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00:00Mysteries can be buried anywhere, under the earth, beneath the sea, or even right under
00:14our own feet. And when we stumble upon them, sometimes what we find can change history.
00:24Tonight, famous discoveries from a missing masterpiece.
00:32Out of nowhere, members of the media begin calling Susan, asking, where did you find it?
00:37And most importantly, did she know what she had?
00:40To an incredible national treasure.
00:43As the appraiser starts reading, some familiar words start to jump out at them.
00:48But there's more, because at the bottom there's a signature.
00:51To one of the most famous lost ships of all time.
00:56This is the holy grail of found shipwrecks.
01:00People have been searching for it for over 70 years.
01:04Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.
01:08We've all done it, borrowed a book and forgot to return it.
01:22For one family, this slip up leads to finding a long lost literary treasure.
01:29In 1990, Barbara Testa is going through some old boxes and bags in her attic.
01:39As she digs and rummages through the clutter, she comes across some old family letters and
01:44some of her grandmother's handwritten poems in an old steamer trunk.
01:48It's a sentimental and nostalgic trip through family history.
01:53But then Barbara pauses.
01:56Tucked between the familiar stories and memories are pages in a handwriting she doesn't recognize.
02:03As she's reading the pages, they appear to be a part of a manuscript and the words are becoming more and more familiar.
02:11Right is right and wrong is wrong.
02:14And a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better.
02:19Barbara's uncovered a handwritten manuscript of Mark Twain's masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
02:28Barbara reaches out to Sotheby's who sends an armored truck to her home to collect the book.
02:37Sotheby's works with the Mark Twain papers project at UC Berkeley.
02:41They compare the handwriting, style and structure to other authenticated Mark Twain manuscripts.
02:48Sure enough, the handwriting matches perfectly.
02:51But there's a twist.
02:53It's only half the book.
02:55The rest is missing.
02:57So how did this part end up in Barbara's attic?
03:00And where's the rest?
03:02Barbara tells the researchers that her grandfather, James Fraser Gluck, was the curator of a library in Buffalo, New York.
03:10And the man was a zealous collector.
03:13He was collecting manuscripts from some of the world's most famous writers.
03:17People like Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott.
03:20And everything he collected, he donated to the library.
03:24Researchers discovered that, back in the mid-1880s, Gluck had contacted Samuel L. Clements, better known as Mark Twain, requesting the manuscript for his collection.
03:37Twain, who was a former resident of Buffalo, New York, agreed to send Gluck the handwritten manuscript of a Huckleberry Finn.
03:43But he only finds the second half of the book.
03:46So that's what he sends over to Gluck, which remains in the library to this day.
03:50And that's where the story is thought to end.
03:53But it turns out, in 1887, unbeknownst to everybody, Twain did find the first half and he sent it to Gluck.
04:01Except for some reason, it never makes it into the Buffalo Library's collection to join the second half of the book.
04:08We do know that Gluck died suddenly in 1897 and the whereabouts of the manuscript were unknown.
04:16It's not until Barbara's discovery, over 100 years later, that the lost half is found.
04:22One rare book collector calls it the greatest literary find of the 20th century.
04:28Twain lovers are ecstatic.
04:30And so are Barbara and her sister, who plan on auctioning it off to make a pretty penny.
04:36But before the bidding even starts, they get a notice from the Buffalo Public Library, claiming they own the rights to Barbara's half of the manuscript.
04:46While Barbara wants to sell the book, the library wants to keep it with the other half in their collection.
04:53After some legal back and forth, the two sides finally reach a deal.
04:57Barbara and her sister get a finder's fee of $1 million,
05:01and the library promises to put Twain's complete manuscript on display just as her grandfather intended.
05:07So all in all, everybody ends up getting what they want, 114 years later.
05:12Meanwhile, another crew isn't digging through paper.
05:17They're pulling something far stranger from the ground.
05:24It's 1872 in Los Angeles, and Major Henry Hancock has set up an operation quarrying natural asphalt from his property.
05:37Large pools of the black, sticky liquid are all over his ranch, near the surface.
05:43And there's a big demand for the substance right now.
05:45It's needed to pave roads, tar roofs.
05:48Los Angeles, at this time, is a growing city.
05:54But as workers start digging out the tar, they come across a large bone.
05:59Then they find another, then dozens, then hundreds, then thousands.
06:07This land used to be a Spanish ranchero, so people first assume that these are the remains of cattle or horses that accidentally stumbled into the tar.
06:19Hancock wants to know just what is going on, so he calls his geologist friend named William Denton to come and take a look.
06:27Denton looks at many of the fossil bones and starts to realize they're too large, not shaped correctly for cattle at all.
06:35Denton also finds a very large fossilized tooth, much bigger than any mountain lion or other cat native to the area.
06:47After further research, he determines that the tooth fossil comes from a saber-toothed cat that went extinct in this area over 9,000 years ago.
06:57The discovery is fascinating, and it's just the beginning.
07:01Over the years, more massive bones are unearthed.
07:05Then, in 1901, a geologist named W.W. Orcut takes over, and he's determined to find even more.
07:15He sets up a major excavation and research operation to remove and catalog the thousands of bones that are still being pulled from the asphalt.
07:25Orcut and his team find skeletons from thousands of different species, all from the Pleistocene Epoch between 10 and 40,000 years ago.
07:35These include mammoths, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, and other massive megafauna that ruled the world during the Ice Age.
07:46The area eventually gets named the La Brea Tar Pits, and it's a gold mine, one of the biggest deposits of prehistoric bones in the world.
07:56But how did so many end up in one spot?
08:00Researchers believe that animals were lured to the area to drink from nearby streams and then would get trapped in the black, sticky substance.
08:09Researchers have even found bones from entire families, meaning they obviously got caught together and perished in this tarry trap.
08:18Exploration of the area continues for decades. Then, in 2006, another project stirs up something brand new.
08:28The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, next door to the La Brea Tar Pits, decides that they want to build an underground parking garage.
08:37They bring in these cranes and heavy earthmovers to begin the task, and as soon as they do, what do they find?
08:44But, you guessed it, more bones.
08:48All together, the workers uncover 16 new fossil deposits.
08:54But by far, the most important discovery is an 80% intact adult mammoth skeleton.
09:01This is the most complete set of mammoth remains to come out of the tar pits, and one of the most complete adult specimens ever found anywhere in the world.
09:11The animal is given the affectionate name Zed.
09:15Researchers determined that he died around the age of 48, nearly 37,000 years in the past, probably from injuries sustained fighting over a mate.
09:25Today, you can go see Zed at the La Brea Tar Pit Museum, one of the most famous natural sites in Los Angeles,
09:32and one that attracts around 400,000 visitors every year.
09:41Antiques, old clothes, dusty heirlooms.
09:44That's all one woman thought she'd find cleaning out her dad's house.
09:48But what she had covered turns out to be worth far more than just memories.
09:53It's 2004 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Susan Hendry Chirot is going through the belongings of her late father, Basil Hendry Sr.
10:04They're going through antiques and old clothing and some religious artwork that he had collected.
10:11Susan keeps a few paintings that have sentimental value and then assigns the rest to a pile that she's willing to sell, including a dark, old, gloomy painting of Jesus Christ.
10:26So a year passes and Susan finally gets around to having these paintings appraised.
10:31The appraiser isn't really blown away by any of them, but he thinks that that one of Jesus could maybe get $750 from the right collector.
10:39The piece has been heavily overpainted, maybe even multiple times.
10:45It looks almost cartoonish.
10:47Plus, the painting's condition is deteriorating, so Susan is eager to get rid of it and she puts it up for auction.
10:54When the painting hits the auction floor, something happens that shocks everyone.
11:00The bidding starts low, but several paddles go up, blasting past the $750 mark.
11:08They start going above $2,000, $3,000, and eventually this painting sells for roughly $10,000.
11:18$10,000 isn't going to change her life, but it's certainly a lot more than she'd hoped to get from cleaning out some of the old family belongings.
11:25So Susan pockets the money and she really doesn't think much more about it.
11:28A few years later, Susan's phone starts ringing off the hook.
11:34Out of nowhere, members of the media began calling Susan, asking her about this Jesus painting that she sold at auction.
11:41They asked, where did you find it? Where did it come from?
11:44And most importantly, did she know what she had?
11:48To most, it looked like just another old painting.
11:51But as the new owners embark on a skilled restoration, a very different story comes to light.
11:58As they clean it up and remove the dark layers of paint on the surface, a new, different image starts to be revealed.
12:09The group takes infrared photographs to get a better look at this image that's peeking through.
12:14They see what's called a pentamento, which is basically a tracing of an earlier piece.
12:19There's a version underneath the painting where Jesus's thumb is straight instead of in a curved position.
12:27Based on this, the new owners believe they've uncovered a lost work from one of the most famous artists of all time, Leonardo da Vinci.
12:38As it's carefully restored, the piece becomes easily recognizable as a missing da Vinci known as Salvatore Mundi, which translates to the savior of the world.
12:48The revelation sparks a flurry of headlines.
12:52How did such an important work of art end up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana?
12:57Susan believes that her father acquired the painting from her Aunt Millie, but no one ever mentioned that this painting was anything overtly special.
13:09With little to go on, experts dig deeper to better connect the dots.
13:15Researchers tracked down records from a Sotheby's auction in 1958 featuring the estate of James Cook, the grandson of famous British art collector, Sir Francis Cook.
13:27Sure enough, there's a record of Aunt Millie buying this painting for 45 pounds, roughly 120 bucks.
13:35Once it's fully restored, the Salvatore Mundi goes back up for auction in 2017.
13:44This time, a member of the Saudi royal family buys it at auction for $450 million, making this, once discarded painting, the most valuable piece of art in world history.
14:02You'd think if you were spending almost half a billion dollars on a painting, you'd want to show it off.
14:09But nobody's seen it since the sale.
14:11The rumor is that it is in a high security vault somewhere in Switzerland.
14:17And with the history of the Salvador Mundi of appearing and disappearing, we may never see it again.
14:23Or maybe we will.
14:26In 2012, another revered piece of history falls into one woman's lap.
14:39Marie Malciotti, who is a book conservation technician at Brown University's library, is going through a recent donation from the estate of Solomon Drown, who graduated from Brown in the year 1773.
14:53And while going through a book that was published in 1811, called The Modern Practice of Physics, she finds something unusual.
15:03A little slip of paper is tucked in the back.
15:06She carefully unfolds the paper, and she sees a depiction of Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist.
15:12But at the bottom, she notices an inscription that says, P. Revere Sculp.
15:19Malciotti can't believe her eyes.
15:22She knows that Sculp, in a signature, stands for Sculpsit, which is Latin for, he engraved it.
15:28And she sees the name P. Revere.
15:31So she started thinking to herself, there's no way that this could be THE Paul Revere from the Revolutionary War.
15:40Most Americans know from school that in April 1775, Paul Revere was responsible for warning the colonists that the British military was on their way.
15:50Less well known is the fact that before he became a celebrated patriot, Revere made copperplate engravings for books and magazines.
16:01Arguably, his most famous engraving was the Boston Massacre in 1770, which was used as a key piece of propaganda for the American Revolutionary War effort.
16:13But this piece is a little different. This etching is of a religious nature.
16:18It depicts Jesus being fully submerged in the Jordan River by John the Baptist.
16:23The piece is titled, Buried with Him by Baptism.
16:28For more insight, Malciotti brings the etching to Richard Noble, the Brown University Library's rare material cataloger.
16:37Noble first examines the paper itself. He holds the paper up to the light and he sees a ribbed structure, which is a telltale sign of 18th century paper.
16:47Then, Noble moves on to his next area of focus, looking at who Solomon Drowned actually was.
16:54The alumnus who owned that collection of books, it turns out that he was a contemporary of Revere's.
17:02So, the age of the books, as well as the etching, they both line up.
17:07Finally, Noble discovers that there are actually four other copies of this etching attributed to Paul Revere.
17:14So, he calls the American Antiquarian Society and the Worcester Art Museum to have this copy compared to the others.
17:21Sure enough, they're a match. So, it's an authentic Paul Revere etching.
17:27But there is one difference between this one and the other copies.
17:31This is the only one with the full plate mark visible, making it extremely rare.
17:36The exact value of this etching isn't known.
17:39But other Revere works, including one of the Boston Massacre, have sold for over $400,000 at auction.
17:47And this one is even more unique.
17:50Now, while this incredible engraving has been featured in numerous exhibits, you can actually go see it today.
17:57Whether you're a history buff or a Paul Revere enthusiast, it's at the John Hay Library of Brown University.
18:03By appointment only.
18:05Imagine in 1799, you're a young French soldier digging near a dusty fort in Egypt.
18:17When your shovel hits something strange, a stone slab covered in symbols no one can read.
18:24What it meant and who left it there puzzles historians for decades.
18:28July 1799, Napoleon and his army are marching across Egypt.
18:41Conquering everything inside.
18:43After the army takes the town of Rashid, they begin to construct a fort laying claim to this area.
18:50Under the blazing sun, the soldiers are digging a foundation for the fort when they strike something unexpected in the sand.
19:02A large black stone.
19:07This isn't the kind of stone that you skip across a pond.
19:10This one is almost four feet tall, two and a half feet wide, and it weighs over 1,600 pounds.
19:16These soldiers have no idea what they're looking at, so they call over a superior officer.
19:22This army officer is not an archaeologist, but he notices the stone is covered in strange inscriptions.
19:32He tells his soldiers to dig it out, and they bring it straight to Napoleon.
19:37Napoleon gathers some of his best scholars to try and figure out what it says.
19:43These scholars have never seen anything like this, but what they are able to determine is that the inscriptions look like three distinct languages.
19:52One of these languages is ancient Greek, which these experts can read.
19:56And it translates to some kind of text about an ancient pharaoh's accomplishments.
20:01The other symbols look like hieroglyphics and demotic script, demotic script being a kind of ancient Egyptian language used by ordinary people, but now lost.
20:11So the scholars are able to identify what it is they're looking at, but they're not able to read it.
20:17Before Napoleon's team can decipher the mysterious writing, the British close in.
20:23On March 21st, 1801, in the Battle of Alexandria, the British defeat the French in Egypt.
20:31They seize control of Rashid and the stone right along with it.
20:35They ship it back to England, where King George III decides to place it at the British Museum in London.
20:41The British send copies of the inscriptions on the stone's face to scholars around the world, hoping someone will be able to unlock its lost languages.
20:51One of these copies lands on the desk of a young French linguist named Jean-Francois Champollion.
20:57He's a prodigy who can speak 13 languages by the time he was 20.
21:02Champollion knows the Greek alphabet, so like scholars before him, he has no trouble reading one third of the inscriptions.
21:10The other two are going to take him some time.
21:14Based on rudimentary knowledge of hieroglyphics, Champollion can already identify where a royal name occurs.
21:23It's surrounded by an oval called a cartouche.
21:27He compares the name Ptolemaeus in the Greek text with a matching cartouche in the hieroglyphics.
21:34Then comes the key realization.
21:37All three languages have the same message.
21:41That connection helps him begin cracking the code.
21:46Not just in hieroglyphics, but in the middle script as well.
21:50Then he discovers that hieroglyphics is a hybrid language.
21:54Some symbols represent words.
21:57Others depict objects.
21:58But other symbols convey entire ideas.
22:01Piece by piece, Champollion maps phonetic sounds to the symbols, slowly unlocking a language that's been dead for nearly 1,500 years.
22:11Essentially, the stone reads like a resume of King Ptolemy V Epiphanies.
22:17It's a chronicle of his good deeds, everything from tax cuts to restoring peace after a rebellion during his predecessor's reign.
22:26He wants everyone to know about his legacy, and he leaves a record to prove it no matter what language you speak.
22:34It's called the Rosetta Stone, named for the town it was founded.
22:40The Rosetta Stone functions almost like a decoder ring.
22:44This allows scholars to finally read and interpret countless inscriptions, texts, and artifacts,
22:51unlocking a wealth of knowledge about one of the most significant civilizations in history.
22:57For many historians, the Rosetta Stone is the best thing to come from Napoleon's otherwise quite brutal reign.
23:07Our next great find takes us from the sands of Egypt to a Greek island,
23:13where a farmer stumbles upon one of the world's most famous faces.
23:18On April 8th, 1820, a Greek farmer by the name of Georgos Kentrotas is looking for stones to help build up a retaining wall on his property on the island of Milos.
23:32And as he's gathering together all these stones, he notices that there's one that seems curiously out of place.
23:39He gets closer, brushes some dirt away, and he realizes he's found a smooth piece of marble sticking up from out of the earth.
23:50The island of Milos is known for rich mineral deposits, things like sulfur or obsidian, but not marble.
23:58As the farmer continues to look for rocks to build his wall, he finds another piece of marble, and another.
24:06And before you know it, he's got a pile of marble, and he can't believe his eyes.
24:11Coincidentally, a French naval officer named Olivier Voutier is exploring the ruins of an ancient theater nearby.
24:21He notices the farmer's reaction to the strange stones that he's finding in his field,
24:26and so he goes over to see what Kentrotas has discovered.
24:29The two men sort through the pile of stones, and they realize that some of them actually might fit together.
24:36It takes a little trial and error, but they slowly reassemble something very surprising.
24:45In front of them is the torso of a beautiful naked woman, although they're unable to find her arms.
24:51Voutier, however, knows enough about ancient relics to recognize something valuable when he sees it,
24:57and so he contacts officials back in France, urging them to purchase this piece.
25:02The French ambassador arranges to purchase the statue, and soon it's on its way to Paris,
25:10where she is presented to King Louis XVIII.
25:13The king donates the statue to the Louvre, where experts identify the statue as Aphrodite,
25:20the Greek goddess of love, who's also known as Venus in Roman mythology.
25:26This identification gives the statue her iconic name, the Venus de Milo.
25:35This masterpiece is carved from two distinct pieces of marble and then carefully joined together,
25:40and when it is, the Venus de Milo stands at an imposing six feet seven inches tall.
25:47Today, this statue that once lay in pieces across a farmer's field
25:52is seen by about seven million people a year.
26:02You expect to find important pieces of American history in Philadelphia,
26:07Washington, D.C., or even New York.
26:10But imagine how unexpected it is when one turns up on a quiet farm in North Carolina.
26:20In 2022, the Wood family of Edenton, North Carolina, decides to sell their 184-acre estate.
26:28The property is historic, dating all the way back to the 1700s,
26:32so the state of North Carolina decides to buy it and turn it into a landmark.
26:37The house itself is old, and it has some original period items
26:40that the Wood family believes probably worth some money.
26:43To prepare for the sale, the Woods bring in an appraiser to see what they might be worth.
26:49As the appraiser surveys a room, he spots a dust-covered metal filing cabinet.
26:56Curious, he decides to take a look inside.
26:59Along with some old and insignificant stacks of paper, one thing stands out.
27:05There's a folder that's holding a very old, creased piece of paper.
27:13And as the appraiser starts reading, some familiar words start to jump out at him.
27:19We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union.
27:26This is, of course, the famous first line to the preamble of the U.S. Constitution.
27:31But there's more, because at the bottom there's a signature.
27:34Charles Thompson.
27:36While Charles Thompson is not a well-known name, the appraiser knows his history.
27:42Charles Thompson is the secretary of Congress during the Constitutional Convention,
27:48when the Constitution was written in 1787.
27:51The presence of his signature on the document provides a powerful indication
27:55that this could be one of the original copies of the U.S. Constitution.
28:01So how does a document of such historical significance
28:05end up in a filing cabinet on a North Carolina farm?
28:09Back in the 1780s, before the Wood family had owned the property,
28:15it was the home of the state's governor, Samuel Johnston.
28:19After the Constitution is ratified by the U.S. Congress in June of 1788,
28:24copies of the document are sent to the governors of the 13 original colonies.
28:29One of those copies ends up at the estate on Governor Johnston's desk.
28:34When the governor passes away at his estate in 1816,
28:38all of his papers and his office is essentially turned into a storeroom.
28:44So eventually all those documents are filed away in that metal filing cabinet,
28:48only to be discovered by the Wood family appraiser more than two centuries later.
28:54Thinking that they might have something really valuable here,
28:56the family decides to put the item up for auction.
28:59The last time that an original state copy of the Constitution went up for auction,
29:05it sold for about $400 in 1891, which in today's money is about $15,000.
29:11So not bad for an old piece of paper, but it's definitely not a fortune.
29:15Now, over a century later, the Wood family hopes for the best as the auction begins.
29:22People are participating in person, by phone and online,
29:28and the price quickly soars past $1 million.
29:32Bids begin jumping by $500,000 increments.
29:36It's a seven-minute frenzy as the family watches the price soar.
29:40When the gavel finally falls,
29:42the Wood's Constitution sells for $9 million.
29:48An anonymous bidder ends up winning the auction,
29:51and according to Sotheby's, pays the highest amount ever for a book, manuscript, or text at auction.
29:58As for the Wood family, this single piece of paper earns them $3 million more
30:06than the $6 million that they earned on the sale of their entire property.
30:12Up next, a discovery on a whole different scale,
30:17and this one wasn't tucked away in a drawer.
30:21So it's 1984, it's the Reagan administration,
30:25and with renewed tension between the United States and the Soviet Union,
30:29the U.S. Navy is eager to recover the wrecks of two sunken U.S. nuclear submarines,
30:35the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher,
30:39both of which sank in the 1960s.
30:42The officials are desperate to find these two sunken submarines
30:47to ensure that the Soviet Union doesn't get there first
30:51and discover vital nuclear secrets.
30:54The Navy wanted to know the status of their nuclear reactor,
30:58so they went to a man who was one of the most lauded names
31:01in underwater exploration, Bob Ballard.
31:06So in August of 1985, Ballard and his team set off on this top secret mission
31:10to locate and survey the wreckage of these two missing subs.
31:14The team uses a deep-toed sonar coupled with the submersibles
31:19to search the sea floor in the grid.
31:23In the search, they find the USS Thresher,
31:27and two weeks later, they identify the wreckage of the Scorpion.
31:30Ballard and his team complete the expedition 12 days ahead of schedule.
31:36They take the remaining days and they comb the ocean floor,
31:39seeing what else they could find.
31:41They continue using this incredible sophisticated underwater imaging,
31:46and on September 1st, 1985, operators in the camera room
31:52observe something unexpected.
31:55It's a debris field on the floor of the North Atlantic.
31:58Ballard follows the debris field for roughly 2,000, 3,000 feet,
32:03ultimately culminating at the hull of a sunken ship.
32:08While the ocean floor is filled with thousands of shipwrecks,
32:13Ballard recognizes this as perhaps the most famous of all.
32:17Her name, of course, the Titanic.
32:20He can't believe it.
32:24This is the holy grail of found shipwrecks.
32:28People have been searching for the Titanic for over 70 years,
32:33but Ballard and his team find the Titanic almost as a footnote
32:37on a military mission.
32:38The find makes headlines around the world,
32:42makes a celebrity of Ballard,
32:44and reignites interest in this so-called unsinkable ship.
32:49In the years after the discovery, one key detail was kept under wraps.
32:56Only in 2008 could Ballard finally reveal
32:59that were it not for the secret search for the Thresher and the Scorpion,
33:04the Titanic might never have been discovering.
33:07It's 1592, and a team in southern Italy are hard at work digging a ditch for a powerful duke
33:22when they unearth something unusual buried in the air.
33:26A team of workers are trying to excavate an underground tunnel system
33:33to bring water from the Sarno River to a town four miles away called Torre Anunziata.
33:39Workers encounter layer after layer of hardened ash,
33:43compacted like cement from previous eruptions of a nearby volcano, Mount Vesuvius.
33:49One day as workers are digging, they find pieces of what appears to be ancient frescoes,
33:59and some have inscriptions on them.
34:01They stop and grab their supervisor,
34:03and when he looks at what the workers have found, he can't believe his eyes.
34:08These seem to be ancient ruins,
34:12and upon closer examination, the architect finds ancient walls
34:17adorned with paintings and inscriptions.
34:20He petitions the duke for permission to excavate,
34:23but the duke is focused on just one thing,
34:26getting water to Torre Anunziata.
34:29The site sits untouched for the next 150 years
34:33until King Charles III of Spain decides to explore it further.
34:38In the mid-1700s, we're in the middle of the Age of Enlightenment,
34:42which is a time period where rulers were literally competing with each other
34:46for knowledge and information.
34:49As part of that thirst for glory,
34:51the King of Spain wants to be the first to excavate Fontana's worksite.
34:56The site is still buried under tons of hardened volcanic ash
35:00and holds little-known significance,
35:03but they call in Swiss military engineer Carl Weber to oversee the dig anyway.
35:09As they dig deeper, Weber and his team uncover something shocking.
35:16Right there on one of these ancient walls, workers discover an inscription,
35:21Re Pubblica Pompeianorum, the Republic of Pompeians.
35:27Now, Weber knows without a doubt that they've uncovered something remarkable.
35:37It's the legendary lost city of Pompeii, missing for nearly 1,500 years.
35:43Pompeii was perfectly preserved by one major catastrophic event,
35:49the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
35:59This is not your average volcanic eruption.
36:02When this thing blows, experts estimate it releases thermal energy
36:07100,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.
36:13It erupts so suddenly that many residents don't have time to flee.
36:20They're preserved in the same positions, sitting, standing, hugging,
36:24that they were in at the time of the eruption.
36:27In all, most scholars think that 1,500 to 2,000 people died in the eruption,
36:33but some estimates suggest that as many as 16,000 people died.
36:37They had no chance. Everything happened so fast, so chaotically.
36:42Pompeii and its citizens are wiped off the map.
36:47Simply put, it's total devastation.
36:50With more than a third of Pompeii still buried, there's still plenty more to be discovered.
36:55And it's all thanks to workers digging a ditch in the 1500s.
37:01It took five years and many dead ends.
37:08But when one of archaeology's greatest discoveries is finally made in Egypt,
37:13it happens by accident, thanks to a young water boy.
37:18In November 1922, 12-year-old Hussein Abdel Rasool does what he does every day.
37:27Carries heavy jugs of water to the dig site of famous British Egyptologist Howard Carter.
37:34Carter's team has been digging at this site, known as the Valley of the Kings, on and off for years.
37:40As you can imagine, digging in the Egyptian desert is a brutal undertaking.
37:45Temperatures reach well over 100 degrees, and all the sand reflects the heat onto the workers at the site.
37:53So Carter and his team rely on water boys like Hussein to bring jugs of water to the dig team all day, every day.
38:03The Egyptian sands can often be unsteady, and so Hussein and the other water boys will often dig little trenches in order to place these jugs to ensure that they don't tip over.
38:14One day, Hussein buries a jug of water just as he's done hundreds of times.
38:19But on this day, something is different.
38:22As he digs, he hits something hard, something that shouldn't be there.
38:29He clears the sand off it, and there's the shape of a step.
38:34Now, Hussein doesn't know where this leads, but in all his time, he's never seen anything like this.
38:40And so he calls Howard Carter over to take a look.
38:43When Carter sees the step, he can't believe it.
38:46He wants to know where it leads.
38:49He brings the rest of the team over, and they ferociously dig for the next three weeks.
38:54Eventually, they discover a sunken staircase, ending at a heavy stone door.
39:07On the door, he sees something incredible, a seal with the markings of Tutankhamun.
39:14On November 24th, Carter breaks a small hole in the door and peers inside.
39:21Then, silence.
39:23When asked if he sees anything, Carter responds in awe,
39:26yes, wonderful things.
39:31The rest of the team heads down to join him.
39:34And as they enter, they find four burial chambers filled with 5,000 extraordinary treasures.
39:42There are gold-covered chariots, stunningly crafted jewelry, and a sarcophagus inscribed with King Tutankhamun's cartouche.
39:53This discovery is a dream come true for Carter because he's wanted this for such a long time.
39:59It also captures the public's fascination, and it leads to what many call Tut-mania.
40:04Effectively after this, King Tut becomes the first world-famous pharaoh.
40:08Archaeologists spend years cataloging and removing these fragile items, all left to honor this fallen king,
40:17who ascended the throne when he was just nine years old and died when he was 18.
40:23Perhaps the most iconic discovery of all is a solid gold mask that once covered the face of King Tut's mummy.
40:31Unfortunately, embalming agents acted like a glue to attach the mummy to the golden coffin around it,
40:38and experts have to dismember Tut's mummy to remove it from the tomb.
40:42Howard Carter goes into the history books as the discoverer of Tut's tomb,
40:49but Hussein Abdel Rasul's role in this discovery is much less known.
40:54Carter purposely leaves him out of his published report and attributes the find to his own workmen,
41:01perhaps to save face so that the world doesn't learn that this expert archaeologist was digging in the wrong place.
41:09Either way, it's fitting that the boy king's tomb is finally discovered by a 12-year-old boy himself.
41:16Some of history's greatest treasures were never meant to be found.
41:24But fate, or maybe just dumb luck, had other plans.
41:29I'm Danny Trejo.
41:30Thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.
41:33We'll see you in the movie-
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