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How did the Vikings rise from isolated Scandinavians to dominate the seas across Europe and beyond? Historian Dan Snow investigates the cutting edge shipbuilding technology that powered the Vikings' legendary longships and how their mastery of oak and ocean reshaped history. This clip is from The Vikings Uncovered (2016) The 'Cutting Edge' Viking Technology That Changed History | 5:34 BBC Timestamp | 835K subscribers | 27,385 views | May 29, 2025

Australian National Maritime Museum announced that a team of archaeological divers believe they have located the wreck of Koning Willem de Tweede. The 800-ton Dutch merchant sailing vessel was lost in Guichen Bay off South Australia in 1857. The team used marine magnetometry and underwater metal detectors in an area where the ship reportedly went down and were able to identify the ruins of a large ship measuring 460 feet long by 140 feet wide, which match the Dutch vessel's documented dimensions. Components from what appears to be the ship's windlass were also seen protruding from the seafloor and fragments...

Mexican sailors were seen dangling from a navy training vessel's main mast moments after the ship smashed into the Brooklyn Bridge. The sailors had been standing atop the Cuauhtémoc's 150-foot masts in the lead up to the ship striking the iconic structure on Saturday as part of a traditional greeting. The massive Navy vessel, reportedly carrying nearly 300 passengers, hit the iconic New York City bridge, triggering a colossal rescue response and leaving two dead and dozens more severely injured. In multiple eyewitness videos, the towering masts are seen snapping and partially collapsing as they crash into the bridge's deck....

In a discovery that pushes back the timeline of domestic cats in North America, archaeologists have uncovered the earliest known feline remains in the modern-day United States.The find comes from the Emanuel Point II shipwreck, one of the vessels in the doomed 1559 expedition led by Spanish conquistador Tristán de Luna y Arellano. Published in American Antiquity on April 14, the study sheds light not only on the fate of these cats but also on their role in early colonial ventures...In September 1559, a powerful hurricane devastated the Spanish fleet anchored off the nascent settlement of Santa María de Ochuse.Several...

A man who died five centuries ago has emerged as a symbol of something he never could have imagined. Sunday on his social media platform Truth Social, President Donald Trump announced his plan to restore the late-15th-century Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus to his once-lofty perch among the venerated heroes of Western and American history. The announcement served as a welcome sign that the president has not forgotten his promised National Garden of American Heroes. On Jan. 18, 2021, only two days before the end of his first presidential term, Trump issued Executive Order 13978. In Section 3, the president identified...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 🚨BREAKING: President Trump announces he is REINSTATING Columbus Day: “I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes.” 12:50 PM · Apr 27, 2025

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...

Spain led the Holy League to defeat the Ottoman Turkish Navy at the Battle of Lepanto near Corinth, Greece, in 1571. Hilaire Belloc wrote in The Great Heresies (1938): "This violent Mohammedan pressure on Christendom from the East made a bid for success by sea as well as by land. ... The last great Turkish organization working now from the conquered capital of Constantinople, proposed to cross the Adriatic, to attack Italy by sea and ultimately to recover all that had been lost in the Western Mediterranean. ... There was one critical moment when it looked as though the scheme...

At Fort Kochi’s St. Francis Church, history appears to have been buried, forgotten, and dead. “Remembering Vasco da Gama, Portuguese navigator; he arrived in Cochin…where he died and was first buried” is written on a plain blue board at the chapel. The man who found the sea route to India in 1498, revolutionising international trade and cross-cultural contact, passed away on December 24, 1524. In the actual location of his death, amnesia reigns as programmes for the 500th anniversary are underway at Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon, where his ashes were repatriated from Kochi in 1539. Not even a candle is...

The Zuytdorp shipwreck was likely caused by a storm, not navigational errors, according to new research. Flinders University archaeologists analyzed historical and environmental data, showing the crew had sufficient skills to navigate but were overcome by severe weather...The study, published in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology by Flinders University archaeologists Dr. Ruud Stelten and Professor Wendy van Duivenvoorde, examined ship logs, historical maps, navigational practices, and weather patterns of the era to uncover the causes of the wreck.The Zuytdorp is one of four Dutch shipwrecks discovered off the Western Australian coast in the past century, with the Batavia and the...

It's finally done. Over 3 days of hand-plotting 173 years' worth of data. The end result is unbelievable. What an incredible dataset to look at.

The recently discovered shipwreck may have set sail as part of da Gama's final Indian Ocean voyage—a journey which he made a total of four times before his death 500 years ago. Researchers believe it may have been one of around 20 ships part of this excursion: the São Jorge, which was captained by Fernando de Monroy and sank in 1524, making it one of the earliest European shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean. Eight similar Portuguese shipwrecks of similar age have previously been discovered in the area.The discovery of the Portuguese shipwreck was made in Malindi, Kenya, in 2013 by...

Columbus’ lineage unveiled through DNA analysis The centuries-old mystery of Christopher Columbus’ lineage has been solved. Scientists revealed the explorer’s roots after DNA analysis in a documentary aired on Saturday, October 10th on Spanish television. Researchers, led by forensic pathologist Miguel Llorente, examined microscopic samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral. They compared them to those of his known relatives and descendants. The DNA study confirmed that the remains of Christopher Columbus are indeed buried in Seville. Llorente, briefing reporters on the findings, confirmed this. He specifically stated: “Today it became possible to verify with new technologies, definitively confirming the...

Scientists have solved the 500-year-old mystery surrounding Christopher Columbus' final resting place.The team spent 20 years performing a DNA analysis on human bones found buried in Spain's Seville Cathedral, confirming with 'absolute certainty' they belonged to the explorer who died in 1506.For the past two decades, they have been comparing DNA taken from the samples with that of relatives and descendants.The findings come just ahead of the U.S. holiday in his name, this Monday, timed to the second Monday in October each year to commemorate the Italian voyager's Oct. 12, 1492 discovery of the 'New World' for Spain...Columbus' body had...

Was Christopher Columbus born in Genoa, Italy? Most definitely not, say an unlikely collection of experts from European royalty, DNA science, university scholars, even Columbus's own living family. This ground breaking documentary follows a trail of proof to show he might have been much more than we know.Who Was The Real Christopher Columbus? | Secrets and Lies of Christopher Columbus | Timeline

The American scholars continue to be brainwashed by the false name Columbus! Columbus means “pigeon”, but the navigator was no pigeon… In the United States there is an economic conspiracy to continue with the name Columbus because of the many printed books, videos and other paraphernalia worthy in sales many millions of dollars! Like in so many fields of endeavor the TRUTH will come to the surface and eventually will triumph!! Cristóvão Colon was the trade name of the discoverer. His natural name was Salvador Fernandes Zarco, born in the southern Portuguese town of Cuba, son of Isabel Gonsalves Zarco...

The National Endowment for the Arts is helping fund the production of a play about going back in time to kill Christopher Columbus. The agency recently awarded $10,000 to the Borderlands Theater, which views people living near or on the U.S. border as “citizens of the world,” for the production entitled “Shooting Columbus.” “A collaborative effort between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Arizona artists will combine elements from interviews with tribal elders and community members with movement, media, and traditional theater for a site-based, immersive, interactive performance,” according to a grant for the project. “The guest artists are members of the Shooting...

THAT VIKINGS crossed the Atlantic long before Christopher Columbus is well established. Their sagas told of expeditions to the coast of today’s Canada: to Helluland, which scholars have identified as Baffin Island or Labrador; Markland (Labrador or Newfoundland) and Vinland (Newfoundland or a territory farther south). In 1960 the remains of Norse buildings were found on Newfoundland.But there was no evidence to prove that anyone outside northern Europe had heard of America until Columbus’s voyage in 1492. Until now. A paper for the academic journal Terrae Incognitae by Paolo Chiesa, a professor of Medieval Latin Literature at Milan University, reveals...

Five hundred years ago, no one suspected the 16th-century vessel the Nao Victoria would become the stuff of legend. In 1519, a Portuguese consul called the Spanish carrack “very old and patched up” and unfit to even “sail … to the Canaries.” Nevertheless, the Nao Victoria was chosen for a five-ship expedition, crewed by 270 men, that would come to be known as one of the most significant journeys in the history of human exploration. The captain of this unprecedented adventure was Portuguese explorer Fernão de Magalhães, anglicized Ferdinand Magellan. On September 20, 1519, he set sail aboard the flagship...

The discovery of a ship, missing for five centuries, in a southwest African desert, filled with gold coins, is one of the most thrilling archaeological finds in recent times. The Bom Jesus (The Good Jesus) was a Portuguese vessel that set sail from Lisbon, Portugal on Friday, March 7, 1533. Its fate was unknown until 2008 when its remains were discovered in the desert of Namibia during diamond mining operations near the coast of the African nation. When it sank in a fierce storm, it was on its way to India laden with treasures like gold and copper ingots. Two...