It would seem that the world is so densely populated by people who love to hunt for treasures and reveal secrets so much that it is difficult to imagine how great, real values can remain lost for a long time. Someone, somewhere, will stumble upon the Ark of the Covenant in the end …
Nevertheless, the fate of some treasures of a world scale, representing both material and cultural and every other conceivable value, still remains unknown.
Among them:
the Amber Room
This masterpiece was created in 1701 by German and Danish masters of the day of the Prussian king Frederick I. After that he changed several palaces, until, finally, it was presented to Peter! and did not settle in Tsarskoe Selo near St. Petersburg. The Amber Room was considered one of the greatest Russian treasures and was even called the eighth wonder of the world. Its decoration consisted of amber panels, gold jewelry and mirrors.
In 1941, when all the valuable exhibits were evacuated from the Catherine Palace, they did not dare to touch the amber room, due to its fragility. They simply pasted over the priceless walls with cheerful wallpaper in the hope that the Germans would not find out why one of the halls of the palace was decorated with such a defiant bad taste. The hope, of course, did not materialize. and the Russian treasure went to Germany.
The room was restored in one of Konigsberg's castles and was proudly shown to the public until the end of the war. In 1945, with the approach of Russian troops, Hitler personally ordered it to be dismantled again and sent to some kind of secret storage. A document has been preserved that confirms that the precious cargo was delivered to the railway station. And this is the last official mention of the amber room.
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How can you lose a whole room full of gold and amber? Some claim it was loaded onto a ship and sunk by the Allies. Others - that she is waiting in the wings in a secret bunker somewhere under the city. Since the end of the war, the Russians have looked for her like mad. Several expeditions scoured all of Europe, looked into all suspicious mines, lagoons and caves. And nothing. Some researchers have lately been inclined to believe that the room was destroyed, and the Soviets simply hid this fact.
The amber room was reconstructed several years ago. But fragments of the original appear from time to time in different places, apparently to maintain interest in this semi-mystical story. So, unexpectedly, a fragment of a mosaic appeared, which was taken as a souvenir by a German soldier who helped prepare the room for transportation in 1945. If anyone nevertheless finds this loss, he will provide himself and his children for the rest of his life. Well, or he can afford to cover one of the rooms in his house with panels of solid gold.
Hitler's body
In 1945, when Berlin was about to surrender under the onslaught of Soviet troops, Adolf Hitler decided to commit suicide, his wife Eva Braun, and at the same time the Blondie dog. Even her puppies were ordered to be shot. What were you waiting for? It was Hitler.
Then the Russians came and found corpses in the bunker. This happened about seven hours after Hitler's death. The bodies were buried. However, after a while Stalin decided that Hitler got off too lightly, ordered an exhumation and removal of a part of the Fuhrer's skull and jaw. Apparently, the photographic evidence did not seem convincing enough to Iosif Vissarionovich.
Later, in 1970, the new burial site came under the control of East Germany. Fearing that it might become an object of worship, the Soviets sent a group of KGB officers who again dug up Hitler's remains, cremated them, and scattered the ashes over the Elbe.
On this the case was closed … until 2009, when DNA analysis was made of a "fragment of Hitler's skull", which, as it turned out, belonged to a woman not older than forty.
So much for you … That is, either they grabbed the wrong skull, or Hitler was hiding a big secret.
The case was reopened. The most daring assumptions were made. A jaw from the same set is still suspiciously jealously guarded by the Russians under the pretext of "extreme fragility." Despite all the diplomatic efforts, they do not want to provide it for research in any way, and the secret remains unsolved. This means that the option is not ruled out that the 120-year-old Fuhrer still enjoys life in his own mansion somewhere in Argentina.
Letter from hell
In October 1888, all of London was agitated by a series of murders of a certain Jack the Ripper, whose identity was never identified. A group of volunteers organized a special Whitechapel Vigilance Committee that took every possible measure to keep the streets safe at night (or at least reduce the number of murders). As, in fact, the entire London police.
One day the head of the Committee, George Lusk, received a package without a return address. Inside, he found two things: half of a human kidney and a note from the killer taunting the Committee and explaining the other half of the kidney that the Ripper, in his own words, "fried and ate."
Unlike hundreds of other letters that have come from Jack the Ripper, most researchers consider this message, signed "From Hell," to be one of the genuine ones. Partly because of the kidney, which is not easy to get. Considering that the real Ripper for some reason stole these organs from his victims, the authorship of the letter was practically not disputed by anyone. Therefore, it, along with the alcoholized fragment of the kidney, was deposited at the police station.
Since then, no one has seen the letter or the kidney.
If they had survived - yes, with the help of current technologies that make it possible to determine the type of ink, paper, and even to take fingerprints a century ago - it is possible that the identity of Jack the Ripper would eventually be established. But thanks to the negligence of the London police, this secret was never destined to be revealed …
San Jose
In 1708, old rivals Britain and Spain fought the War of the Spanish Succession (a major European conflict that began in 1701 after the death of the last Spanish king of the Habsburg dynasty, Charles II and ended in 1714 with the accession of King Philip V to the throne). It was in the Caribbean, off the coast of Cartagena, in Colombia. The ship "San Jose" was returning home to Spain. Unfortunately, on the way he came across English ships that sank him.
Nobody would have remembered this episode now, if not for the cargo that went to the bottom along with the ship. The fact is that on board the San Jose there were countless treasures, including 344 tons of silver and gold, 116 chests with emeralds and almost all the fortune accumulated by the viceroy of Peru over a lifetime. All together in today's market would have pulled at least two billion dollars. And if collectors were involved, the price, according to some authoritative experts, could easily soar up to ten billion.
Oddly enough, despite the fact that the approximate place of the sinking of the ship is known, none of their countless desperate attempts to find the treasure so far have been crowned with success.
True, since 1984 the number of official expeditions has significantly decreased. Perhaps because the government "slightly" lowered the percentage due to the finder: from fifty to five.
In addition, the Colombian government does not allow the use of sonar sonar (a means of sound detection of underwater objects using acoustic radiation) or other methods of remote search for searches. Therefore, all that treasure hunters have to rely on are vague descriptions of British sailors who participated in the loading. So the $ 2 billion prize is still waiting for its lucky one.
Eighteen and a half minutes of Watergate tape
If President Nixon is famous for it, it is the Watergate scandal in the first place.
Richard Nixon left the presidency in 1974 after a very ugly story surfaced.
June 17, 1972 at the headquarters of the Democratic Party, which was located in the Washington complex "Watergate", were detained 5 people who entered the hotel by burglary. They were engaged in setting up eavesdropping equipment and photographing internal documents of the Democratic headquarters. The President, as it turned out later, not only knew about this outrage, but also approved of it.
The fact is that Nixon was literally turned on the wiretap. So much so that he even recorded his own conversations in order to later use these recordings for his future memoirs. It was these films that surfaced one fine day. In one of them, Nixon discusses the Watergate story with his chief of staff, Holdman, calls it a "smoking gun" and gives instructions to obstruct a CIA and FBI investigation.
And this, if someone is not aware, is called pressure on justice and is a serious criminal offense.
In general, incautious dirt collected on himself put an end to Nixon's career and reputation. However, the investigation revealed that several pieces of tape were mysteriously erased, including a nearly 19-minute span of that fateful conversation between Nixon and Holdman.
When the commission in charge of this case began to find out how this could have happened, it was unable to achieve anything other than a vague apology with attempts to shift the blame on the President's secretary. And since it’s a no brainer that the film was not erased as a result of an “annoying misunderstanding,” there must have been something completely out of the ordinary on it. What could it be? Nixon's order to stuff the offices of political opponents with bugs? Or kill someone? Or maybe Nixon told Holdman where the fabulous treasures of the aforementioned San Jose are buried? We will never know.
Or…
The record is, of course, erased, it's a fact. But technological progress does not stand still. The National Archives and Records Administration is still hoping to restore this piece of recording with future technology. Several attempts have already been made. So maybe one day we can still find out what Nixon tried so hard to hide.
Atomic bombs
The military, of course, have learned a lot about throwing bombs, but they are far from good at picking up unexploded shells scattered around the world. Unfortunately. Therefore, in 90 years after the First World War, more than 900 tons of this "good" have been collected in Europe alone. Even with modern remote sensing capabilities, many bombs still remain buried in the ground until a farmer pushes his plow against them. They appear every spring when the frozen ground pushes them to the surface. This is called "Steel Harvest". Every year new crops are invariably sprouting.
And these are not always just bombs. Many contain mustard gas and other chemicals that can kill from a distance. They are still so dangerous that sometimes entire cities have to be evacuated.
But all these are flowers, in comparison with nuclear weapons lost in the world.
To date, the United States has officially acknowledged the loss of eleven nuclear weapons. According to several civil society organizations, including Greenpeace, the whereabouts of approximately fifty nuclear weapons are currently unknown around the world. This is, in essence, a lost apocalypse.
If it occurs to you to equip an expedition and go in search, we must warn you: these objects are lost, and mostly in places that are extremely inaccessible to humans.
One bomb, for example, went missing in transit from Alaska to Texas. More precisely, it was dropped off the coast of British Columbia (province of Canada) when a B-36 bomber flying from Alaska to Texas had minor problems and could not continue flying. Fortunately for Canada, the nuclear filling did not explode that time, but this 1950 event opened up a series of similar incidents.
Another was lost when an American Boeing B-52 crashed into the ice shell of North Star Bay in Greenland. So this thing is lying there at least until global warming.
Many of these scattered bombs, for which the US military coined the poetic term "broken arrow", rest on the ocean floor in a frightening, simply ominous proximity to civilization. For example, the one that disappeared in 1965. Then the A-4E jet plane with a nuclear charge on board simply fell off the US cruiser Ticonderoga and sank some 80 miles off the coast of Japan.
How about this story: in 1961, a B-52 aircraft dropped a 24-megaton nuclear bomb during tests in North Carolina. Take it and fall in the flooded farmland. And so all the decades that have passed since then lie there …
Although, of course, that in vain to breed panic! Maybe these bombs will never explode …
E. Simon. “Interesting newspaper. The world of the unknown"