The Lost and Found Megathread (hopefully)

The Lost and Found Megathread is where I would love to hear stories you have seen about things that have been discovered which were either assumed 'lost' to the passage of time e.g. Dead Sea Scrolls Wiki Dead Sea Scrolls or 'found' unexpectedly like the 30,000 Roman coins discovered in Bath just recently: Telegraph roman coins story

All throughout history there have been miraculous discoveries. In fact they seem to be on a weekly basis. If one takes a mean number of 10,000 years of modern human history and the amount of history then can these finds be classed as inevitable? Will finds like this continue throughout history? Or is there a finite amount of time this can carry on?

I would love to know:
1. Any finds you know of that were remarkable.
2. Any finds you'd love to happen.
3. Discussion of the above

I have loads more finds i'll bring in to the thread from the JFK assasination footage discovered last year through the 50 million pound Chinese vase in an old Grannies loft, it is a subject that has fascinated me for years and hopefully will be a fun topic.

reply to post by spacedonk


Oh and dont forget the purposely hidden stuff in plain site too. Like governments sealing documents from public view for 30 50 or even 100 years!! That drives me crazy

A meaningful soundtrak for your thread... Enjoy.

I start this thread yesterday and lo and behold today I come across a new discovery story that I found quite exciting: Newly discovered Mozart Piano Work

Manuscript was found in an attic last year
Bore the name 'Del Signore Giovane Wolfgango Mozart'
Composer's father, Leopold, used 'Wolfgango' when labelling his young son's works

The story reports:

A previously unknown piano work written by Mozart as a child was performed for the first time today.
The piece formed part of a 160-page book of handwritten music found last year after apparently being left in an attic for centuries, according to the Mozarteum Salzburg Foundation, which staged the event.
The lively 84-bar passage — marked 'allegro molto', or 'very quick' — was played on the Austrian composer's piano in a room of his Salzburg home, where he was born in 1756, by virtuoso Florian Birsak.
Part of a collection of notes from a village music teacher, the book was dated 1780 - 24 years after Mozart was born - and the manuscript bore the name 'Del Signore Giovane Wolfgango Mozart', Italian for 'Mr Wolfgang Mozart Jr'.
The music was found in a private house in Austria's Tyrol province by university lecturer Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider from the institute for Tyrolean music research at Innsbruck University.


Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk...

So not assuredly Mozarts work, but absolutely 100% most likely to have been written by him:
Smug Git!

Here is an interesting article about documents and papers sealed by governments, universities or courts that are due to be released in the coming years, I am most interested in the Martin Luther King tapes sealed in 1977!:
Nine Historical Archives...

The past looks quite promising. Over the next several decades, governments and universities will shed new light on historic figures and events by opening long-sealed archives.

Take the Harvard University Archives, which, in 30 years, will unseal John F. Kennedy’s responses to questionnaires and psychological tests he was first given as an undergraduate. Robert Dallek, a historian and author of the JFK biography An Unfinished Life, speculates that the papers could reveal fresh insights into the 35th president’s character. “Did he have any focus on social issues as a young man?” Dallek wonders. “Or maybe there will be a picture of a very vacuous young man, preoccupied with his self-indulgences, because that was another side of him.”

Keeping in mind that history never ceases to be rewritten, here is a collection of must-know archives scheduled to open in coming decades:

2011: The State Department’s Office of the Historian expects to begin releasing volumes on Nixon and Ford administration foreign policy initiatives, including potentially new details on the energy crisis, NATO and the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

2019: The papers of the poet T. S. Eliot, who died in 1965, include 1,200 personal letters that have remained off-limits: his correspondence with Emily Hale, a girlfriend whom biographer Lyndall Gordon described as Eliot’s “muse.” In 1959, Hale bequeathed the letters to Princeton University.

2026: As chief justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986, Warren Burger presided over cases concerning abortion, capital punishment and the Watergate scandal. In 1996, the year after Burger died, his son, Wade, donated the justice’s personal papers—some two million documents—to the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, with the understanding they would be sealed for 30 years.

2027: The FBI spied on Martin Luther King Jr. in an unsuccessful effort to prove he had ties to Communist organizations. In 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy granted an FBI request to surreptitiously record King and his associates by tapping their phones and placing hidden microphones in their homes, hotel rooms and offices. A 1977 court order sealed transcripts of the surveillance tapes for 50 years.

2037: A decade ago, Oxford University’s Bodleian Library released ten boxes of documents pertaining to the 1936 abdication of Edward VIII so that he could marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson. But one collection of “sensitive documents” (Box 24) was to be withheld for 37 years. British news media speculate the documents include embarrassing revelations about the Queen Mother’s alleged support for negotiating peace with Nazi Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II.

2040: Psychiatrists initiated the Harvard Study of Adult Development in 1937 to track the lives of 268 men who’d recently entered college. The ongoing study uses questionnaires, interviews, psychological tests and medical exams to better understand what contributes to mental and physical well-being. The identity of most of the men is unknown, but reportedly they include a best-selling novelist and four candidates for the Senate. (Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee admitted to being a participant in his 1995 autobiography, A Good Life.) John F. Kennedy’s file—containing questionnaires and reports from 1940 until his death in 1963—was withdrawn from the study’s office, not to be unsealed for 30 years.

2041: Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess flew from Germany to Scotland on May 10, 1941, claiming that he wanted to discuss peace terms with Britain and that their common enemy was the Soviet Union. Hess was imprisoned and interrogated. After the war, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to life at Spandau Prison. A British intelligence file said to contain an interrogation transcript and Hess’ correspondence with King George VI is scheduled to be unsealed 100 years after his arrest. Historians say the papers might show whether British intelligence tricked Hess into undertaking his fateful mission.

2045: In May 1945, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) attacked two German ships in the Baltic Sea carrying 7,000 survivors of the Neuengamme concentration camp. Only 350 survived. RAF intelligence had mistakenly believed the vessels held Nazi officials escaping to Norway or Sweden. Because the RAF ordered the records to remain classified for 100 years, scholars have been unable to offer a complete account of one of the worst “friendly-fire” incidents in history.

This story looks really interesting. an expedition has been launched in Germany to find £500 million of precious artworks looted from an Hungarian Baron during the latter years of WW2:

Expedition seeks to unearth £500m worth of masterpieces buried by Nazi looters in mine

Search is underway for two underground galleries believed to be hidden under Germany's Erzgebirge mountains Monets, Manets and Cezannes among the stolen Hatvany collection
Local mayor says it's only a matter of time before the SS loot is found Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk...

An Indiana Jones-style expedition has been launched in Germany to recover £500million worth of missing artworks looted by the Nazis in World War Two. Monets, Manets, Cezannes and masterpieces by other artists, along with sculptures, carpets and tapestries, are believed to be buried in an old silver mine near the Czech-German border, 90 minutes' drive from the city of Dresden. The paintings formed the bulk of the Hatvany collection, the property of Baron Ferenc Hatvany, who was a leading Hungarian-Jewish industrialist and art patron. Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk...

If the expedition is successful then we will be hearing a LOT more come May and another big 'find' for the list.