Buzz
Losing things is a daily occurrence for many, but most of us don't lose something as bizarre as nuclear bombs, cargo containers, ships, entire cities, or even spacecraft. However, as these 10 remarkable lost and found objects show, it happens.
10. The Journal of ‘The Father of the Yukon’
Pioneer Jack McQuesten, also known as 'The Father of the Yukon,' played a crucial role in establishing trading posts for gold prospectors traveling north during the late 1800s. His handwritten journal, thought to have been lost in the 1967 Dawson City fire, was discovered by local resident Ralph Troberg while he was going through boxes left to him by his late father.
McQuesten's journal details his life from 1871 to 1885, the years he spent in the Yukon. While the journal was published as a book in 1952, its true importance lies in the fact that it remains unedited.
McQuesten provided prospectors with the essential supplies, including food and clothing, all on credit. He told them they could repay him when they struck pay dirt. Today, his journal is preserved in the Yukon Archives in Whitehorse, Canada.
9. 1937 Cord 812 Supercharged Convertible Phaeton
In order to raise money to acquire the now-defunct Auburn Cord Duesenberg automobile company in 1960, Glenn Pray, a high school shop teacher from Tulsa, Oklahoma, parted with his cherished 1937 Cord 812 Supercharged Convertible Phaeton, which he had restored himself.
Local TV station owner and car enthusiast Jimmy Leake purchased Pray's Cord for $8,000 and resold it in 1962. By 1968, Pray and a friend attempted to track down the car, but their efforts were unsuccessful.
Glenn Pray passed away in 2011. However, one day his son, Douglas, who had inherited his father’s business, received a call from a man in Michigan. The man owned the Cord Glenn had been searching for, and it had been sitting untouched in a barn for 45 years. He was looking to sell it if Douglas was interested.
After confirming the car's documentation, Douglas purchased his father’s beloved Cord for six figures. The car returned to Tulsa but not for long, as Douglas chose to sell it again and reinvest the proceeds into his business.
The Cord was put up for auction through the Leake Collector Car Show & Auction, now run by Jimmy Leake’s descendants. However, Douglas intends to repurchase it someday.
8. BMW
In June 2016, a man borrowed his friend’s BMW to attend a Stone Roses concert at Etihad Stadium in Manchester, England. After parking in a garage, he forgot where he had left the car. Despite searching high and low, he couldn’t find it.
After five days of searching for the missing BMW, he eventually gave up. Two months later, the car’s owner, having contacted local businesses and the police, filed a report declaring his vehicle as lost or stolen.
The police recovered the missing BMW and estimated that the owner owed approximately $6,150 in parking fees.
7. Nuclear Bomb
In 2016, Sean Smyrichinsky believed he had stumbled upon a UFO while fishing during a dive near Haida Gwaii, an archipelago located 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the coast of British Columbia. However, it’s more likely that he discovered a “broken arrow,” a term used for incidents involving US nuclear weapons.
On February 13, 1950, a pilot may have abandoned the Mark IV, a 5-ton, 3-meter-long (10 ft) blimp-shaped nuclear bomb, before his B-36 bomber crashed in British Columbia, Canada, during a training exercise.
Luckily, the bomb was a dummy intended for training purposes, not military use. Instead of plutonium, it contained lead, lacking the necessary core for an atomic explosion.
The Canadian navy will now investigate the situation to assess whether the bomb presents any danger and whether it should be recovered.
6. Eastern Airlines Flight 980 Flight Recorders
On January 1, 1985, Eastern Airlines Flight 980 crashed while attempting to land at El Alto Airport near La Paz, Bolivia. Located at an altitude of 4,000 meters (13,000 ft), El Alto is the world’s highest international airport. Tragically, all 29 people aboard the Boeing 727 perished. Due to the inaccessible crash site, the flight recorders could not be recovered.
In May 2016, Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner from Boston managed to recover the aircraft’s flight recorders while climbing Mt. Illimani at an altitude of 4,900 meters (16,000 ft). Since the country where an aircraft crashes holds jurisdiction over the investigation, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) needed Bolivia’s approval to analyze the flight recorders.
After receiving permission, Futrell and Stoner handed over the damaged remnants of the flight recorders—twisted orange metal and a spool of magnetic tape—to NTSB investigator Bill English, who then sent the materials to the NTSB laboratory in Washington, DC. The results of the analysis have yet to be determined.
5. Shipping Containers
A lost shipping container lying at the ocean floor has become the subject of a scientific study aimed at understanding the impact of its presence on marine life. Every year, up to 10,000 containers are lost at sea, for which cargo ships collect insurance.
Marine biologists discovered that a 12-meter (40 ft) container, upside-down on the seafloor, has turned into a thriving habitat for sea snails, along with crabs that feast on the snails’ eggs. The container was located when biologists aboard a research vessel used a robotic submarine to scan the ocean floor.
Scientists are uncertain about how the presence of thousands of shipping containers lost in sea lanes may impact marine life. However, they worry that these containers could attract invasive species, which could then migrate from one coastal harbor to another, as biologist Andrew DeVogelaere explained.
4. Battleship
Billionaire Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft, financed the search for the Musashi, a World War II-era Japanese battleship. When it was constructed, the Musashi was the largest and heaviest warship ever built.
It took Allen’s team eight years to discover the wreck of the lost ship, which was located in the Sibuyan Sea, amidst the islands of the Philippines. Allen’s interest in World War II history drove him to fund the search. As Allen mentioned, “Since my youth, I have been fascinated with World War II history, inspired by my father’s service in the US Army.”
Seventeen bombs and 19 torpedoes were required to sink the battleship. Nearly half of its 1,023 crew members lost their lives when the ship went down during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which marked Japan’s largest maritime defeat. While Allen’s team explored the wreck, they treated the site with reverence, considering it a war grave.
3. Spaceship
Although it seems nearly impossible to lose a spaceship, NASA managed to do just that. After two years of searching for the STEREO-B satellite, which was working alongside its counterpart STEREO-A to monitor the Sun, NASA successfully reestablished contact with the missing spacecraft in August 2016.
STEREO-B lost communication with NASA for three months as it orbited the far side of the Sun. In anticipation of this, NASA had equipped the satellite with a fail-safe that would reset its system if no contact was made for 72 hours.
When NASA tried to check the satellites' status, only STEREO-A came back online. STEREO-B, however, was nowhere to be found. NASA scientists speculate that the communication system on STEREO-B, which tracks its rotational speed, failed. This malfunction caused the satellite to lose its ability to maintain proper orientation or keep its solar panels aimed at the Sun.
Once STEREO-B was located, NASA powered down its batteries. The space agency hopes to recover the satellite, though this won’t be possible until after 2019. First, the satellite’s rotational speed must be calculated, and the Hubble telescope might be necessary for the process.
2. Underwater Egyptian City
In 2000, the long-lost Egyptian city of Thonis-Heracleion, known to the Greeks as Thonis, was discovered beneath the Mediterranean’s waves, located 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) off Egypt’s coast, in the western part of Aboukir Bay.
Prior to this discovery, the city was only referenced in classical writings and a handful of inscriptions. Franck Goddio and his team from the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) were responsible for locating the submerged city and charting parts of the ruins.
Scientists theorize that the city may have collapsed under its own weight, possibly triggered by a volcanic eruption, flood, tidal wave, or another catastrophic event that caused the clay soil beneath it to liquefy. Videos and photos have revealed some of the remarkable artifacts recovered from the site.
The findings include remnants of 64 ships, gold coins, statues reaching up to 5 meters (16 feet) in height, stone slabs etched with inscriptions in both ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek, small limestone sarcophagi that may have once contained mummified animals, and over 700 ship anchors.
1. Lost City
Legends of a lost city, known as The City of the Monkey God or La Ciudad Blanca (“The White City”), were proven true. An expedition ventured into a secluded, still-secret location in the Honduran rainforest and confirmed the existence of the city and the civilization it once supported.
Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology, which works by emitting laser pulses to map the terrain and uncover hidden features beneath dense vegetation, was instrumental in locating the city. One of the remarkable discoveries at the site was a figure illustrating the transformation of a man into a jaguar.
Once the site is secured from looting, researchers will conduct studies and catalog the ruins. Given the number of human-made artifacts found, experts speculate that the lost city may be part of a larger network of undiscovered cities.
