Slow burn
Australia's Mount Wingen has been burning for 6000 years. A lightning strike or brush fire ignited a coal seam there around 4000BC and it's been going ever since. "Smouldering fires, the slow, low-temperature, flameless form of combustion, are an important phenomena in the Earth system, and the most persistent type of combustion," University of Edinburgh fire scientist Guillermo Rein told the New York Times. "The most important fuels involved in smouldering fires are coal and peat. Once ignited, these fires are particularly difficult to extinguish despite extensive rains, weather changes or firefighting attempts, and can persist for long periods of time (months, years), spreading deep (5 metres) and over extensive areas of forest subsurface. Indeed, smouldering fires are the longest continuously burning fires on Earth." The Mount Wingen fire holds the Guinness record for the longest-burning fire in the world.
Always misquoted saying…
Frances writes: "An article about New Zealand's handling of Covid in The Guardian said: 'The proof, experts say, is in the pudding'. Is this the most misquoted well-known phrase of all time? The proof is not in the pudding; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Now that makes sense!"
