10 places on Earth where fire has blazed for centuries

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-10 19:46

Spontaneous combustion, fortunately, is quite rare, otherwise our planet would be a much hotter place. However, it does occur in fossil fuels such as coal or peat deposits and natural gas sources. In addition, all this goodness can, through negligence, be set on fire by people, and then wonder - why hundreds of years pass, but it still does not go out?

We present to you ten places on Earth where fire has been burning in a strange way for centuries. In some cases, people themselves support it, and in others they tried to extinguish it - completely unsuccessfully. No miracles, just an unimaginable amount of fuel and chance.

1) The Burning Mountain near the small Australian town of Wingen is not impressive in size - only 653 meters in height. But until 1830 it was considered the only active volcano in Australia! Until it became clear that coal is still burning in it - however, for 6 thousand years, burning out by about 1 meter per year.

2) Mount Chimera in Turkey, aka Yanartash, has been burning since the times when the ancient state of Lycia was located in that place - about a thousand years BC. The fires of the Chimera are powered by methane, and in ancient times they were so high and bright that ships were guided by them, like a lighthouse.

3) A coal basin near the Indian city of Jaria is an excellent example of the fact that the "eternal flame" can burn not only due to gas. This is not a modest fire to attract tourists - it is a network of monstrous fires that have not been extinguished with any amount of water, sand and chemicals. The first of them appeared in 1916, and according to experts, the coal reserves of Jaria will burn for about 4 thousand more years.

4) In New York State's Chesnut Ridge Park, the eternal flame sits beneath a waterfall, creating a beautiful combination of fire and water. The source burns due to the high concentration of ethane and propane, and periodically goes out, but the keepers rekindle it each time to attract tourists.

5) The Smoking Hills are located in the east of Cape Bathurst on the northwest coast of Canada, they were discovered by the English navigator John Franklin in 1826. The hills are almost entirely composed of combustible hydrocarbon shale, most likely spontaneously igniting, and therefore smoke swirls over them for more than a century.

6) The Cave of Water and Fire in Taiwan is not actually a cave, but a rock with a rich methane source located near a mud volcano. Underground gas has been burning for about three hundred years and a couple of centuries ago it reached three meters in height.

7) Mrapen is a sacred flame that has fallen into Indonesian folklore. Once the tiny village of Mrapen was visited by a group of monks led by Sunan Kalijaga, one of the saints of Islam. People froze, and then Kalijaga jabbed a stick into the ground, and fire burst out from under it. Legend is a legend, but underground gas feeds the Mrapen flame for at least five hundred years, neither rain nor wind can extinguish it.

8) Another "burning mountain", Brennender Berg, is located in Germany, near the city limits of Saarbrücken, the capital of the Saarland. It is not known for certain who exactly set it on fire in 1688 - according to rumors, a couple of shepherds wanting to warm up - but the coal seam in it burns steadily to this day.

9) Baba Gurgur is a large oil field near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Still, it is not oil, but gas that burns on it - but for at least 4 thousand years. This eternal fire was mentioned in their writings by Herodotus and Plutarch, and it was most likely the very “fiery furnace” into which Nebuchadnezzar ordered to throw three youths for refusing to worship the golden idol.