Thermal Valley

This guide to Thermal Valley in Beitou, Taipei opens in 1905, when a Japanese engineer named Okamoto Yohachiro found an unfamiliar crusted stone in a scalding, acidic riverbed. You'll hear how that discovery led, a few years later, to scientists naming a new mineral after this district, and how the valley earned its old nickname, Hell Valley, from the water's heat and acidity. The guide also traces how a physicist later put the site's radioactive traces to use in an early nuclear experiment.