Tag Archives: china

Two Odd Examples of Pre Ebola "Ebola"

I used Google N-gram Viewer to inspect the occurrence of the word “Ebola” in the Google-indexed literature. A few instances of Ebola came up earlier than the disease being known, so I figured they were references to the place name in Zaire/Congo, after which the disease is named. And that was in fact the case. But, of handful of early instances I checked out, two were interesting.

The Ngram is above. Note that I have smoothing set to zero, which I recommend, and I’ve got the date set for early on in the use of the term so pre-disease uses are more visible.

The two interesting instances I wanted to show you are ..

1) An Okapi at the Paris Zoo named Ebola, allegedly the first captive born Okapi to survive in a zoo.

Screen Shot 2014-09-11 at 10.41.19 PM

The other is a bit stranger. Have a look:

Screen Shot 2014-09-11 at 10.44.16 PM

See the yellow highlight? This (and the Okapi picture) are screen grabs of what Google Books give you when you search for a word or term. Here, “China” in funny Gothic looking script was recognized by the scanner as “Ebola.” You can kind of see how that would happen. Not really. But it happened.

I hate when this happens (falling into holes department)

This is one of the hazards of being an archaeologist (it has happened to me a few times) but it is sad to see it occur with a private citizen.

The moral of the story? Don’t be talking on your cell phone when instead, you should be scanning the terrain in front of you with Ground Penetrating Radar to locate cavities that are too close to the surface.