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00:00Mysteries can be buried anywhere, under the earth, beneath the sea, or even right under
00:19our own feet.
00:21And when we stumble upon them, sometimes what we find can change history.
00:30Tonight, explosive discoveries from a ticking time bomb underneath our nation's capital.
00:38As he peers down into the hole, he's stunned.
00:42They are panicked.
00:43This is a real World War I mortar shell.
00:47To remnants of a killer asteroid.
00:50From the size of the crater, the asteroid was about twice the size of the superdome, striking
00:56the earth at over 45,000 miles per hour.
01:00The impact was a cataclysmic event.
01:04To a lost weapon of war.
01:06It's loaded with over 270 pounds of high explosives.
01:10In other words, this thing could bring down a small building.
01:14Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.
01:17When fishermen head out to sea, they hope to return with a full net.
01:33But one captain hauls in a catch that might just sink him.
01:38It's October 2022, and Captain Glenn Westcott and his crew are fishing off the coast of Rhode
01:48Island.
01:48It's a family operation, so helping him man the rigging are his son and nephew.
01:53As they haul their catch and drop it on deck, fish are flopping around everywhere.
01:59That's when Captain Glenn notices something unusual.
02:03Mixed with the fish is a large, corroded metal barrel.
02:08But it doesn't look like a normal barrel, like an oil drum.
02:13It's covered with all these bolts and metal plates, and it's really heavy.
02:18The captain's first move is to call the Coast Guard, who then races a boat out to evacuate
02:24the crew.
02:25The Coast Guard quickly realizes that they're in over their head, so they call in the Navy.
02:30When the Navy explosive experts arrive, they lose no time in identifying the threat.
02:36It's a World War II MK-6 depth charge, loaded with 270 pounds of TNT.
02:44It's enough to bring down a small building.
02:46During World War II, depth charges played a vital role, serving as a primary defense
02:54against German U-boats.
02:56After these depth charges roll off the back of a destroyer escort or a frigate, they sink
03:01very rapidly, and when they reach a specific depth, which has been preset by the crew, the
03:07pressure fuse triggers the bomb, and it goes off, and it sends a shockwave, and that shockwave
03:13reaches the enemy submarine hull, and crushes it.
03:17The goal was to sink any submarines lurking in the area.
03:21In some cases, multiple ships would rain down hundreds of depth charges, hoping one of them
03:27will cause the destruction of the U-boat.
03:29Based on where it was found, naval historians believe this particular depth charge was dropped
03:37in one of the final sea battles of the war.
03:40So, in May 1945, a Coast Guard frigate and a Navy destroyer spotted a German submarine, U-853, just two miles off the coast of Rhode Island.
03:51The two American ships unleashed a barrage of 195 depth charges, hoping to sink the sub.
04:00Eventually, the relentless pounding sent the German U-boat to the ocean's floor.
04:05Apparently, not all those depth charges detonated, because here one is, 80 years later, in Captain Glenn's net.
04:15All of those control measures that are in the depth charge to keep it from going off have all corroded.
04:20It really could go off at any minute.
04:22So, the Navy works with the Coast Guard to set up a perimeter to ensure that nobody gets too close.
04:27The Navy carefully removes this from the fishing boat.
04:31They take it out to sea.
04:32They're a mile offshore.
04:33They put other explosives around it, and they detonate it.
04:38And as an explosion, bystanders said they could feel on the shore.
04:44I know fishermen are full of tall tales about the one that got away.
04:47But in this case, I'm sure that Captain Glenn and his crew were happy to let this one go.
04:51The ocean floor isn't the only place that World War II left behind a few surprises.
04:59Just ask the kids who uncovered something just as shocking on a beach a decade earlier.
05:05In May of 2008, two nine-year-old boys are playing on the sands of Ovig Beach in Denmark on a family vacation.
05:17They're jumping in the water, running around, and they're having a great time.
05:20One of the boys spots something near a bluff.
05:24It looks like a bucket sticking out of the sand, so he runs over to check it out.
05:29But when he gets there, he finds something even more interesting.
05:34Buried in the sand next to the bucket is what appears to be a metal door with concrete around it.
05:41They clear the sand from around the door and pry it open.
05:46When they peek in, they discover something amazing and horrifying.
05:56This is a concrete room that's about 200 square feet, and it's filled with beds, uniforms, and military equipment.
06:03They even find that some of the equipment is marked with a swastika.
06:07The authorities finally arrive and call in archaeologists, who confirm what the locals already suspect.
06:15They found a long-lost Nazi bunker from World War II.
06:20In the early days of the war, German forces invade Denmark.
06:25But the Danish military is no match for the Nazi war machine, and the country quickly falls.
06:32The Germans then spend the rest of the war fortifying Denmark's western shoreline.
06:37These bunkers are part of a broader system that Germany builds during World War II that consists of over 7,000 bunkers and fighting positions that stretch from Norway all the way to the Franco-Spanish border.
06:48It's designed to defend their conquered territory from a counterattack by the Allies.
06:53The project is known as the Atlantic Wall.
06:56The scale is staggering.
06:58It takes over 300,000 workers to build these bunkers.
07:03They use over 700 million cubic feet of concrete and over a million tons of steel.
07:10The Danish bunkers are designed to hold out against anything the Allies can hit them with.
07:15They have six-foot-thick walls to stop bomb blasts, mortars, and gunfire.
07:23With thousands of such bunkers and fighting positions along the Danish coast, archaeologists are convinced that there could be more hidden by sand dunes.
07:31So they start searching.
07:33Sure enough, nearby, they find two more bunkers poking out of the sand.
07:40These things have been buried out of sight for nearly 70 years, and now suddenly they found three of them.
07:47What's really amazing is that the inside of these bunkers, they're like time capsules, untouched since the end of the Second World War.
07:53They find boots, socks, underwear, Hitler postage stamps, soda bottles, mustard.
08:02They even find half-finished bottles of schnapps and a pipe with tobacco still in it.
08:07What they don't find are any bodies or remains of German soldiers.
08:13When the war ended with the German surrender on May 8th, 1945, the soldiers inside these positions simply walked out, closed the doors, walked to the nearest town, and surrendered.
08:25Soon after, many of the bunkers were looted and stripped, but some were never discovered until now.
08:32In the end, all of the items inside are preserved and sent to a museum.
08:36And the bunkers themselves, although once hidden, are now preserved and open to the public.
08:42They attract thousands of visitors every year.
08:50When you're digging in your yard, you have to be careful.
08:54You could hit a pipe, sprinkler line, or if you're really unlucky, something much more dangerous.
09:01In 1993, in the Spring Valley section of Washington, D.C., a construction crew was preparing to dig a trench.
09:11They're surrounded by some of the fanciest houses in D.C., the kind of place where your next-door neighbor might be a U.S. senator or an ambassador.
09:20A backhoe operator fires up his engine and begins digging.
09:23Suddenly, the bucket on his backhoe hits something and makes a large clang.
09:27He climbs out of the machine to go down and have a closer look.
09:32As he peers down into the hole, he's stunned.
09:36What he's hit isn't a rock, and it looks pretty alarming.
09:40It's metal and shaped like a foot-long bullet.
09:44They are panning, so the crew calls the fire department.
09:48When they see it, they panic and call the cops.
09:50And yes, the cops also panic, so they call the bomb squad.
09:53But the bomb squad confirms that this is a real World War I mortar shell.
10:01Concerned there could be more bombs buried nearby, the authorities carefully search the rest of the area.
10:09They find dozens more of these mortar shells.
10:12Of course, they immediately evacuate 25 of the surrounding homes, and they call in the army to try to get a handle on the situation.
10:19Even though these shells are old and corroded, they're still alive, therefore still dangerous.
10:25So they could explode.
10:27When the army arrives, they start carefully removing these shells, and within a few days, they've uncovered 140 of these.
10:36However, what looks like standard ammunition hides an even deadlier secret.
10:41These shells were not designed to kill and maim through fragmentation.
10:45It's worse than that because this site used to be home to a U.S. Army chemical weapons depot.
10:53Inside of these shells are some of the deadliest chemical compounds known to humankind.
10:59World War I broke out in 1914, and it was the first war that started since the Industrial Revolution.
11:06A lot of new weapons were being tried out for the first time, and one of the worst of these was chemical weapons.
11:13Highly poisonous compounds like mustard gas were loaded into shells and fired at the enemy.
11:18When they hit, they'd unleash a cloud of death.
11:23They would burn and blister flesh, destroy soldiers' lungs, cause blindness, and often they'd lead to an excruciating, painful death.
11:31In 1917, as the United States is preparing to intervene in the First World War, it establishes a chemical weapons service in the U.S. Army.
11:43The new U.S. Army Chemical Service enters into an agreement with the new American University, and together they establish this facility called Camp Leach.
11:52There they tested chemicals on soldiers' skin, tried out new designs of gas masks, and they developed toxic chemical compounds, loaded them into mortars, and fired them there right on site.
12:06But before the new weapons could be sent to the front, Germany surrendered and the war was over.
12:12Camp Leach was shut down, they dug pits in the ground, stuffed the chemical weapons in, and just buried them.
12:18At the time, the military thought, these chemicals would dissipate on their own.
12:23So no one really thought much when 10 years later, 1928, the ground was turned over to developers to build what would become this ritzy neighborhood.
12:33Now, seven decades later, these canisters remain just as lethal as the day they were buried, making this wealthy neighborhood a dangerous minefield.
12:45The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and several private hazardous waste disposal companies have been working to try to bring this problem under control.
12:54But the problem keeps getting bigger and bigger.
12:57They'll clean up one burial site of former World War I chemical weapons and then immediately find another one.
13:03The Spring Valley site is about 661 acres of land and nearly 1,600 private homes, several embassies, and American universities sit atop this collection of toxic chemicals.
13:16In the end, it takes the government nearly 30 years and 250 million dollars to clean up the mess.
13:24They remove over 1,000 military shells filled with the deadliest chemicals and poisons man has ever developed.
13:31And yes, today they say they think they've got it all.
13:34But honestly, if I were buying a house, I'd be looking for a discount.
13:37Next up, another war era surprise washes up on the shores of Normandy, just in time for its close-up.
13:48In 1961, a film crew is clearing the beaches where the historic D-Day landing site occurred in Normandy, France.
13:59They're prepping to start filming their own World War II epic film called The Longest Day, starring none other than the duke himself, John Wayne.
14:08Before the cameras can start rolling, the beach has a lot of debris on it. It's got to be cleaned up.
14:13As they coat the sand, they uncover what at first looks like a random piece of metal.
14:18But as they begin to clear the sand away from it, it gets bigger and bigger.
14:23They at first think they've uncovered some kind of vehicle, maybe a jeep.
14:28They keep digging, and it becomes pretty clear that this thing, it's way bigger than a jeep.
14:33It is a buried, full-size tank.
14:38The film's military advisors quickly identify the machine.
14:43It's a vintage World War II Sherman tank used by the Americans on the D-Day landing beaches 17 years earlier.
14:52On June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 Allied soldiers crossed the English Channel and landed on the Normandy beaches.
15:02This was a coordinated attack along 50 miles of German-controlled and fortified coastline, and it turned out to be one of the bloodiest battles of the war.
15:10One of the reasons that it was so difficult for Americans was because that initial wave was also supposed to include 64 Sherman tanks.
15:20The tanks were supposed to provide cover, lay down fire, and then roll over German fortifications.
15:27Unfortunately, nearly half of the tank fleet sunk in the rough waters of the English Channel before they reached Normandy.
15:37While this particular tank was lucky enough to make it to the shore, it quickly ran into another problem.
15:44The film's military advisors think that the tank may have broken down not long after it made it to the beach and that it was left behind during the Allied advance.
15:53Eventually, it sank into the sand, where, in the end, it was covered by a dune.
16:00But it turns out to be a fortunate find for the producers of The Longest Day.
16:04They're desperately looking for period-accurate props for the movie, so when they find the tank, they're ecstatic.
16:10The film crew refurbishes the tank, slaps on a fresh coat of paint, and gives it a role in the D-Day sequence of the movie.
16:17And that's how a lost, forgotten relic turned into a motion picture star.
16:23Sure, home improvement projects often come with surprises.
16:34But for one couple in France, what was hidden in their wall was no mold or mouse nest.
16:44In 2017, in France's Burgundy region, a couple is remodeling their home.
16:51And as they're doing so, they pull down the drywall, and in one area of the house, they see that there's something hidden inside.
17:03As it turns out, the object is an old pistol.
17:05They pull it out of the wall, and they're shocked to see there's another gun behind it, then another, and then a submachine gun.
17:16By the time they're done, the couple has pulled out three Sten submachine guns, three pistols, over a dozen live hand grenades, and a thousand rounds of ammunition.
17:29The biggest mystery is that two of the machine guns have names engraved on them, Peppette and Alice.
17:36The couple contact a local military museum who date the weapons back to World War II.
17:44Turns out, at the same time, French resistance leader Armand Simonot was living in the house.
17:50The French resistance was a paramilitary unit waging guerrilla warfare against the German occupation.
17:57It started as a scattered and loosely organized group, but by 1943, French General Charles de Gaulle was coordinating the activities of multiple factions from exile in England.
18:09The French resistance blew up rail lines, sabotaged supply routes, rescued downed allied pilots, and by 1944, they grew into a 400,000-strong force that was a major thorn in Germany's side.
18:28Among them, the well-armed commander Armand Simonot.
18:32It's clear that Simonot hid these weapons in his house from prying eyes or to keep them close in case the enemy came knocking.
18:40When he died, the secret died with him, and it wasn't unearthed until a sledgehammer hit the wall.
18:49It still leaves one question. Who were Peppette and Alice?
18:53Researchers wonder, were Peppette and Alice fighters, or were these just simply nicknames that people gave to the guns?
19:00Fortunately, the couple that found these items understood their historical significance.
19:06They donate them to a local museum, and they remain on display as a testament to the courage and the sacrifice of the French resistance.
19:18Finding an arsenal hidden in your wall is pretty wild, but that's child's play compared to what's found at one playground.
19:30On January 14, 2025, a crew is hard at work expanding a children's park in Northumberland, England.
19:39They're adding things like a balance beam and a net bridge, and they have to clear the land and lay foundations to install those.
19:46As they dig, one of the workers strikes something solid, and it rings out with a clang.
19:55Work grinds to a halt as the rest of the crew comes over to take a look at this partially exposed object.
20:01As they clear away more dirt, a shape comes into view that stops them cold.
20:06It's a bomb.
20:11It's a foot long with a conical shape and what looks like a fuse at one end.
20:16The first call goes to the local police, and within minutes, the bomb squad is on site.
20:24The experts quickly identify it as a British World War II era bomb.
20:29It's not big.
20:30It's only 10 pounds, so it's quite a bit smaller than most World War II bombs.
20:34But with a live fuse and an intact charge, it's still lethal.
20:40Authorities evacuate the entire park.
20:43Local officials bring in a private bomb disposal company for what they expect will be a couple of days of searching the site to make sure there are no more explosives.
20:51It soon becomes clear that this is a much bigger job than they expected.
20:56By the end of the first day, they've uncovered 65 more bombs.
21:02The next day, they find 90 more.
21:05Altogether, they remove 176 bombs and smoke devices.
21:10The real mystery isn't just how many bombs there are.
21:15It's why they're here in the first place.
21:18It turns out this playground was sitting on what used to be a British Home Guard training site.
21:24These are specialized training munitions that were called practice bombs.
21:28Don't be fooled by the name. Practice does not mean harmless.
21:33These bombs have a smaller explosive charge than regular ordnance, but they can still explode.
21:39And when they do, they can kill.
21:41These bombs are used in training exercises where the bomb is dropped over a target.
21:46When it strikes the ground, it can either produce smoke or a visible flash that allows the trainee to ascertain whether or not they hit the target.
21:56During World War II, the Home Guard was a last line of defense.
22:00A citizen militia trained to fight in case the Nazis invaded.
22:03But the German invasion never occurs.
22:07And then in the aftermath of the war, the practice bombs that were located there were not carefully dealt with.
22:13They were simply buried under the training grounds and forgotten about until now.
22:18Until authorities are confident that every bomb has been found, the playground in Northumberland remains closed.
22:25But when they are able to safely reopen, there's no doubt the kids will have a real blast.
22:37Some explosions don't impact cities or battlefields.
22:42They ripple through space.
22:44And on one quiet night in 2016, an amateur stargazer catches something no one has ever seen before.
22:55One night in September 2016, Victor Buzo is outside taking pictures with his new camera.
23:02When he gets a cool idea, he attaches the camera to his 16-inch telescope to try to take some pictures of the stars.
23:11After searching around for something interesting to shoot, he spots what appears to be a distant, spiral-shaped galaxy.
23:18Victor sets the camera to take a sequence of images, each with a 20-second exposure.
23:27He waits for the camera to click, and then he checks to see how each photograph turned out.
23:32The images turn out about how he was expecting.
23:36Some great images of the spiral-shaped galaxy.
23:41Cool, but ultimately unexceptional.
23:44But then, in one of the last photos, he sees something strange.
23:48A bright dot of light suddenly appears in the galaxy.
23:55But what's even weirder is that the dot of light gets brighter and brighter in subsequent images.
24:02Victor thinks he's captured something interesting, but he's not really sure what it could be.
24:07So he posts the pictures on an astronomer's message board,
24:11where they catch the attention of some Argentinian astronomers.
24:14They immediately freak out.
24:18It turns out that Victor Busso has captured something that no one has ever imaged before.
24:24One of the holy grails of astronomy.
24:31It's a supernova event taking place over 60 million light-years away.
24:36A supernova occurs when a very massive star, which is essentially a nuclear furnace, runs out of fuel.
24:44In that case, the outer layers of the star collapse inward, crushing the supernova down onto the core.
24:51A shockwave goes through the entire thing, and that triggers the biggest explosions in the universe.
24:57When a supernova blows, it destroys everything in its solar system.
25:03All the moons, all the planets, everything.
25:06The blast is so powerful, it can affect planets and other star systems light-years away.
25:13Victor's incredible photos give scientists their first visual evidence that many of their theories about supernovas are correct.
25:25It's one thing to think you know how something happens.
25:28It's another to see it with your own eyes.
25:30It just happened to be pointed in the right place to capture a star that burned for billions of years
25:39at the exact moment that flash of light hit planet Earth.
25:45As proof, you just never know what you might find the next time you look up into the night sky.
25:54Not all evidence of huge space explosions come from above.
25:59Sometimes, it's hidden far beneath the waves.
26:06In 2017, engineers are exploring the seafloor off the coast of Guinea in West Africa.
26:14They work for a company that's looking for offshore oil deposits,
26:17and they use sound waves to create a map of the Earth deep underground.
26:23When Dr. Louis D. Nicholson starts breaking down their data,
26:26he notices something strange, and it has nothing to do with oil.
26:32About 3,000 feet beneath the ocean's surface,
26:35there appears to be a small ridgeline or mountain range.
26:41What's strange is that it doesn't fit with the known geology of the region.
26:45As he expands his search, Nicholson realizes this odd geological feature stretches nearly five miles,
26:54and it's in the shape of a circle.
26:58He's looking at a massive, round ridge, and in the center appears to be a mountain.
27:05He also sees that outside of this ring is debris that looks like it's been blown out of the center in all directions.
27:13Nicholson has an aha moment, because he's seen this type of formation before.
27:19It's the site of a massive meteorite crater.
27:22News spreads in the scientific community about the discovery, which becomes known as the Nader Crater.
27:29From the size of the crater, astronomers are able to calculate that the asteroid that created it was about 1,500 feet wide.
27:38That's an object twice the size of the superdome in New Orleans,
27:42striking the Earth at over 45,000 miles per hour.
27:45Upon impact, it would have created a tsunami 2,600 feet high.
27:54That's a wall of water twice the height of the Empire State Building,
27:58crashing upon the Atlantic coast, wreaking complete heaven.
28:02But the real surprise comes when scientists date samples from the impact zone.
28:09It turns out that this asteroid struck 66 million years ago,
28:13and that catches everyone by surprise,
28:16because there was another very well-known asteroid that also struck around the same time.
28:22That asteroid was called Chicxulub, and its impact is credited with wiping out the dinosaurs.
28:28That asteroid was between 6 and 9 miles wide, which is wider than the island of Manhattan.
28:35It left a 124-mile crater under the Yucatan Peninsula,
28:40and it blackened the skies with ash and debris,
28:43triggering global fires and wiping out 75% of all life on Earth.
28:49So the discovery of the Nader Crater led to the question,
28:55was the extinction event due to two asteroids at once, like a one-two punch?
29:01Or is the Nader Crater a completely separate event a few hundred years before or after the Chicxulub impact?
29:10Until scientific dating methods are more precise, we'll likely never know.
29:15Either way, the impact was still a cataclysmic event of the magnitude
29:22that we certainly wouldn't want to experience in our lifetimes.
29:32It started as a search for something ordinary, water.
29:37But what surfaced was anything but.
29:40In 1709, in the town of Racina, Italy,
29:46a group of workers is digging a well for a monastery.
29:51When they get about 50 feet down, they strike something hard.
29:55It appears to be a man-made wall, five stories underground.
30:01They decide to break off some pieces so they can show them to the local Prince of Lorraine, Emmanuel Maurice.
30:10The Prince examines the stone and identifies it as marble.
30:15This gets the Prince thinking.
30:17If there's a marble wall down there, then maybe there are more treasures to be found as well.
30:22He orders some crews to dig a tunnel.
30:26When they do, they find that the wall is part of an entire buried building and it's stuffed with ancient artifacts.
30:34These incredible finds are buried under several feet of solid stone that the workers have trouble cutting through.
30:44Eventually, it becomes too difficult and they give up.
30:47The site lays undisturbed for nearly 30 years until King Charles VII of Naples hears about the mysterious underground structure.
30:58Charles hires military engineers to conduct a proper excavation.
31:03As the king's engineers restart the dig, they realize that this discovery goes way beyond marble walls and statues.
31:10First, they find more rooms in the uncovered building.
31:16Then, they discover more buildings.
31:19And soon, they realize what they found is incredible.
31:24An entire city buried underground.
31:29There are city streets, beautiful frescoes, bronze sculptures, ornate jewelry, and even statues of Roman emperors.
31:39Clearly, this is a city of wealth and importance.
31:44It's a stunning discovery.
31:46So experts scramble to figure out what city it could be.
31:50They scour ancient records and texts trying to put some clues together.
31:55And eventually, scholars realize that this is the long-lost city of Herculaneum.
32:02Herculaneum was the exclusive seaside retreat of luxurious houses for the Roman elite.
32:07Think of it as the Hamptons of ancient Rome.
32:10But this paradise turned into hell.
32:14In the year 79 AD, the nearby volcano, Mount Vesuvius, erupted.
32:19This is the same eruption that famously buried the nearby city of Pompeii.
32:24The cities were struck by a wall of 750-degree superheated gas, rock, mud, and ash.
32:34Within five minutes, the entire city was buried under volcanic tuff.
32:39Ironically, the same searing heat that brought devastation also preserved items from the past.
32:49Wood, textiles, loaves of bread, even human waste were instantly cooked by the intense heat, preserving their shapes in a kind of charcoal.
33:01It's a process that's called carbonization.
33:04And many items look exactly like they did on the day of this disaster.
33:10What archaeologists don't find are any human remains.
33:14Then, in the 1980s, archaeologists discover 300 human skeletons packed together in a boathouse.
33:22They speculate that these were residents trying to escape the eruption by sea, but they didn't make it.
33:31The extreme heat was so intense that it burned away flesh and violently contorted bodies in an instant.
33:38All that's left are twisted skeletons, all piled together, frozen in their final moments.
33:45While much of Pompeii has been uncovered, it's estimated less than a third of Herculaneum has been explored.
33:53Considering what has already been found, there are surely more discoveries to be made in this unique and tragic archaeological site.
34:05Not all blasts bury history. Sometimes they reveal it.
34:10In 1954, workers are clearing out and rebuilding an area of Walbrook Square in East London.
34:21The city as a whole is basically still recovering and rebuilding from the massive amount of damage inflicted upon it by German bombers during the Blitz of World War II.
34:31As the workers are digging test wells in preparation for construction, they hit something long and flat.
34:41It doesn't look like a slab of rock or part of the rubble, so the workers are confused.
34:48What they've struck isn't a World War II casualty. It's something much older.
34:53So the workers call over an archaeologist to take a closer look.
34:5721 feet down lies what looks like a pinkish-gray mortar floor.
35:06They continue the excavation and expose more of the foundation.
35:10What they find is a floor that's roughly 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, a perfectly rectangular chamber buried below ground
35:23with the remnants of pillars that must have stretched all the way up to the ceiling.
35:28Then they start finding amazing artifacts, sculptures and statues.
35:36There's a bust of the goddess Minerva.
35:39There's a statue of the god Mercury seated next to a ram.
35:43They begin to put two and two together and realize this isn't just some random assortment of relics.
35:48This is some kind of temple or a shrine.
35:51They feel it most likely dates back to the Roman origins of the city when it was still called Londinium.
35:57But beyond that, the archaeologists are mystified.
36:01Then, on the last day of their excavation, the team makes a critical discovery.
36:09It's another bust, this time of a man wearing a special hat known as a Phrygian cap.
36:16The archaeologists know this particular image very well.
36:21It's the Roman god Mithras.
36:22Mithras was originally a Persian god that was adopted by Roman soldiers in the 2nd or 3rd century.
36:31He became sort of a patron saint to them, representing loyalty, strength and secrecy.
36:37In fact, he was so revered that his followers sort of built a secret society around him.
36:44Followers traveled all throughout Europe and they built hidden temples called Mithraeums
36:49where they could worship in secret.
36:52We do know that only men were allowed inside to worship Mithras,
36:56but beyond that, it's mostly a mystery.
37:00Despite the mystery, archaeologists date the site to 240 A.D.
37:05and they turn it into a museum.
37:08As many as 30,000 people come out and wait for hours just to see the site.
37:14This temple stands once again and the mystery and intrigue of Mithras lives on.
37:22Imagine your life's work going up in flames.
37:29But when you return to assess the damage, you find an even bigger mystery.
37:35That's just what happened to one researcher in Wyoming.
37:39In 2003, Wyoming state archaeologist Dan Eakin is researching wooden animal traps
37:50left behind by the indigenous Shoshone people.
37:53On one summer day, he's watching uneasily as storm clouds gather over the forest.
37:59Sure enough, within moments, lightning strikes and trees erupt in flames.
38:08Over the next few days, this fire burns over 11,000 acres of the Shoshone National Forest.
38:17Dan is devastated because he really believes that all these wooden traps that he's been looking at
38:22and any other sort of artifact would have perished in this kind of a blaze.
38:28As soon as authorities give the all clear to re-enter the forest,
38:33he goes in and tries to survey the damage.
38:36The devastation is even worse than he had initially feared.
38:40The fire had burned through nearly all the trees and brush,
38:44leaving behind only smoldering earth.
38:47And the ancient wooden traps he's dedicated his entire career to are nearly all wiped out.
38:54But as Eakin surveys the charred grounds, something catches his eye.
39:02Scattered on the smoldering earth are hundreds of ancient-looking artifacts.
39:07There are arrowheads, flint tools, glass beads, and ceramics.
39:13Eakin recognizes that these are Native American items.
39:18But he's stunned to suddenly find so many where none had been noticed before.
39:25He contacts some fellow archaeologists, and soon they're combing all over the fire zone.
39:31What they uncover is staggering.
39:35Thousands of artifacts, from bone knives to metal tools.
39:40They find a tri-notched projectile point, once used for a spear,
39:46and the remains of indigenous lodges.
39:50Now what's really extraordinary about this is that these objects weren't just placed there anew.
39:57What has happened is that the fire has burned all of the underbrush.
40:01And what it did is reveal centuries-old artifacts that have been lying there the entire time.
40:09This accidental discovery is just the beginning.
40:14With each wildfire season, more artifacts emerge.
40:18Some date to just after the last Ice Age.
40:20Even more surprising, metal artifacts were found at the site.
40:24This means once Europeans came on the scene, locals were trading with them much earlier and more widely than previously thought.
40:33In all, over 600 previously unknown sites have been revealed, leading to the discovery of more than 160,000 artifacts.
40:42The finds are remarkable, but once uncovered, these relics face a new challenge, staying intact.
40:52They can be washed away by rain, trampled by wildlife, and stolen by looters looking to make a buck.
40:58So it's ironic that these destructive wildfires have revealed these lost artifacts.
41:04But now, researchers are in a race against man and nature to catalog them as quickly as they can, before they are lost once more.
41:16Whether it's an explosive asteroid from the heavens, or a fiery eruption that covers an ancient city,
41:23these blasts from the past left an unforgettable mark.
41:28I'm Danny Trejo.
41:29Thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.
41:34I'm Danny Trejo.
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