Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Niamiha
Niamiha (Belarusian: Няміга Russian: Немига) is a river, flowing through Minsk now (like many lost little rivers of Minsk), contained in a culvert.
The first mention of the river in historical chronicles is connected with a disastrous battle, which took place here in 1067, when the forces of the prince of Kyivan Rus' defeated the forces of Polatsk princedom. The mediaeval epic The Lay of Ihor's Campaign refers to the "bloody river banks of Niamiha."
For a long time it was the second largest river flowing through Minsk, until its time has come to be sacrificed to the city growth and replanning. One part of the river was put into a pipe in 1926, and the rest of the river was contained into a pipe in 1955. Nowadays, because of its 'piped' state, the very existence of the river is rather unnoticeable and the name Niamiha is more commonly used as the name of the nearby street, not as the river's name.
The metro station of the same name "Niamiha" became the place of another tragedy in the recent past. On May 30, 1999 a stampede killed 53 people, caused by a crowd of young people who were attending an open-air concert in downtown Minsk. There was a sudden thunderstorm, they ran for shelter in the underpass of the nearby "Niamiha" station. The steps were wet and slippery, people began falling. In the crush 53 mostly young people died (unofficially as much as one hundred) and hundreds more were injured.
Another incident connected with Niamiha, street and river, took place even more recently. On July 25, 2004 a two-hour downpour in Minsk caused the storm sewage to overflow and the water flooded some lower places of the city, including the Niamiha street. Some people joked, 'Niamiha found its way from the pipes to the ground surface', the flood was not caused by the river though.
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