10,000 miles of the country beyond the pole, and found nothing...There was no observable feature of any significance beyond the pole...only rolling white desert from horizon to horizon.' That, dear reader, is most probably the truth of it: and I proffer the following Assorted URLs only with a concerted Caveat Lector.
I am, Sirs, your Faithful Fiend, Dr. Jonathan P. Hoag (Ersatz.)
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