History
The Mackenzie (previously Disappointment) River was named after Alexander Mackenzie, who travelled the river in the hope it would lead to the Pacific Ocean, but instead reached its mouth on the Arctic Ocean on 14 July 1789. No European reached its mouth again until James Franklin on 16 August 1825. The following year he traced the coast west until blocked by ice while John Richardson (naturalist) followed the coast east to the Coppermine River. In 1849 William Pullen reached the Mackenzie from Bering Strait.
The Royal Canadian Mint honoured the 200th anniversary of the naming of the Mackenzie River with the issue of a silver commemorative dollar in 1989.
In 2008, Canadian and Japanese researchers extracted a constant stream of natural gas from a test project at the Mallik methane hydrate field in the Mackenzie Delta. This was the second such drilling at Mallik: the first took place in 2002 and used heat to release methane. In the 2008 experiment, researchers were able to extract gas by lowering the pressure, without heating, requiring significantly less energy. The Mallik gas hydrate field was first discovered by Imperial Oil in 1971–1972.
Read more about this topic: Disappointment River
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)