Friday, February 25, 2011

thinking of buying one



The lions that killed 135 humans in tsavo

Two of these lions are known as the Tsavo maneaters; they attacked workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway in 1898. They killed more than 135 people in less than a year before being found and killed by Colonel John Patterson.


Even this is the story line for English movie ghost and the darkness 


and its Telugu remake mrugaraju


its said they are 9ft









 


In March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo (SAH-vo) River in East Africa. Over the next nine months, two large male lions reportedly killed and ate 135 railway workers and native Africans. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and thorn fences for protection, but to no avail. Hundreds of workers fled Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge.

Before work could resume, chief engineer Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson (1865-1947) had to eliminate the lions and their threat. After many near misses, he finally shot the first lion on December 9, 1898, and three weeks later brought down the second. The first lion killed was measured at nine feet, eight inches (3 m) from nose to tip of tail. It took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp. The construction crew returned and completed the bridge in February 1899.

(The 1996 movie "The Ghost and the Darkness" was the third Hollywood film to be based on Patterson's adventures in Tsavo.)




Railroad and thorny wilderness around Tsavo (1899).




Colonel Patterson and the First Tsavo Lion

The first lion was shot on December 9, 1898 and measured nearly nine feet, eight inches, from nose to tip of his tail.





The Tsavo Lions Cave (1899)

The cave known as the "man-eaters' den" was photographed by Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson nearly a century ago. The cave is believed to contain human remains of some of the victims killed by the lions.





The Tsavo Lions Cave (1997)

The location of the cave was rediscovered on April 30,1997 by Tom Gnoske (Field Museum Zoologist) and Julian Kerbis Peterhans (Roosevelt University Professor and Museum Adjunct Curator). The striking resemblence to the picture taken in 1899 (previous page) confirmed their finding.




Tsavo Railroad Bridge, 1997

The Bridge over the Tsavo River, originally designed by J.H. Patterson, 1898.