Here’s some news that will brighten your day: While strolling the sands of British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii Islands, a beachcomber recently found a Harley Davidson swept away in the Japan tsunami last March. He had no idea what had happened to the person it belonged to. But the story has a happy ending — the owner of the bike has been identified. And he’s alive.
About a week ago, a soccer ball that belonged to a 16-year-old survivor of the Japanese tsunami was returned to him, after it was discovered on the Alaskan coast. But a beachcomber in Canada has since stumbled across an even more fantastic find: a Harley Davidson, with all its parts still in place.
When the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan last year, it created more than 22 million tons of debris — the size of California, pretty much. Included in that debris was this ghost ship, a 45m long squid-fishing boat that’s just been found, a year after the tsunami, near the coast of Canada.
Last year’s earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan left countless individuals separated from their possessions, including family photos. The Japanese town of Ofunato has set up a hub where people can come to search through piles of salvaged pictures with the hope of finding their own.
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake rumbled the northeast coast of Japan at a depth of 24km. The resulting tsunami destroyed everything nearby, but most people thought it never affected other areas. Until now.
After the earthquake hit Japan earlier this year, tweets poured out of the country and retweets spread across the world. The level of tweeting spiked to 5000 tweets per second after the quake and tsunami hit.
How do you return a 400-tonne ship to Japan’s waters, after it washed ashore in March’s brutal tsunami? Using giant cranes that hoist it 9m above the ground, lowering it onto a massive 192-tyre trolley normally reserved for trains.
