A revised version of the popular History Channel "Modern Marvels" series on "Salt Mines" was released quietly a couple months ago. Check here for its next airing. The 50-minute program also became available this week on DVD. Here's the blurb:
Salt is the most humble and precious of minerals. In Roman times, soldiers were sometimes paid with it. In the Middle Ages, it was called "White Gold." Today, we collect 146 million tons of salt annually, and it is used in over 14,000 ways.
MODERN MARVELSTM journeys beneath the earth to tell the extraordinary story of how we collect this essential mineral--and of the awesome caverns salt mining creates.
Visit a 700-year-old mine in Poland that has three chapels and a soccer field among its underground chambers. Sea salt has been collected over the millennia, from dehydrating sea water to scratching it out of underground chambers. And take a fascinating step-by-step trip backwards from the salt shaker on your dinner table to the strange, subterranean world of a modern salt mines.
From a Manhattan-sized mine near Cleveland to the world's largest underground storage facility, SALT MINES tells the story of the staff of life and the amazing places created by its collection.
This is an outstanding presentation (and Cargill and Morton get lots of product placement visibility in return for having video crews in their production plants).
Joy Mining Machinery, a regular sponsor of Salt Institute annual meetings, is taking commercial advantage of the footage of their continuous miner shown in operation at Morton Salt's Fairport, OH mine.