Posted on 09/01/2023 5:31:19 AM PDT by Red Badger
A nearly 200-year-old West Point time capsule that appeared to yield little more than dust when it was opened during a disappointing livestream contained hidden treasure after all, the U.S. Military Academy said Wednesday.
It was just more hidden than expected.
The lead box believed to have been placed by cadets in the base of a monument actually contained six silver American coins dating from 1795 to 1828 and a commemorative medal, West Point said in a news release. All were discovered in the sediment of the box, which at Monday’s ceremonial opening at the New York academy appeared to be its only contents.
“When I first found these, I thought, man, you know, it would have been great to have found these on stage,” said West Point archeologist Paul Hudson, who after the event, took the box back to his lab and began carefully sifting through the silt with a small wooden pick and brush.
“Before long, lo and behold, there’s the edge of a coin sticking out,” he recounted by phone, “and I thought, well that’s OK. That’s something, that’s a start.”
He said he was as disappointed as anyone by the underwhelming results of the live opening, which brought comparisons to Geraldo Rivera’s televised 1986 unsealing of a Chicago hotel vault purportedly belonging to gangster Al Capone, which infamously revealed nothing but dirt. A crowd that had gathered at the U.S. Military Academy had hoped to see military relics or historical documents when experts pried open the top and pointed a camera inside.
It was probably better to extract the coins and medal in a controlled setting anyway, said Hudson, who still plans to analyze the sediment for more clues about what else may have been inside.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
They are officially US Government property. If anything, they will be on display at West Point or the Smithsonian.
Friggen cadets! Dumb as rocks!
You can enlarge the view of your screen on Mac by holding down the the command key (to the left of your space bar) and then tap the plus sign key (upper right next to the delete key).
Keep holding down “command” and pressing the plus sign over and over to keep on enlarging up to 8x.
You may have to reposition the image within your screen with your cursor, side to side or up and down, to see the good parts.
* * *
You can also download an image from a web page to your computer by placing your cursor on it and then pressing and holding down your touch pad or mouse. When you see a tiny icon with “jpg” in it, drag it to your desktop and release the cursor to dump it there.
Then you can open it as a jpg and enlarge it by the same method — command+
Thanks. I wish I had a Mac, but I have an iPad. I can download pictures, no problem. I just enlarge pics by touching the screen w/ two fingers and spreading them apart.
Solved your own problem!
I had to use the pc platform while I was still working. Hated it.
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