New Bedford, Massachusetts: The city that once lit the world

bbc.com

38 points·MiriamWeiner··9 comments

As I have pointed out many times: the (crude) oil industry saved the whales!

Oddly enough, sperm whaling peaked in the 1960s, following increased demand for heat-stable oils for automatic transmissions. It only stopped when the International Whaling Commission voluntarily enacted a moratorium in 1985.

The later whaling industry is depressing to read about. It was more grizzly than the Moby Dick era, with explosive tipped harpoons and faster boats capable of corralling whales into bays where they could be killed en masse.

By the way, as a New Bedford resident, my favorite travel writing about NB came from the New York Times' "36 hours in..." series. The biggest challenge was what to do with the other 24 hours.

It's all a little dismal.

It's grisly not grizzly but TBH I love your version too.

That's bearly a typo

not exactly.

”the town was granted a city charter with the Latin motto, ‘Lucem Diffundo’. ‘We light the world’.”

That’s quite a loose translation. I would translate it as “I spread light”.

Interesting to read the line "Then, the final blow broke in 1879. Thomas Edison had invented the electric lightbulb." in a BBC article. Normally, UK sources side with Edison's rival, the English physicist and inventor Joseph Swan as the inventor of the lightbulb.

Actually I wrote an article for Nantucket news expressedly with this exact premise, only about Nantucket, a decade ago. Love to go back and compare numbers.

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