The SS Central America - 'Ship of Gold'

The SS Central America, the 'Ship of Gold' was a 280-foot (85 m) sidewheel steamer that operated between Central America and the eastern coast of the United States during the 1850s. The ship sank in a hurricane in September 1857, along with more than 550 passengers and crew and 30,000 pounds of California gold. The wreck contributed to the financial panic of 1857.

The bullion had been shipped from San Francisco to the west coast of Panama, then sent by rail to the east coast and finally loaded onto the 280-foot steamship bound for New York. A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) operated by the Columbus-America Discovery Group made the discovery on 11 September 1987. Significant amounts of gold and artifacts were recovered and brought to the surface by another ROV built specifically for the recovery. Treasure hunter Tommy Thompson found the S.S. Central America after convincing 161 local investors to fund his search.

Thompson with the “Eureka bar” an 80-pound gold ingot.

More than $50 million worth of gold bars, coins and dust that’s been described as the greatest lost treasure in U.S. history is about to make its public debut in California. The gold will be on display Feb. 22-24 at the Long Beach Convention Center. It's all for sale. The 3,100 gold coins, 45 gold bars and more than 36 kilograms of gold dust recovered are expected to be hot sellers. Meanwhile Tommy Thompson continues to sit in an Ohio jail after fleecing his investors and deliberately refusing to disclose the whereabouts of hundreds of gold coins.

Praetorian Guard

The Praetorian Guard (Latin: cohortes praetoriae) was an elite unit of the Imperial Roman Army whose members served as personal bodyguards to the Roman emperors. During the era of the Roman Republic, the Praetorians served as a small escort force for high-ranking officials such as army generals or provincial governors. With the transition into the Roman Empire the first emperor Augustus founded the Guard as his personal security detail.

Although they continued to serve in this capacity for roughly three centuries, the Guard became notable for its intrigue and interference in Roman politics, to the point of overthrowing emperors and proclaiming their successors. In 312 the Guard was ultimately disbanded by Constantine the Great.

Praetorian Cohorts intervened on numerous occasions in the struggle for the imperial succession. Lacking troops of its own, the Senate had no choice each time but to accept the choice of the Praetorians as well as that of the various legions. The new emperor was always proclaimed by the Praetorians before being ratified by the Senate and the legions stationed in the various provinces. While the guard had the power to make or break emperors, it had no formal role in government. Often after an outrageous act of violence, revenge by the new ruler was almost always forthcoming.

Strange Discoveries

Kepler-78b is a planet that should not exist. This scorching lava world circles its star every eight and a half hours at a space of less than one million miles – among the tightest known orbits. Based on present theories of planet formation, it could not have formed so close to its star, nor could it have proceeded there.

The ancient burial site “El Cementerio,” near the Mexican village of Onavas was disturbed in 1999. Villagers unearthed 25 skulls, 13 of which did not look entirely human. Experts theorize that the deformity of the skulls were intentionally produced through the ritual of head flattening, otherwise called cranial deformation, in which the skull is compressed between two wooden boards from childhood.

Otzi the Iceman. In 1991, a group of hikers were trekking in the mountains of Austria when they came across an awful sight: a frozen body was buried in the ice at their feet. That body belonged to a 5,300 year old man. By studying the body, scientists have discovered some surprisingly specific facts. When he was alive, he had parasites in his intestines, was lactose intolerant, and had been sick three times in the past six months. His death seems to have been caused by an arrow wound to his back.

In 2012 Australian scientists unveiled the biggest-ever graveyard of an ancient rhino-sized mega-wombat called diprotodon. Diprotodon, the largest marsupial ever to roam the earth, weighing up to 2.8 tonnes, lived between two million and 50,000 years ago and died out around the time indigenous tribes first appeared.

Pachacamac is an archaeological site 40 km southeast of Lima, Peru in the Valley of the Lurín River. Most of the common buildings and temples were built c. 800-1450 CE, shortly before the arrival and conquest by the Inca Empire. The adult dead in the newfound tomb were found in the fetal position and were surrounded by a ring of baby skeletons.

Road crew workers working on the expansion of a road from Weymouth, Dorset to the lsle of Portland came across a mass grave of fifty-four skeletons and fifty-one heads of Scandinavian men who were executed sometime between A.D. 910 and 1030. After further analysis, archaeologists determined that it was likely the grave of the Jomsvikings, a merciless group that terrorized the coast of England around 1000.

An execution of the Jomsvikings captured in the Battle of Horundarfjord (Hjorunga Bay) occurred in A.D. 986.

In the second century, Bulgaria was known as “Little Rome”. This title was verified when a gravesite of Roman soldiers was uncovered during a construction accident. Archaeologists say the tomb belongs to soldiers from the eighth legion of Augustus. In its Roman heyday, Debelt was known as Deultum and held an important place in the Roman Empire. Among the items found there were gold jewelry needles, beads, scrapers used for bathing and massage, medicine, and gold medallions.

Black Sea Fortress of Artezian yields treasure

Residents of a town under siege by the Roman army about 2,000 years ago buried two hoards of treasure in the town's citadel — treasure excavated in 2013. More than 200 coins, most bronze, were found along with gold, silver and bronze jewelry and glass vessels inside the ancient fortress of Artezian.

Artezian was part of the Bosporus Kingdom.

The kingdom's fate was torn between two brothers - Mithridates VIII, who sought independence from Rome, and his younger brother, Cotys I, who was allied to the empire. Rome sent an army to support Cotys, establishing him in the Bosporan capital and torching settlements controlled by Mithridates, including Artezian.

People huddled in the fortress for protection as the Romans attacked, but they knew they were doomed. The hoards were funeral sacrifices. It was obvious for the people that they were going to die shortly. The siege and fall of the fortress occurred in AD 45.

Scythians: the art of war

Plaque unearthed from the Kul-Oba kurgan in eastern Crimea.

For most of the first millennium BC, the steppe between the Black Sea and China was the domain of Scythians – fierce nomadic warriors who were adept metalworkers, wood-carvers and painters. Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia, a new exhibition at the British Museum, reveals what the finest pieces tell us.

Heavily decorated shoe of a woman interred in a burial mound at Pazyryk. It’s made from red leather embellished with gold and tin, and the sole is ornamented with tiny beads and pyrite crystals stitched into the leather.

Half of a belt buckle; the other half was often but not always a mirror image.

Gold lion-griffin ornament, fourth century BC

Scythian button

Belt Plaque

Gold torque.

Laestrygonians

The Laestrygonians are a tribe of man-eating giants from ancient Greek mythology. Odysseus visited them during his journey back home to Ithaca. The giants ate many of Odysseus's men and destroyed eleven of his twelve ships by launching rocks from high cliffs. Odysseus's ship was not destroyed as it was hidden in a cove. Eleven ships perished with their crews, and only his vessel and crew survived. It is with this one ship that Odysseus put in to the island of Aeaea, having lost his whole army. Later Greeks believed that the Laestrygonians, as well as the Cyclopes, had once inhabited Sicily.

The Laestrygonians were said to be eight-foot-tall cannibal giants with heavily tattooed arms. They had yellow pointed teeth. Under their clothing is leather armor and they carry iron clubs.

Classical Greek Statues

The first traces of human habitation in Greece appeared during the Paleolithic Age (120000 - 10000 B.C.) During the Neolithic Age that followed ( 7000 - 3000 B.C.) a plethora of Neolithic buildings spread throughout the country. The beginning of the Bronze Age (3000-1100 B.C.) is marked by the appearance of the first urban centers in the Aegean. Flourishing settlements were found on Crete, Mainland Greece, the Cyclades and the Aegean.

The Artemision Bronze (God from the Sea) is an ancient Greek sculpture that was recovered from the sea off Cape Artemision, in northern Euboea.

It represents either Zeus or Poseidon, is slightly over lifesize, and would have held either a thunderbolt, if Zeus, or a trident if Poseidon.

The Charioteer of Delphi, also known as Heniokhos (Greek: the rein-holder), is one of the best-known statues surviving from Ancient Greece, and is considered one of the finest examples of ancient bronze statues. The life-size (1.8m) statue of a chariot driver was found in 1896 at the Sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi. It is now in the Delphi Archaeological Museum.

Caryatids from Erechtheion. A caryatid is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town of Peloponnese. The best-known and most-copied examples are those of the six figures of the Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis at Athens.

The statue of Laocoön and His Sons was excavated in Rome in 1506 and placed on public display in the Vatican. The marble figures are near life-size and the group is a little over 2m (6 ft 7 in) in height, showing the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents.

The Discobolus of Myron ("discus thrower") is a Greek sculpture that was completed toward the end of the Severe period, circa 460–450 BC. The original Greek bronze is lost but the work is known through numerous Roman copies, both full-scale ones in marble and smaller scaled versions in bronze.