History
Griesgletscher as well as the many surrounding Swiss Alpine glaciers have played an important role in the cultural and economic development of the Swiss Alps. During the Second World War owing to its proximity to the Swiss/Italian frontier the Swiss Army constructed a series of look-out posts and foxholes to reinforce this relatively undefined border area and as part of Switzerland hydro-electric building programme. A dam was built in front of the glacier, however the resulting dam contributed to the increased retreat of the glacier thanks to the glacier becoming decoupled from the bedrock as water levels in the dam increased.
Read more about this topic: Gries Glacier
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)