Photographer James Balog and his crew were hanging out near a glacier when their camera captured something extraordinary. They were in Greenland, gathering footage from the time-lapse they’d positioned all around the Arctic Circle for the last several years.

They were also there to shoot scenes for a documentary. And while they were hoping to capture some cool moments on camera, no one expected a huge chunk of a glacier to snap clean off and slide into the ocean right in front of their eyes.

It was the largest glacier calving event ever filmed

For nearly an hour and 15 minutes, Balog and his crew stood by and watched as a piece of ice the size of lower Manhattan, but with ice-equivalent buildings that were two to three times taller than that, simply melted away.

As far as anyone knows, this was an unprecedented geological catastrophe, and they caught the entire thing on tape. It won’t be the last time something like this happens either.

But once upon a time, Balog was openly skeptical about that........

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