Amateur Treasure Hunter Unearths Missing Centerpiece of Henry VIII’s Crown.
The gold figurine, valued at roughly £2 million, depicts 15th-century English king Henry VI. When classic car restorer and metal detecting enthusiast Kevin Duckett spotted a glint of gold peeking out beneath the soil of an English field , he initially thought he’d found a…Read More
Unraveling the Secrets of the Long-Lost Shipwrecks in the Bahamas.
Using historical records, a new initiative has identified and mapped 176 wrecks. Underwater researchers have encountered many other shipwrecks while studying the Maravillas in the Bahamas. Treasure hunters have long been obsessed with retrieving shiny gold doubloons and dazzling jewels from shipwrecks. But these wrecks…Read More
Alchemy May Not Have Been the Pseudoscience Thought It Was.
Although scientists never could quite turn lead into gold, they did attempt some noteworthy experiments. Throughout much of the 20th century, the academic community had little patience with alchemists and their vain efforts to transmute base metals into gold. Any contemporary scholar who even dared…Read More
The Last Gold Beater in Venice.
In the 1700s, there were about 300 artisans making gold leaf in the city. Now there is just Marino Menegazzo, who is also one of very few remaining in Europe. He is widely acknowledged as the last goldbeater-or battiloro, in Italian-to produce golden leaves using…Read More
Liquid gold of the ancient Dwarves.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug has received mixed reviews , with some complaining that the movie does not stick to the book’s plot line stringently enough. Physicist Rhett Allain, however, has a quibble not with the movie’s divergence from autor Tolkien’s original story, but…Read More