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Officials claim they used coins discovered inside a shipwreck off the coast of Colombia to prove the doomed vessel is the legendary San José that was carrying a $20 billion treasure when it sank. The Colombian government used an unmanned vehicle to inspect the wreckage of the 18th-century craft to prove it has found the lost Spanish galleon. The submersible carried out a non-intrusive investigation to document areas of the shipwreck that have yet to be photographed that contained coin-like objects, according to a study from Antiquity. Coins found in a hoard area in the ship’s stern were photographed and...

The National Museum of Denmark has confirmed that two 18th-century shipwrecks in Cahuita National Park, long thought to be pirate ships, are the Danish slave ships Fridericus Quartus and Christianus Quintus, which sank in 1710. The identification was announced on Sunday, resolving decades of speculation about the wrecks off Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. The ships were identified through underwater excavations in 2023, which analyzed ship timbers, cargo blocks, clay pipes, and other artifacts. In 2015, U.S. archaeologists from East Carolina University discovered yellow bricks, specific to Danish manufacturing in Flensburg, among the wreckage, prompting renewed investigation. The wrecks, located on...

What have I done to be placed on the sanctions list of the Russian Foreign Ministry, alongside several distinguished historians of eastern Europe? My normal hunting ground (not the right word for a maritime historian) is the Mediterranean and the oceans beyond. But maybe Russia’s mandarins know that I am now writing about the Black Sea. Since the reign of Peter the Great in the 18th century, Russia has seen the Black Sea as a vital gateway to the wider world. The Ottoman sultans blocked Russian attempts to reach warmer waters via Istanbul. Russian ships bound for intended conquests had...

A very good watch, a re-enactor of the 18th century discusses society and what we have lost.

Salt pork was a very popular meat in the 18th century. In this video we explain how to prepare you own.

So far, almost one million people have watched a video of a man in a Tricorne hat demonstrating how colonists made fried chicken in the 18th century. The recipe, first published in Nathan Bailey's 1736 cookbook, "Dictionarium Domesticum," utilizes quartered chicken, malt vinegar and green onions as a three-hour marinade, flour and white wine as a frying batter, and — if you really want to go authentic — lard or clarified butter as frying oil. "The tartness of the marinade contrasted to the sweetness of the batter really sets this dish off," costumed video host Jonathan Townsend says in the...

Sometimes the rigors of daily life just get too overwhelming, causing me to turn to other less stressful items of interest. So I am now reading, “Benjamin Franklin -- An American Life,” by famed biographer, Walter Isaacson. It is already an amazing story about an amazing man, and I am not half way through its 586 pages --- small type, no pictures! Benjamin Franklin: author, inventor, scientist, politician, raconteur. But he considered himself, first and foremost, to be a printer. And would generally sign his name, “Benjamin Franklin, printer.” For in that Colonial period, a printer was a person of...

"World's Oldest" Cognac Opened in Poland What is thought to be the world's oldest Cognac sold at auction was opened in Poland recently to inaugurate a partnership between a Swiss watchmaker and a corporate collector. The Gautier Cognac was purchased by collector Wealth Solutions in 2014 during an auction of rare wines and liquors organised by Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers & Valuers in New York. The bottle itself dates back to 1762 and was recognised as the oldest Cognac sold at public auction to-date when it went under the hammer. It was opened during a ceremony to mark the partnership...

American Piano Music of the 18th Century by Alexander Reinagle · William Grant Naboré

A man whose wit was matched only by the looseness of his tongue, the combative John Adams quickly acquired a hefty reputation for articulate jabs and razor-sharp put-downs... 1. On Benjamin Franklin “His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency.”2. On Alexander Hamilton “That bastard brat of a Scottish peddler! His ambition, his restlessness and all his grandiose schemes come, I'm convinced, from a superabundance of secretions, which he couldn't find enough whores to absorb!”(Hamilton certainly wasn't above returning the fire.)3. On Thomas Paine's Common Sense “What a poor, ignorant, malicious, crapulous mass.”(For more...

FORT EDWARD, N.Y. - This history-rich Hudson River community has yielded a museum's worth of 18th-century military artifacts over the decades, from musket balls to human skeletons. But a colonial soldier's daily lot wasn't all fighting and bloodshed. They had their share of down time, and that's where the sutler came in, offering for sale two of the few diversions from frontier duty: alcohol and tobacco. A five-year-long archaeological project has unearthed the 250-year-old site of a merchant's establishment that sold wine, rum, tobacco and other goods to the thousands of soldiers who passed through this region during the French...

Have you folks heard of the Constitution Party? www.constitutionparty.com Principal can be very hard to discern in politics. I just know that if the constitution party really had a chance to win they would definitely get my vote. This is a party of mostly Christians that uphold the constitution, guided by the Holy Bible, as the ultimate law of the land.

INDEX Gentleman's Magazine - Gunpowder June 1740. Volume 10. Friday, 20. - Complaint having been made to the Lords of the Admiralty that the Gunpowder used by the 3 Men of War when they took the Princessa was weaker than the Powder taken in the said Ship in Proportion of 7 to 12, it was thought proper to make a publick Tryal; in order thereto some Gunpowder was taken out of each of the above 4 Ships, put into 4 Boxes at Portsmouth which were sealed up by some Officers of the Navy and Ordnance, and sent to Town, and...