The History Blog

Headstones are a rich source of information for historians and genealogists, but since they’re not easily scanned like paper documents, you usually have to visit in person. Thanks to a program funded by a tax on plastic bags and staffed primarily by volunteers, people looking for their Irish forebears will be able to view headstones from selected historical cemeteries in Ireland.

Experts train local volunteers for two weeks. The volunteers take pictures or good ol’ fashioned pencil rubbings of headstones, and then collect any other information — stories, legends, audio of oral histories and video of the headstones — associated with the graves. Smartphones, digital cameras and GPS devices facilitate data collection and digitization. The data is then uploaded to the Historic Graves website where people can search for specific graves using keywords, family names, year of birth, or year of death. You can also search by graveyard, or, if you don’t know the cemetery’s name, by map.

It’s a brilliant way to utilize the knowledge and passion of local heritage groups, parks employees, schools and volunteer graveyard maintenance organizations to share a wealth of Irish history with people who might otherwise never have a chance to see where their ancestors are buried, or even just to enjoy the beauty of and history behind these cemeteries.

[Project coordinator John] Tierney said historic graveyards were full of heritage and character and were “unique connectors between people and place”.

“The goal is that communities will develop a richer view of their local heritage with benefits for locals and for tourists who find Irish historic graveyards so fascinating. Many of the 19th and early 20th century Irish city graveyards have links across to families and communities in the UK and by making the burial data available via the web and smartphone devices, it is hoped to connect into the growing area of genealogical tourism.”

The data will be parlayed into handy county, area, and national cemetery trails for local and international heritage tourists to follow. There will also be a separate mausoleum trail.

The survey started eight months ago and there are already over 6,000 graves from 80 graveyards in 12 counties recorded and published on the website. Data from various older surveys has been centralized and added to the site, which is why there are graveyards in England and Scotland visible on the map. They have a long ways to go, though. There are over 3600 historic cemeteries in Ireland and the ultimate aim of the project is to document and digitize every one of them.

If you’d like to help, you can sign up to transcribe memorial inscriptions from the photographs. Register to be a transcriber here, then view the pictures and transcribe the names and dates. Your transcription will be published as soon as you submit it, making that record instantly searchable.

See some beautiful cemeteries and surveyors at work on the Historic Graves YouTube channel.

Last December, Captain Lance and Suzanne Holmquist announced that they would restore the African Queen and put her back to work doing inland water tours. After three and a half months of work and almost $70,000, the 30-foot riverboat used in the iconic 1951 John Huston movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn is officially back in business.

The steamship, built in England in 1912 then used by the British East Africa Railway Company to carry cargo and passengers in the Belgian Congo and Uganda, had been deteriorating in dry dock for ten years. Her previous owner, Jim Hendricks Sr., had rescued from her a land bound horse farm in Ocala, Florida in 1982, then used her for tours and took her around the world twice for special events. Once Jim Sr. died in 2002, the boat passed to his son Jim who unfortunately could not afford to maintain her as his father had.

The Holmquists could see the Queen sitting forlorn on her dock as they operated their charter boat business. Captain Lance, who has a passion for restoring boats, noticed that even decrepit in dry dock the African Queen was still a hugely popular stop for tourists. Hundreds of people would come every day to take her picture. So they struck a deal with Mr. Hendricks: they’d restore the boat as historically accurately as possible, and in return Jim would lease them the Queen to use for charter tours.

The restoration was challenging, but not as hard as some of the other restorations Captain Holmquist has done. The African Queen was still structurally sturdy. First they had to fix the hull. Made from 10-gauge British steel, most of it had toughed out the tough times. Only 20% of the steel panels were corroded enough to need replacing, but that 20% took three weeks of welding to fix. Watch this YouTube video to see the welders, and their commanding officer/Chihuahua, Stewart “The Killer” Kipp, in action.

Also salvageable was much of the original black African mahogany used for flooring and siding. The Holmquists just had to oil and condition it. For historical authenticity and ambiance, they decided to spend $26,000 to install a new steam boiler even though during the shooting of the film the boat wasn’t actually powered by steam; they just made it look like it was. Last up was a new paint job, which lasted just a few hours before Captain Holmquist took a rag and some brown paint and messed it up so it would look like it looked chugging through the jungle with Bogie and Hepburn.

“We wanted it to look beat up, like it appeared [in the Congo] in World War I,” said Suzanne Holmquist. “It’s starting to get its sheen back, and its authentic look.”

The African Queen will be officially relaunched Thursday. The Key Largo Chamber of Commerce is throwing her a party and fundraiser dockside at the Holiday Inn Key Largo. Stephen Bogart, son of Humphrey and Lauren Bacall, will be there. The first ride on the Queen with Stephen Bogart will be auctioned off at the event, as will the original steel pieces from the hull that were replaced. The party is open to the public; the suggested donation is $15.

Starting at the end of the month, the African Queen will be taking passengers on two-hour canal cruises several times a day, and for six-passenger dinner cruises around Key Largo on select evenings. She will also be available for private charters. See her back on the water and hear her lovely bell in this video.

Construction workers restoring a 19th century mansion that once belonged to the noble Naryshkin family discovered an immense treasure of silver services, pearl- and porcelain-handled flatware, enamel, jewels, and medals, hidden in a secret storage compartment between the second and third floors of the building. More than 1,000 individual pieces from the 19th and early 20th centuries were found, all of them in excellent condition thanks to careful packing in vinegar-soaked cloths.

The objects were then wrapped in newspapers from March, June and September of 1917, which gives us a handy time frame for when the treasure might have been buried. This was a turbulent time in Russia, to say the least. The Duma had taken control in February, setting up the Russian Provisional Government and forcing Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate. Some months later the October Revolution would bring the Bolsheviks to power. Within days, Lenin’s Decree on Land abolishing private property was passed by the Second Congress of Soviets. The first floor of the mansion was put to use as a stolovaya, a cafeteria-style restaurant where workers could get a cheap meal.

The Naryshkin family, whose many illustrious members include Nataliya Naryshkina, wife of Tsar Alexis and mother of Peter the Great, and Princess Maria Naryshkina, mistress of Tsar Alexander I, fled the country in 1917 leaving behind a wealth of riches that were moved to the State Hermitage Museum in 1920. Several of the silver sets found in the mansion bear the family crest. The treasure might not all have belonged to the Naryshkins. Documents belonging to army officer Sergei Somov were also found among the objects, so perhaps some of it was once his. Somov also fled the country after the October Revolution. He died in France in 1976.

The mansion is itself a historical treasure, despite the hard treatment it has received. It used to be two separate buildings, one of them built in the 17th century by Prince Pyotr Trubetskoi, the other owned in the 18th century by Abram Petrovich Gannibal, the African great-grandfather of poet Alexander Pushkin who as a child had gone from being a hostage of the Ottoman Sultan to the godson of Peter the Great who had him raised and educated along with his own children. In 1832 the two houses were made into one large mansion which Duke Vasily Naryshkin bought in 1875.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Trubetskoi-Naryshkin mansion was converted into apartments. In 1999, the St. Petersburg International Center for Preservation set up offices in the historical building. Ten years later, construction company Intarsia began a three-year program of re-engineering, restoring and adapting the building for use as a restaurant (doubtless a pricier one this time) and a conference and cultural center.

Intarsia reported the discovery to the police on Thursday, March 29, but it appears some pieces were discovered by workers a few days before that. Police searched the site and discovered two caches, one containing three gilded silver salvers, the other a box of silver forks and spoons, which had been secreted behind construction debris. Some workers apparently hoped to smuggle them out when the coast was clear.

A full inventory and assessment of the treasure by St. Petersburg’s Committee for the State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (KGIOP) is ongoing. When they’re done, the treasure will be put in a museum. Intarsia hopes they’ll be able to put it on display in the second floor exhibition rooms of the Trubetskoi-Naryshkin mansion once the restoration is done later this year.

The question of ownership might get thorny, though. By law, the workers who discovered the treasure can claim 50% of it and the property owner the other half, unless it is deemed of historical or cultural value, which in this case seems a foregone conclusion. If the treasure is deemed historically significant, the state will claim ownership and reimburse the finders/owners the market value.

Then there are the family members. Any Naryshkin descendants who might be out there could make a claim, as could any Somov descendants.

Ivan Artsishevsky, chairman of the House of Romanov, said the discovery of the treasure could cause self-proclaimed Naryshkin descendants to step forward, demanding the treasure be returned to them.

“In my experience of working with the Romanovs, I can say that ‘secret’ descendants from the Emperor’s dynasty regularly appeal to me with all kinds of claims and demands. In this case many such ‘relatives’ may appear,” Artsishevsky was quoted as saying by Interfax.

Artsishevsky said all of the precious objects found should be donated to a museum, adding that he was sure that no real Naryshkin descendants would come forward in hopes of claiming the treasure.

“All this should be given to a museum. All of these objects actually belong not to the Naryshkins, but to all Russian people. I doubt any of the duke’s descendants would believe otherwise,” he said.

Alfons Mucha, the Czech artist who basically invented Art Nouveau (it was originally known as “Mucha Style”) and whose characteristic berobed women with flowing hair against a field of flowers have been selling everything from theatrical productions to champagne to chocolate since the late 19th century, rejected the Art Nouveau label, considering himself and his art first and foremost a product of the Slavic folk tradition in which he was raised. In 1900, he traveled all over the Balkans in preparation for his work on the Bosnia-Herzegovina pavilion for the Paris World’s Fair. Although he returned to Paris and continued his customary work, he was inspired by the trip to dedicate himself to “work for the [Czech] nation.”

Mucha was born in 1860 in Ivancice, a rural community in Moravia that was then part of the Austrian Empire. The area was a hotbed of Slavic nationalism, even more so in reaction to the Habsburg efforts to “Germanize” the many cultures in the empire. He left in 1879 to do design work for a theater in Vienna. He returned to Moravia after the theater burned down, doing some freelance art work including murals for Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov who would fund his first formal artistic education.

In 1887 he moved to Paris, studying and getting jobs as a commercial artist. He became famous in 1895 after a chance encounter in a print shop resulted in his making a poster for the play Gismonda, starring the incomparable Sarah Bernhardt. She loved the poster so much that she signed him to a six-year contract.

His fame spread worldwide, but back in his homeland he was considered something of a sell-out, more French than Slav. Although Mucha saw himself as Czech and his art as an expression of his Slavic identity, his countrymen tended to disagree. When he was commissioned to paint murals in the Mayor’s Office at the New Municipal House in Prague in 1909, the move was roundly criticized by the public.

Undeterred, in 1910 Mucha moved his family to Prague and, while still taking some commercial gigs to pay the bills, poured his talents and resources into the passion project of a lifetime: a series of 20 monumental paintings (the biggest canvas is 26 feet wide and 20 feet tall) depicting the history of the Slavic people. The Slav Epic took him 18 years to complete, during which time World War I saw the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of the new nation of Czechoslovakia with Prague as its capital.

On September 1, 1928, Alfons Mucha donated the complete Slav Epic to the people of Czechoslovakia. All 20 paintings went on display in the Trade Fair Palace in Prague where they inspired a range of reactions, many of them negative. The left-wing nationalists considered the style and pan-Slavic sentiments old-fashioned, and the fascists held Slavic nationalism itself in contempt.

When in 1939 Nazi Germany followed its occupation of the Sudetenland by invading the rest of Czechoslovakia, Mucha was one of the first artists to be arrested by the Gestapo. They released him, but he died shortly thereafter on July 14, 1939 of pneumonia. In his will, he bequeathed the Slav Epic to the city of Prague, on condition that they build a special pavilion to house them.

Building a pavilion for enormous Slav nationalist paintings wasn’t Prague’s top concern during World War II. Just keeping the paintings out of Nazi hands was challenge enough. The Slav Epic was rolled up and hidden in storage rooms (as well as, rumor has it, a crypt) to keep it safe. Unfortunately the end of the war wasn’t much help, as the Soviet-backed Communist Party which took power in the 1948 Czech coup had no love for the Epic. They certainly weren’t going to build a pavilion for it.

The paintings were moved to the southern Moravian town of Moravský Krumlov in 1950 for safekeeping but remained in storage. Finally in 1963 they went on display at the local castle. When the Communist regime fell in 1989, there was discussion about bringing the paintings back to Prague, since the artist did give them to the city, but the Moravský Krumlov community vehemently protested. The Mucha family sided with Moravský Krumlov, noting that legally Prague couldn’t claim the paintings without complying with the condition in Alfons’ will requiring a dedicated pavilion. They were concerned that moving the works only to put them up in some transitional space would be detrimental to their delicate health.

A decade of legal wrangling ensued, in the middle of which Prague approved plans for the construction of a new pavilion which was scheduled to be complete by 2010. Disputes over the proposed architecture of the pavilion kept it from ever getting built, but come 2010, Prague sent movers to the Moravský Krumlov castle anyway.

The Mucha family got an injunction to stop the move until they’ve built this everlovin’ pavilion like they’re supposed to, but five of the paintings made it out the door anyway, going on display in early 2011 at Prague’s Veletrzni Palace after restorers examined them. A year has passed and the legal issues remain unresolved, but over the protests of the Mucha family and the town of Moravský Krumlov, now Prague has taken the remaining 15 works.

The Veletrzni Palace is the only place with the wall space to display all 20 gigantic paintings, but its conditions are far from ideal. Temperature and humidity levels fluctuate enormously with the weather, and again, a temporary exhibit in an old building does not comply with the conditions stipulated by Alfons Mucha. The Mucha family and the foundation they run are working assiduously to create a permanent location for the Slav Epic in Prague’s central train station.

The Mucha Foundation says that Prague’s main railway station is the best permanent home for the paintings. [The artist's grandson] John Mucha says that the foundation is in negotiations with the council about the plans. “Everyone’s pulling in the same direction,” he says. “If we all manage to keep this momentum, the Slav Epic should be unveiled [there] in spring 2014.” When describing the suitability of the venue, John Mucha says that the train noise can be screened, and appropriately the art nouveau station was designed by Josef Fanta, a friend of Alphonse Mucha.

We’ll see if that ever happens. Meanwhile, the Epic will have to make do with the drafty, moist palace.

Born in Bayswater, London, in 1889, Frederick Kempster was of normal height just like his six siblings until he turned 15 and began to grow. His father had died of bronchitis when he was 8, and his mother Jane struggled to support the three youngest children, including Frederick, who were still living at home. She took in laundry and cleaned houses, but couldn’t make enough money to keep a roof over their heads. In 1898 they were evicted from their one-bedroom hovel in Islington. Homeless and destitute, the family was forced apart. Jane needed her children cared for so she could get a job as a domestic servant, so she sent her daughter to live with her sister and the two boys to Barnardo’s Commercial Street Shelter, a group home for orphans and indigent children, in London’s East End.

A month before he turned 10 years old, Frederick found himself on a boat to Canada. Barnardo’s believed that the children in their care could carve out new lives for themselves in the wide open spaces of the frontier, so they regularly shipped hundreds of kids to Canada to work as farm hands and domestic servants. Frederick worked for a Manitoba farmer for the next five years until a weakness in his legs made him unfit for agricultural labor.

When he returned to England in 1904, his unusual growth had already begun. He went back to live at another Barnardo’s Home where he was taught the basket-making trade. By the time he was 19, he was well over seven feet tall (it’s hard to know precise figures because the reported figures are all over the place). In 1911, he marched in the “Parade of Giants” at the Crystal Palace in London as part of the celebrations leading up to the coronation of King George V. That’s what gave him the idea that he might actually be able to make a living just by being his tall self.

A few months later, he got a job as a giant at Astley & Co.’s American Circus in Essex. For the next three years he toured Europe and America with the circus, staying near his sister in Essex during his downtime. Articles about him from 1913 describe him as 7’9″ by now and over 300 pounds. Each hand reputedly had a 16-note reach on a piano.

He was in Germany with his troupe when World War I broke out in August 1914. Frederick and four other members of the company including a legless dwarf were stranded in Berlin and kept under house arrest in a room they’d rented. Some news stories report that he was mistreated and malnourished, but in interviews Frederick seemed downright sanguine about his time as a POW. They played a lot of cards and dominoes, he said, and the local police chief would bring his kids around to see them.

After a month, Germany let Frederick and company go. He stayed at an inn in Wiltshire run by another sister of his and her husband. He was never drafted to fight in the war. Depending on what story you read, the military either had no idea what to do with him and so left him alone, or they dearly wanted to put his freakish height to good use but just couldn’t figure out how.

He was in no condition to be fighting anyway. He was lame in one leg and had been since a failed operation to repair his weak legs after his return from Canada. In 1917, he was hospitalized. He recovered enough to start one final tour in the north of England. While doing a gig in Blackburn, Frederick Kempster caught pneumonia and died on April 15, 1918. He was just 29 years old.

Before he died, he met a doorman in Blackburn named Tom Cook whose wife Maggie was a laundress. They became friends and boon companions, and apparently, Maggie did his whites. Tom Cook’s nephew David Jardine found an enormous pair of long johns and a night shirt among his uncle’s belongings in the 1970s. After David’s wife Ivy died two years ago, their son John refound the extremely long johns while clearing out the house.

It’s John putting the very long johns up for sale at Tennants Auctioneers in Leyburn, North Yorkshire. They will go on the auction block on April 28, with an estimated value of £150-250 ($238-$396).

When Google Art Project launched in January of last year, it gave anyone with a computer access to 17 major museums in nine countries including the US, France, Germany and the UK. The interface was on the clumsy side, unfortunately, making it hard to navigate, and although some stand-out individual pieces were presented in almost microscopic detail, the overall coverage was limited.

Now Google has announced the completion of the second version of Google Art Project. From 1,000 gigapixel ultra-high resolution images of paintings, the database now offers 32,000 images of not just paintings, but photographs, sculptures, textiles, rock art, ancient artifacts and so much more from 151 museums in 40 countries. If you’d like to take a turn through some of those museums and institutions, 46 of them have virtual tours, including the White House, Athens’ Acropolis Museum and the nearest and dearest to my heart, the Musei Capitolini on the Capitoline Hill in Rome.

The interface is vastly improved. You can navigate speedily from collection to collection. If you want to take a virtual tour of the museum, click the yellow man icon in the upper left next to the museum name and the Details button, then navigate just as you would use Street View in Google Maps. If you’d like to browse the artworks instead, just click on the thumbnails in the collection gallery. Click the details button for more information about the piece, including a link to the artwork on the website of the museum. Of course you can also search for individual artworks or artists using the menu in the top left.

They also have a much more user-friendly personal gallery where you can not only save the images in a collection of your own, but also make notes and share them with friends. If you’re in the mood to be surprised, click the Discover button on the left vertical menu (it looks like a light bulb) and Google Art Project will take you on a random tour of its wonders. You can browse it as a gallery or view as a slideshow.

The educational resources are greatly enhanced. Click on the Education link on the menu at the bottom of the screen to get an art historical overview in the Introduction and Look Like an Expert sections. The DIY section offers tips and ideas for ways to use Google Art Project as an educational and creative resource, to create a virtual exhibition of your own unbounded by geographical and financial limits. DIY even connects to 10 other museums’ own proprietary educational databases, like the Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History which I dearly love and have spent many lost weekends perusing.

The Google Art Project YouTube channel has introductory videos about using the site, about the artists and the museums. Here is a trippy preview of some of the incredible museum views and gigapixel artworks:

Here is the Google Street View camera as it records 360 degree views of every public room in the White House:

The FBI thinks so, and no, Monty Burns is not their suspect. They have detained Robert Gentile, a 75-year-old Hartford mobster who has a venerable arrest record beginning in the 1950s and going all the way through to his most recent arrest last month for selling prescription painkillers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham stated during a bail hearing in a Hartford District Court that they have “reason to believe that Mr. Gentile had some involvement with stolen property out of the District of Massachusetts.” That doesn’t mean they think he was directly involved in the theft of three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a Manet, five Degas, and two historical artifacts from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on St. Patrick’s Day night in 1990. They think he may have information about the theft based on his connections to a mafia crew that was working in Boston in the years after the theft.

Durham said Gentile was associated with a crew active in Boston and led by Capo Robert Luisi, but associated with Philadelphia’s mafia family. It was Luisi who “made” Gentile by inducting him into the Philadelphia family, Durham said in court Tuesday.

When Luisi was arrested and confronted with a long prison sentence for selling cocaine about a decade ago, he implicated Gentile and other alleged members of his crew in a long list of criminal activity, Durham said.

In 1998, Gentile established an elaborate surveillance of the armored cars that he believed were transporting cash from the Foxwoods Resort Casino. Gentile plotted the truck routes and the frequency of pickups, Durham said.

In Gentile’s basement, Durham said, FBI agents found police identification materials, uniforms, Tasers and police scanners — devices that criminal gangs often use in armored-car robberies. There also were weapons and ammunition.

The two unknown men who pulled off the largest art theft in history also wore police uniforms and ID. That’s how they duped the security guard into letting them in and then letting them “arrest” him after they “recognized” him as a criminal with an outstanding warrant. The thieves told him to call the only other security guard to the security desk and then took them both to the basement where they tied them to pipes and duct-taped their hands, feet and mouths. The entire museum was theirs, so they helped themselves to $500 million worth of art, including two extremely rare and important pieces: Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, the only seascape he ever painted, and Vermeer’s The Concert, which is one of only 34 known works by the Dutch master.

The investigation into the crime has been ongoing ever since. The FBI and the US Attorney’s Office have been working on the case with the Gardner’s Director of Security. Their primary focus is on recovering the works, not on making an arrest. The Gardner Museum offers a reward of $5 million for information leading to the recovery of the art in good condition, and the Feds offer complete confidentiality to any tipsters.

A. Ryan McGuigan, Gentile’s lawyer, points out that given that enormous payday and the minimal risk to snitching, why would the old man not spill any information he has and claim the reward? He certainly wasn’t making $5 million selling prescription pills. The government is also putting pressure on Gentile by denying him bail, so that’s even more incentive for him to talk. He insists he doesn’t know a thing about the Gardner heist (and that the prescription drugs were for his personal use, not for sale, of course).

Ronnie Johnston found something with his metal detector in a bog in Corrard, County Fermanagh in December of 2009. He thought the twisted metal rope was a suspension spring for a vintage car. He took it home, rinsed it off, put it in a drawer and thought nothing more of it for the next two years. Then, in May of 2011, he saw a picture of a torc in a treasure hunting magazine and realized that his nifty spring might be something altogether more important.

By Irish law, anyone who discovers something he has reasonable grounds to believe is treasure must report it to the coroner within two weeks. Obviously Mr. Johnston missed the boat a little on compliance with the Coroners Act of 1959, but as soon as he realized his car spring might be a gold torc, he called an expert from the Armagh County Museum to examine it. Dr. Greer Ramsey suggested it be reported to the authorities as a potential treasure find and so it was.

On Friday, March 30th, the Coroner’s Court in Belfast held a treasure trove inquest. Experts testified that it is indeed an ancient torc made of 87% gold and 11% silver. The style, a four-flanged design that is twisted into a spiral, is characteristic of the Middle Bronze Age, probably the Penard Period of metalworking, ca. 1300-1150 B.C. To make this style torc, the smith took a cast bar of gold then cut four lengthwise wedges into the bar creating a cross-shaped cross-section. Once the flanges were carved, the torc was twisted by turning the ends of the bar. Then the smith forged trumpet terminals out of each end of the bar.

It’s 37 inches long, so was probably worn around the waist rather than around the arm or neck as we tend to think of torcs. It was coiled before burial, perhaps to make it easier to bury in a smaller space, or perhaps to make it hard for someone else to uncoil it and wear it.

The coroner declared the torc treasure, the first official treasure that has been found in Northern Ireland in the last three years. Next up comes the valuation. The torc will be sent to the Treasure Valuation Committee at the British Museum in London. Experts will assess a fair market price for the piece. Since Johnston owns the field where he found the torc, any museum that purchases the artifact will pay him the valuation price.

The coroner, John Leckey, described the Corrard torc as an extremely beautiful object and stressed the importance of reporting such finds to the authorities.

“I would regard it as an outcry if the object didn’t end up in Northern Ireland on display in a museum. This is part of the culture of Ireland,” he said.

He added how Culture Minister Caral Ni Chuilin should be alerted to the immense significance of the find, describing it as “an important day for Northern Ireland”.

Dr. Owen Johnson was looking at a hole dug by builders in his back yard in the town of High Ackworth, near Pontefract, West Yorkshire, last summer when he saw the rim of a ceramic pot sticking out of the dirt. He tried to dig it out, but it split in two and a torrent of gold and silver coins spilled out “like a slot machine,” as the good doctor put it. The final tally was almost 600 gold and silver coins dating to the 1640s and a gold ring inscribed, “When this you see, remember me.”

The coins were buried near what look like the remains of an old post, so Dr. Johnson believes the treasure might have been buried by a worried Royalist hiding his worldly goods from marauding Parliamentarians during the Civil War. The coins have a total face value of £85 ($135), the equivalent in today’s spending power of about £7,000 ($11,000). (The UK National Archives website has an awesome historical currency and buying power converter.) Of course their historical value is much higher, and probably the plain precious metal weight is too.

As expected, the coins and ring have been declared official treasure, at the coroner’s inquest at Wakefield Coroner’s Court on Tuesday. Since they are precious metals older than 300 years, according to the 1996 Treasure Act the artifacts are now property of the Crown. The next step is to assess their market value. Museums will then be given first bite at the apple, but they have to raise the money to secure the treasure. The money is usually split between the finder and the property owner, who in this case are the same person.

Local government officials are hoping the coins and ring will stay in the area, perhaps on display at the Pontefract Museum.

Dr Johnson said: “Pontefract Museum is very interesting but it could do with some highlights and this would definitely be a highlight, which would be good because Pontefract’s history is sometimes undervalued.”

Lisa Dodd, Wakefield Council’s service director for sport and culture, added: “We believe these items have been in our district since the 1600s, making them a real part of this district’s rich history. It would be a great shame to not do all we can to try and keep the treasure in its rightful home for future generations to enjoy.

“The Wakefield district has a superb, nationally renowned heritage and Pontefract Museum would be a fitting home for the treasure.”

Pontefract played an important role during the Civil War. Pontefract Castle, a powerful ducal stronghold since the Norman invasion and the place where King Richard II was imprisoned and died after his forced abdication, was besieged by Parliamentarian forces no fewer than three times between 1644 and 1649. Cromwell described it thus after the second siege:

[Pontefract Castle] is very well-known as one of the strongest inland garrisons in the kingdom; well-watered; situated on rock in every part of it; and therefore difficult to mine. The walls are very thick and high, with strong towers; and if battered, very difficult of access, by reason of the depth and steepness of the graft.

He knew whereof he spoke. Pontefract Castle would prove to be literally the last Royalist line of defense. Pontefract was still fighting for the Royalist cause for months after the war ended everywhere else. The third siege began in August of 1648. It was still going strong on January 30th, 1649, when King Charles I was beheaded. The Rump Parliament that had executed the king for treason declared the monarchy abolished on February 7th.

The Royalist garrison at Pontefract Castle simply proclaimed the regicided king’s son King Charles II and fought on in his name for almost two months. They even minted coins in the name of King Charles II, inscribed with the motto “Post mortem patris pro filio” meaning “After the death of the father, support the son.” The castle finally fell on March 24th, 1649, and was demolished by Parliament that summer. Only ruins remain now.

After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Pontefract made “Post mortem patris pro filio” its official motto which it remains to this day.

A recent study published in the Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries reports that five small telescopes have been discovered in Amsterdam, all of them dating to the 18th century and all of them made from bovine metatarsals, the long cylindrical bones above a cow’s hoof.

Although the Dutch Office for Monuments & Archaeology records over 2000 historical artifacts excavated over the past 35 years that were made out of hard animal tissue like bone, antler, ivory and tortoise shell, they’re all things like combs and buttons. Other telescopes from the 18th century have been discovered, but they’re made out of wood and metal. These five are the only bone telescopes known in Dutch archaeology.

Details of the findings hadn’t been published until now, and, in the case of two of them, were unidentified until several years ago when Rijkelijkhuizen, then a master’s degree student, started work on her thesis. She was looking at organic artifacts found in Amsterdam when she came across bone artifacts that would later turn out to be telescopes.

“At first I didn’t recognize them either,” Rijkelijkhuizen said. Her analysis of the five telescopes is now published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries.

Two of the five telescopes were discovered in cesspits, one of them dating between 1725 and 1775, the other between 1725 and 1750. We don’t have the archaeological context for the three remaining telescopes, but their style identifies them as also dating to the 18th century. Four of the five are no more than 3.5 inches long and an inch in diameter. The longest one was made in two parts that were fitted together with screw threads. The total length when both parts are attached is 5.5 inches, and the diameter at the thickest point is just a hair over an inch.

These are notably tiny dimensions for a telescope. They were bounded by the raw materials. Cow metatarsals provided an ideal round shape, thick compact bone tissue and a marrow cavity to look through, but the usable part doesn’t get much longer than 3.5 inches. The marrow cavity gets oval in shape towards the ends of the bone, so those parts had to be removed. Once they had a round bone with its round cavity lathed into shape, the craftsmen carved out a platform on each end for lenses to rest on. They then made screw threads on the outside of the ends so that lens caps could be fitted over them with metal rings.

Both lenses are extant from the two-piece telescope and one of the lenses from the smaller telescopes also survived. We know therefore that these were refracting telescopes which would have had a very low magnification rate of about three. The craftsmanship required to make them — both the bone carving and the lens grinding — suggests that these were luxury items. They wouldn’t have been strong enough to be turned towards the heavens, so probably the telescopes were used as opera glasses or to watch the seas during a ship voyage.