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Deepest Shipwreck Explored, Iron Age Sword Benders and More Unearthed Secrets

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A roundup of Secrets in the News for April 2021.

USS Johnston: Sub dives to deepest-known shipwreck

If you like this, you might like: Abandoning the Titanic

BBC: A submersible has dived to the world’s deepest-known shipwreck. The vessel reached the USS Johnston, which lies 6.5km (4 miles) beneath the waves in the Philippine Sea in the Pacific Ocean.  Explorers spent several hours surveying and filming the wreck over a series of dives. The 115m-long US Navy destroyer sank during the Battle off Samar in 1944 after a fierce battle with a large fleet of Japanese warships…[read more]

 

Iron Age warriors bent the swords of their defeated enemies, ancient hoard reveals

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Live Science: A metal detectorist scouring an ancient hillfort has uncovered “one of the biggest Iron Age weapon hoards in western Germany,” according to archaeologists at the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL). The hoard contains more than 150 objects, including deliberately bent weapons, such as 40 spearhead and lancehead tips, swords and fragments of shield bosses (round structures at the center of a shield); tools; belt hooks; horse gear; three silver coins; bronze jewelry; and one fibula, or lower leg bone, Manuel Zeiler, an archaeologist at LWL, told Live Science…[read more]

 

Harriet Tubman’s lost Maryland home found, archaeologists say

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The Washington Post: Archaeologist Julie Schablitsky found the coin with her metal detector along an old, abandoned road in an isolated area of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She dug it out of the ground and scraped off the mud. She hadn’t been finding much as she and her team probed the swampy terrain of Dorchester County last fall searching for the lost site where the famous Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman lived with her family in the early 1800s…[read more]

 

Here’s What I Learned When My Dad Finally Agreed To Tell Me About His Time At Auschwitz

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Huffington Post: During coverage of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, I spotted a man wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt. My nails digging into my palms, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing any more than I could understand how 48% of U.S. adults under 40 could not name one concentration camp, including Auschwitz. I knew the name of the camp well. My father, before his death last fall, was one of fewer than 2,000 Auschwitz survivors worldwide. A few weeks after his 94th birthday, I opened my laptop and watched him disclose the secrets of his childhood I’d waited decades to hear…[read more]

 

Was Nero cruel? British Museum offers hidden depths to Roman emperor

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The Guardian: Nero, one of the most notorious Roman emperors of them all, murdered his mother and two wives, ruthlessly persecuted early Christians, including Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and even set fire to Rome itself – famously fiddling amid the flames – to make room to build himself a vast, luxurious palace. Or did he? That is the question posed by an exhibition opening at the British Museum next month which seeks, if not to rehabilitate Nero’s reputation, at least to challenge some of history’s assumptions about him…[read more]

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