Scuttling is the act of deliberately sinking a ship by allowing water to flow into the hull.

This can be achieved in several ways—valves or hatches can be opened to the sea, or holes may be ripped into the hull with brute force or with explosives. Scuttling may be performed to dispose of an abandoned, old, or captured vessel; to prevent the vessel from becoming a navigation hazard; as an act of self-destruction to prevent the ship from being captured by an enemy force; as a blockship to restrict navigation through a channel or within a harbor; or to provide an artificial reef for divers and marine life.

The Spaniard conquistador Hernán Cortés, who led the first expedition that resulted in the fall of the Aztec empire, ordered his men to strip and scuttle his fleet in order to prevent the secretly planned return to Cuba by those loyal to Cuban Governor Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar. Their success would have halted his inland march and conquest of the Aztec Empire.

HMS Sapphire was a 32-gun, fifth-rate sailing frigate of the Royal Navy in Newfoundland to protect the English migratory fishery. The vessel was trapped in Bay Bulls harbour by four French naval vessels led by Jacques-François de Brouillan. In order to avoid capture, the English scuttled the vessel on 11 September 1696.

Captain James Cook, FRS, RN (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy. Cook made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.

Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This helped bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This notice came at a crucial moment in both Cook's career and the direction of British overseas exploration, and led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages.

In three voyages Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously achieved. As he progressed on his voyages of discovery he surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions.

Hermenegildo de Brito Capelo was born in Palmela, Portugal, in 1841, and died in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1917. He was an officer in the Portuguese Navy and a Portuguese explorer, helping to chart territory between Angola and Mozambique in southern Central Africa that was unknown to Europeans in the 1870s and 1880s. Alongside Roberto Ivens, he is famous for being the first European to cross Central Africa from coast to coast between Angola and Mozambique.

Hermenegildo Capelo later rose to become aide-de-camp to King Luis I of Portugal and afterwards to King Carlos I and, later still, vice-admiral. His military career ended in 1910 when King Manuel II of Portugal was exiled.

Hermenegildo de Brito Capelo was born in Palmela, Portugal, a town about 25 km (16 mi) south of Lisbon. He was one of six brothers and his father was Major Félix António Gomes Capelo.

In 1860, Capelo sailed to Angola, in southwest Africa, and served on board the D Estefânia, which was commanded by Prince Luís, staying for three years at a naval station before returning to Lisbon in 1863. He sailed to Africa again in 1866, visiting Angola, where he remained until 1869.

Yucca Mountain is a mountain in Nevada, near its border with California, approximately 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Las Vegas. Located in the Great Basin, Yucca Mountain is east of Amargosa Desert, south of the Nevada Test and Training Range and in the Nevada Test Site. It was the site for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository before that plan was scrapped in 2010.

The formation that makes up Yucca Mountain was created by several large eruptions from a caldera volcano and is composed of alternating layers of ignimbrite (welded tuff), non-welded tuff, and semi-welded tuff. The volcanic units have been tilted along fault lines, thus forming the current ridge line called Yucca Mountain. In addition to these faults, Yucca Mountain is criss-crossed by fractures, many of which formed when the volcanic units cooled.

A series of large explosive volcanic eruptions occurred to the north of Yucca Mountain millions of years ago, producing dense clouds of volcanic ash and rock fragments which melted or compressed together to create layers of rock called tuff, forming the mountains and hills of the region. The volcanic eruptions that produced Yucca Mountain ended about 12 million years ago. This explosive volcanism produced almost all (more than 99 percent) of the volcanic material in the Yucca Mountain region.