Facts and Trivia

In this case we are talking about red sunsets. Red sunsets are relatively common near beaches and near the farmlands. However, here in the Rocky Mountains they are more rare; except during wildfire season (Kaingin in local setting).

They physics behind red sunsets is simple. Light is composed of all of the colors of the rainbow, otherwise known as the visible light spectrum. Each color has a slightly different wavelength with red being the longest and blue the shortest.

When the sun is high in the sky the sunlight appears brilliant white or slightly yellow. As the sun sinks toward the western horizon the light has to travel through much more of earth’s atmosphere (about 38 percent more). As a result, the shorter wavelengths (blue and violet) get scattered and we see yellow orange and red.Pollutants in the atmosphere (such as smoke, volcanic ash or salt particles from seawater) scatter the light even further. In this case the greens and yellows also get scattered leaving only the oranges and reds. If conditions are just right, the sun appears as a giant red ball above the horizon, more like a bloated tomato than a blazing star.

The amount of smoke or ash required to produce such a sunset usually requires a fire of considerable magnitude and the effect is best appreciated at a distance of thirty miles away or more. In the case of the Casper Mountain fire, a red sunset may have been visible as far away as Douglas (although I have no confirmation of this).

In some cases, such as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, red sunsets can be seen for days or weeks after the event. This occurs because there is not only a great deal of ash thrown into the atmosphere, but it is caught by winds aloft, and spread globally.

While such displays are magnificent to behold, they come at a heavy price. The fury of Mother Nature in the form of fire destroys homes, displaces families and threatens lives. Yet this same fury renews the ecosystem and improves habitat; and even the fury has a beauty, harsh though it is. Fire season and red sunsets eventually pass and we can appreciate the beauty while being thankful that their cause is temporary.

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The Woman With 3,400 Shoes
Former First Lady Imelda Marcos was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the woman with the largest collection of shoes. Reports said that when the Marcos family fled to Hawaii during the People’s Power Revolution in 1986, around 3,400 pairs of shoes were discovered in one room at Malacanang Palace. They were the First Lady’s collection.

In 1987, Mrs. Marcos denied this and claimed she had only 1,060 pairs of shoes. The former First Lady has an eight-and-a-half inch footwear size. She said her having many shoes is not a symbol of extravagance but an expression of love and appreciation for Filipino-made shoes. Most of her shoes, she added, were bought from Marikina, the shoe capital of the Philippines. For this, Marikina City had acquired 200 pairs of the Marcos shoes and put them on display at the city’s shoe museum.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1173911.stm

The world’s best-known shoe collector, former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos, has opened a museum in which most of the exhibits are her own footwear. 

Imelda Marcos

The Marikina City Footwear Museum in Manila contains hundreds of pairs of shoes, many of them found in the presidential palace when Imelda and her husband, President Ferdinand Marcos, fled the Philippines in 1986.

An emotional moment for Mrs Marcos

“This museum is making a subject of notoriety into an object of beauty,” Mrs Marcos told reporters. The museum management hopes it will help attract tourism to Marikina, a district known as the shoe capital of the Philippines.

“They went into my closets looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes,” a smiling Mrs Marcos said, wearing a pair of locally made silver shoes for the day.

 

“More than anything, this museum will symbolise the spirit and culture of the Filipino people.

“Filipinos don’t wallow in what is miserable and ugly. They recycle the bad into things of beauty,” she said.

Symbol of extravagance

The exhibits include shoes made by such world-famous names as Ferragamo, Givenchy, Chanel and Christian Dior, all size eight-and-a-half.

There are also shoes belonging to former President Fidel Ramos and other well-known figures.

The espadrilles she wore when she fled the presidential palace

During her time as first lady, Mrs Marcos was famed for travelling the world to buy new shoes at a time when millions of Filipinos were living in extreme poverty. President Marcos’ successor, Corazon Aquino, ordered many of Mrs Marcos’ shoes to be put on display as a demonstration of her extravagance.

While Ferdinand Marcos died in exile, never seeing his country again after his fall from grace in a popular uprising, his widow has reintegrated herself into Philippines life.

She has twice run for president and analysts say she may run for mayor of Manila next May.

Last December Mrs Marcos underwent surgery to remove a blood clot close to her brain, which doctors say could have killed her.

Some 200,000 people work in the Marikina district making shoes, with roads carrying names such as Sandal Street and Slipper Street.

 
 

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