Common minke whale produce downswept calls of 250 to 50 Hz. The first written records attest to the active hunting of minke whales off Norway by 1100 A.D. By 1240 they began utilizing iron darts fired from crossbows that had been treated with the tissue of dead sheep infected with the bacterium "Clostridium". Introducing this infectious agent to a wound weakened the whale and after a couple days the men would return and lance it to death. This method of whaling continued to be used until the 1880s. Norwegian catching of minke whales from small fishing vessels started off Møre, western Norway, in
A Gentle Creature A Gentle Creature "A Gentle Creature" (), sometimes also translated as "The Meek One", is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1876. The piece comes with the subtitle of "A Fantastic Story", and it chronicles the relationship between a pawnbroker and a girl that frequents his shop. The story was inspired by a news report that Dostoyevsky read in April 1876 about the suicide of a seamstress. Dostoyevsky referred to it as a "meek suicide" that "keeps haunting you for a long time." The story opens with the narrator in a frenzy about an apparent tragedy that has just