The Amber Room; they're still looking for it.
for Napoleon in 1908? |
Just recently, in April of 2012, I read an article in Bloomberg/Business week magazine about the Amber Room.
As the article explains, the East German Stasi spent decades and huge amounts of money trying to find it. They failed.
I've been reading about this 'Eighth Wonder of the World' for many years now. For those of you who already know the history, you know that it's been lost since the second world war.
Periodically, treasure hunters think that they have found the secret hiding place. Everyone gets excited, and then... disappointment.
I think it would be really cool if it was found, but the fact is... it's lost forever. It was probably burned and destroyed during the final days of World War II.
Here's an article from the Smithsonian that describes in detail just what the Amber Room was.
Here's a 2004 article from MSNBC about the Amber Room.
In 1873, German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann, in Turkey, excavating the site that he believed to be Troy, found what became known as the jewels of Helen.
To be sure, there is some controversy, but let's go with the legend.
At roughly the same point in time that Moses led his people out of Egypt... there was the Trojan War.
The jewels that Schliemann found were taken to Berlin, where they remained in a museum. But after the fall of Berlin in 1945, the jewels were gone. It was feared that they had been destroyed, or melted down by the Nazis during the war.
there was the attempted coup in Moscow. The Soviet Union and many of its secrets came apart.
The Russian archives were opened... and the jewels of Helen were found; the Russian army had taken them from Berlin when they captured that city.
The jewels today can be seen at the Pushkin museum in Moscow (they are currently on loan to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg).
Was a war won... because of a wooden horse?
Well, it's possible that it's just a story that made its way down through the ages. It's also just as possible that there really was a ten year battle over a city, and maybe a beautiful woman was the cause.
A trick involving a wooden horse makes a great story.
It's also possible that an earthquake took place, and some of troy's walls tumbled down, and the city was lost. The invading army could have erected a monument to their earthquake god.
And what was the Greek image of their earthquake god? ...A horse.
Napoleon, sitting astride his horse, with his army behind him, began crossing the border into Russia.
He believed in destiny, and he was convinced that his destiny was to conquer Russia.
As he began his ride across the border, his horse stepped into a gopher or prairie dog hole, and stumbled, spilling Napoleon onto the ground.What could his thoughts have been?
In 1908, an asteroid exploded over the desolation of Siberia, resulting in widespread destruction.
Did you know that asteroids (meteors) routinely explode in the Earth's atmosphere?
Recently, a top Air Force General expressed concerns that these explosions could be mistaken for nuclear bombs, and that a country could go to war thinking it was being attacked.
At least 30 times a year, a space rock measuring a few yards across slashes into the atmosphere and explodes, releasing energy equal to that of an atomic bomb.
Brig. Gen. Simon Worden, deputy director for operation of the U.S. Strategic Command, says the United States has satellite instruments that can tell within minutes whether these explosions are from an asteroid or nuclear bomb. He is concerned that countries such as Pakistan and India, bitter enemies, could mistake one of these explosions for an attack by the other country.
Relatively recently, not far from these countries, a 15 to 30 foot asteroid exploded, with a Hiroshima type (16,000 tons of TNT) blast.
Russia also built a returnable space craft. However, after just one flight into space, it was determined that it was not cost effective, and their space program returned to more traditional and proven space rockets.
An interesting thing about the Russian space shuttle...
it looks a lot like the American version. Most people would think that the Russians just copied ours, but according to some American aeronautical experts, the forces of the atmosphere and outer space dictate the shape and design of the shuttle.The shuttle can be found at a park in Moscow.
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