Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to bling a chuk reboarding, and I'm fair out and strange as it might seem, especially since we're history podcast, the news can actually play a pretty big role in what we choose to cover as topics. And that's because history, or at least what we know about it, is constantly changing. It's always evolving, and new discoveries are made, theories are formed, old mysteries are sometimes solved, or sometimes they're made even more complicated Ned Kelly case in point exactly. And in all of these cases, one thing holds true. The breaking news gives us a great opportunity to review what we know about a particular topic, so it makes a great opportunity for us to talk about them again. But of course we don't have a chance to cover all of the historical finds that are unearthed in any given years. So last year we decided we would do a real Newsy kind of topic a year end wrap up, and we ended up recording an episode that covered a few of big discoveries that we thought were either cool or just I don't know. It's fascinating in some way that appealed to us, and this year we've decided to do the same, but we're going to step it up a not too We're gonna do two episodes of historical finds, things that have been unearthed in TWN that we just thought were really neat. Yeah, and we've called it an Earth in twenty eleven. That's the title. But of course, not all of these discoveries literally came as the result of digs and archaeological work. Some of the some of them are just finds that came from all sorts of places, from the ocean, for example, or even from someone's musty old attic you never know, or somebody just putting two and two together and making a new discovery from research, or or finds that were already existing. Yeah, that's true. Some of these that we're going to discuss our findings based on things that were up either within the last couple of years or in some cases decades ago. So it's not something that was necessarily unearthed this year, but the finding was unearthed, it just had some important component of the process that happened in to make our list. But this is of course by no means a comprehensive list. I mean, we really had to to whittle it down, pick and choose here. The only common thread, though, is that there are discoveries that we found interesting, ones that had some kind of interesting story behind them, and most of them had some kind of tie into themes that we've covered a lot, And I mean I found that appealing for a yearine wrap up podcasts, we have hit on themes this year. I don't know, shipwrecks comes to mind, medicine, medicine, historic alcohol, historic dogs. So you're gonna notice a few of those themes popping up in both of these episodes, Yes you will. And that goes for the first one that we're going to talk about, which is pirates. A lot of people know Captain Morgan as a brand of rum, Captain and Coke anyone, but Captain Henry Morgan was an actual seventeenth century Welsh pirate and the wreck of one of his ships was found off Panama by a team of U S archaeologists this August. So just a little background on Morgan and his ships. He was a privateer sailing on England's behalf, so part of his work was defending England's interests, and he also pioneered expeditions to the New World. In the late seventeenth century, he went up against Spain, which at the time had a pretty tight grip on the Caribbean, and Morgan wanted to weaken Spain's influence a bit by taking Panama City, and so in sixteen seventy one he set out to capture a Spanish fort called Castillo de San Lorenzo, which was on a cliff overlooking the mouth of the Chagres River, the only water passageway between the Caribbean and Panama City, and Morgan and his men ultimately succeeded here, but they lost five ships, including their flagship called the Satisfaction, in the process, and that was due to some pretty rough seas that were surround the fort and also a reef known as the Lajas Reef nearby. So the discovery that these u s archaeologists made this year is presumably from one of those five ships, right. They made it by doing a magnetometer survey, which looks for metal by finding any kind of deviation in the Earth's magnetic field, and what they ended up pulling up to the surface included a portion of the starboard side of a wooden ships hall and a set of unopened cargo boxes and chess that were covered in coral, and of course everybody including us, thinking like, maybe this is some kind of pirate treasure, maybe this is Captain Morgan's treasure. So we were unable to find out whether the cargo was opened at the time the story broke um it had, it was yet to be determined, and we haven't heard anything since then. But according to a Discovering News article about the fine, there are at least a few people out there who are hoping that the boxes and chess contain gold or something that contain liquor. And you can probably figure out why some folks might be hoping for that. Yeah, it's because there's kind of an interesting twist to this story. To the story of this discovery. Though the research team included archaeologists and divers from Texas State University and some other volunteers, the project was actually funded by Captain Morgan, USA, the maker of Captain Morgan's Room, and they stepped into help when the research team ran out of funding, and that funding actually allowed the team to do that magnet a meter survey. So in a statement, Tom Herbs, the brand director of Captain Morgan USA, said, quote, when the opportunity arose for us to help make this discovery mission possible, it was a natural fit for us to get involved. The artifacts uncovered during this mission will help bring Henry Morgan and his adventures to life in a way never thought possible. So there you go. I'm kind of envisioning these Captain Morgan commercials maybe in with like footage from the archaeological dives, and maybe could if they were really willing to put out some more money, some rolling stones satisfaction. I mean, who knows it's it's a brilliant marketing move on there, it sounds like it. But prior to making this discovery, the team also found a collection of iron cannons in the same general area last year. But I think we're really most excited, as probably most people are, to find out what's in the chest. Yeah, I mean, maybe it'll be another entry for our Historical Spirits episodes. Maybe. So moving on to the next couple entries on our list. We mentioned earlier that we have talked about dogs some this year, specifically war dogs, and they come up in random podcast too. But we've got two interesting pieces of news from that have to do with our canine friends. We do. There were a couple of discoveries this year that gave us some insight into the history of domesticated dogs and the role that they played in humans lives. The first for dog lovers especially maybe somewhat disturbing, though so just be forewarned. In January, scientists released a new analysis of a bone fragment found in Hine's Cave in southwestern Texas, which evidence shows was occupied by a group of hunter gatherers about nine thousand years ago. And scientists performed genetic testing on the bone fragment and figured out that it belonged to a dog rather than a coyote or a wolf, for a fox or something else, making it the earliest known evidence of dog domestication in the Americas. It predates other examples by about eight thousand years, and the dog was probably around twenty to thirty pounds and may have been similar to some breeds of Mexican or Peruvian dogs. But we mentioned some of you might not like this story very much, and that's because this dog was not just man's best friend. The bone fragment was found in dried human feces, which suggests the dog might have been man's best meal too, So it's good. Yeah, there's a lot to learn about the rural domesticated dogs played in humans lives over the years. I mean, they could have been used for tours and things as well, but they were food. We do have a more uplifting dog related story though, hopefully yeah, hopefully, depending on how you look at it. In February, Discovering News reported that the burial remains of a husky like dog that lived seven thousand years ago were found in Siberia, and it was an unusual kind of grave pit because the dog was buried uh in a in a site that also contained the partial remains of five different human skeletons, and DNA and stable isotope analysis showed that the dog ate what humans ate today, probably better than most people can say about their modern pampered dogs today. But this well pampered dogs and on Sara eating pete or something. Um. This dog, however, ate staff like fish and deer and some small plants, so um. Researchers assume that it probably lived and worked right alongside humans. Yeah, and there was certain wear and tear on the dog skeleton that showed that it probably helped transport loads during the course of daily chores. Some fractures also suggested the dog may have participated in hunting, although there's always the chance that its injuries were the result of being struck by humans. However, the fact that the dog was advanced in age when it died and the way in which it was buried indicates that it was likely cared for and cared about too. Robert Losey, lead author of the study about the dog burial, said in a Discovery News story about it quote based on how Northern Indigenous people understand animal in historic times, I think people burying this particular dog saw it as a thinking, social being, perhaps on par with humans in many ways. When I think it was even buried with objects, to which seems like a very very kind of human touch for for something like that. Moving on, though, we have been talking about medicine a lot this year, and this is kind of the ultimate entry in the medical medicine related category. And this is a good example two of a fine that the actual discovery happened decades ago, way back in the seventies, but it's only recently that new interpretation of what was found has has come up. So back in the nineteen seventies, divers excavated the shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany, and items aboard the ship suggested that it was about two thousand years old, that it had originated in Greece, and that when it went down it was on some sort of trading mission. But what caught the attention of researcher Emmanuela A. Petiti when she later read about the ship's cargo, you know, the discovery was this cash of medical supplies that had on board, for instance, a copper bleeding cup we talked about blood this year, to about that, to a surgical hook, viles, a mortar, and most importantly a tin container that still contained these quarter sized gray green pills, two thousand year old pills that were underwater for all of that time. Appetiti's husband, Alan Twade, is a historian in the Botany department at the National Museum of Natural History who studies just such ancient medicines. Except for that the whole of his career, he's basically had to work off medical texts alone. So Appetiti and to Wade knew that these tablets weren't just interesting as shipwreck artifacts. They were the first known samples of ancient medicine, according to Smithsonian Magazine. To Wade said quote, I was going to do everything I could to get them, and it took a little while. After eighteen months negotiating with Italy's Department of Antiquities, to Aid got two samples of the tablets and recruited Robert Fleischer, who was the head geneticist at the Smithsonian Center for conservator Shin and Evolutionary Genetics, to tackle the analysis aspect. Because two aids work normally requires looking at tax as he mentioned illustrations. I think already he speaks twelve languages, so he needed to get somebody who could look under the microscope on this one. And Fleisher was skeptical at first because he didn't really think any viable genetic material would be left after two thousand years, but he was convinced. He got to work and started to extract DNA from the tablets and compare it to the National Institutes of Health gene Bank, which of course has records of all sorts of plants. The first few ingredient lists that he came up with weren't right. Twade could tell that they contained plants not yet present in Greece two thousand years ago. But finally, after seven years and using the most sophisticated DNA techniques, Fleisher discovered a genetic makeup that jelled with historical texts and that include carrot, parsley, alfalfa, celery, wild in radish yarrow, hibiscus, and sunflower bound in clay sunflower aside, which the researchers believe was a modern contaminant, those ingredients fit the bill for a two thousand year old cure for stomach ailments common of course among sailors exactly so to Aid even thinks that this kind of tablet, I mean, we mentioned it was a quarter size, so it's not something you would just take as is. He figures it was probably something you would drop in a glass of water or wine or even vinegar, which sounds like it would turn your stomach and then settle it. But who knows. So there's one interesting last point to this uh this story, though, in May of to Aide and his wife presented the findings in Italy, and by chance they met with some of the divers who had explored the wreck in the nineteen seventies. And the divers were able to explain that sunflower contamination. They said that they had kept their off cygen tanks outdoors near the place where they were staying before going out on the dive, and the area they were staying was filled with sunflower field. So it's quite possible that something got onto their dive tank and ultimately onto the aluminum container or the tin container rather and um onto the pills. It's good to have that explanation. It was a big deal for to Wade to finally see some of the medicine he studied in action, and he told History dot Com quote, the information that you have in a text is always exposed to the risk of being only theoretical, and so until you have physical evidence of what you have in the texts, you never know what you're working on has been used in ancient daily life and practice. And I thought this was such an interesting multidisciplinary example here that both of uh these researchers really needed the other researchers work to to make sense of the find I thought it was pretty cool. So our final entry for this list is probably the favorite author of many of our listeners, at least she's a common request just this month, the news broke that British author Dr Paula Byrne had an earth a portrait of none other than Jane Austin. And Austin is of course best known for writing books like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, but she initially published her books anonymously and she wasn't well known until after her death. So why is this new portrait such a big deal. Well, according to a BBC news story about the recent discovery, there are currently only two recognized portraits of Austin, which I never realized before. One was a watercolor painter by her sister Cassandra, whom Jane was really close to, and that's the only portrait that's never been contested, and I believe it shows her from the back, so not much of a detailed portrait. Yeah. The new portrait, though, which Burns husband Jonathan Bate picked up in an auction, is a pencil drawing on vellum that has the words miss Jane Austin inscribed on the back and it was probably drawn around eighteen fifteen. Uh just for comparison there, Austin died in eighteen seventeen, so late in her life and it's supposed to bear a pretty good resemblance to Jane Austen, or at least, since we don't have a terribly great idea of what she looked like, at least bears a resemblance to her family. Apparently, the sitter in the portrait has quote the long straight Austin news. Burne is consulting with various experts to have it authenticated. But of course there are several reasons why people might be skeptical of her new find. For one thing, it's been around for a couple hundred years, so you could ask, okay, why has it been authenticated before. Obviously the person who sold it to her husband didn't think that it was genuine. Also, Burne has a new book on Austin ready for a release, so the timing of the story is really good publicity for her in that respect. Maybe we should mention too that the inscription on the back doesn't spell Austin with any yes. If new story is correct, it spells it with an eye, so that's a little a little twist to although spellings from the eighteenth nineteenth century are a little hard to rely on in the first place. But that wraps it up for our News Minds of Part one and brings us to Mega Listener Mail, an extended listener mail segment. We have missed out on doing the amount of listener mail we've wanted to lately, but we've gotten so many great letters, postcards, emails from people about episodes that we've done recently, which we've really enjoyed. We've had a lot of fun with our research in the last couple of months, and so we wanted to kind of give you guys an idea of what people are saying about some of the podcasts and some of the little tidbits that they're throwing out us that we didn't know before. Okay, so first we want to look at a few emails regarding our Gunpowder Plot episodes. We did two episodes about the Gunpowder Plot and received just tons of emails and letters from people about it. People really seem to enjoy it, or at least have something to say about it from their own experienceal bonfire story. Yeah, so we wanted to share a few of those. The first one is from Heather and she says, my family and I have just moved back to the States after living in England for four years. My husband is a brit and both my children were born there. We celebrated Guy Fox Day each year while there. The local village usually had a party at the village hall with food, sausages, candy, apples, etcetera, and drink from the bar. For the adults. There was a judging of the Guy, where the best of the half dozen guys made by the village children was chosen. These look basically like a scarecrow, old clothing, stuff with straw or newspaper and decorated to look like anyone the child wanted, usually someone famous. The winner got a prize and then the guys may or may not have been tossed on top of the bonfowery pile, depending on the children's wishes. I liked that you could keep your effigy if you wanted to. The patch of grass under the bonfire site was usually black for the rest of the year, which was funny to me. And she also corrects us on one point which a few people did, so we should mention this. She says, the penny for the guy thing that children used to do in England was not selling the guy, but collecting change to fund the guy and the celebration. So thank you, Heather, Yeah, it does make sense. Thank you for writing in and telling us your traditions and for letting us know some more about the Guy. And I think most of the people we heard from writing in about Guy Fox Day were based in England or they were transplants. But we did hear from Jason who lives in Newfoundland, and he wrote that Guy Fox Night is celebrated every year in my native Newfoundland as well. Newfoundland, the most easterly point of North America, was part of Britain until nineteen when it joined the Confederation and became Canada's tenth province. Newfoundland's very unique culture is heavily influenced by Ireland, Scotland and England, where most of its people can lay claim to their ancestry. Um. So that was neat to know that Guy Fox Day really is something that people people take with them wherever they go. It seems we had another one from Adam which is on a more somber note, but I still thought it was interesting to share. He says. Each year, the government tries to promote the safety aspect of bonfire Night by warning people to take care with sparklers and not to pour petrol on the flames and things like that. However, this year it seems that there may have been a completely unforeseen tragedy from a fireworks display. One of the worst motorway accidents in the UK, in which seven people died in a multi car pile up, may have been the result of fireworks smoke obscuring driver's vision. I don't want to leave my letter on a somber notes, so I will say that as a new dad, I had the pleasure of taking my nine month old baby boy Dylan to a public fireworks display in my hometown of Harwick, Essex, which he loved and I can see us having many happy bonfire nights to come, thanks in part to Guy Fox. Probably the coolest piece of Guy Fox related mail we got though with from Kelsey and Vermont. She's a bartender there and she sent us a note on some lovely stationary saying I'm finally writing to tell you that I am a self proclaimed dork who enjoys creating drink specials based on your historical tidbits, as I also like listening on my way to work. Most of the drinks are more clever than tasty, but I was pretty proud of this one, so I thought i'd share. I call it the Guy Fox, and the specials board would read remember remember the fifth of November with Pama Campari and Gin You'll dance in the street. It's bitter and sweet as is all revolution. And she shared the recipe. Maybe we could post that. We probably want to try it too, don't we. Yeah, we need to try it. It sounds good. I don't know all of the the ingredients, but she has suggested brands and everything, so um, maybe we'll give this a shot, uh and report back to you guys in the new year. Next, we want to share a few emails and letters related to the Emperor Maximilian episode. We got a lot on this as well. People love Maximilian, yes, And this first letter from Sarah we get a great example of some thing that we see a lot, which is people with their own expertise writing in to kind of give us a different angle on a topic that we've discussed, which we really liked. So Sarah has a background in art history and archaeology and that's where she's coming from, and she says, I was excited to see that you released a podcast on Emperor Maximilian, and even more so that you mentioned Edward Manet's series of paintings on the subject of Maximilian's execution. I know you like art history, so I thought i'd share a couple more things about these works. In terms of what we see in the painting, Manet's composition is clearly referencing a work from the early nineteenth century, Francisco Goya's Third of May eighteen o eight. Like in Mena's work, Goya is addressing a contemporary political event involving an occupation by French troops in this case of Spain, and the central incident of the French soldiers firing on the Spanish is mimicked in Mena's Maximilian paintings. Mane sited Goya in a number of paintings, and in the case of these works, one of the few times that either artist overtly referenced a highly political event, and that email struck me too, because people do often recommend that we cover the Third of May, so it could be another one of these political art history combo episodes. We also heard from a few people who had some kind of personal insight on the Maximilian story because they are from Mexico and they could give us a little feel for how people really really what opinion they have of Maximilian. There. The first is from Christo Ball, who lives in California, and he says he's from Mexico, and he says the mrs and I were visiting her family near Berlin during the Christmas holiday, and since we were so close, we decided to hop over to Vienna and play tourists for a week. We did all the typical touristy things like visiting castles, churches, Christmas markets and so on. During the middle of our stay, we signed up for a day tour that would take us to a couple of different palaces and other landmarks throughout the city. Sometime between visiting a three hundred year old church and a four hundred year old palace, I asked the guide if she knew where Maximilian was buried. Being from Mexico and having visited some of the historical locations in the Motherland having to do with that whole episode, I thought it would be interesting to check out his crypt or wherever he was interred for myself. Well before I was even able to finish asking where he may be, the guy gave me a really sour face and proceeded to explain to the entire group how Maximilian was tragically murdered in Mexico, to which I answered back that my understanding of events was that he was executed as the leader of a foreign nation that had unlawfully overthrown the true government of the people. Surprisingly, she did not agree with my As she put it, interpretation of events just goes to show how history can be interpreted depending on where or how you or yours were affected by it. So that was pretty cool. He gives this perspective for both countries here a rare thing. And we also heard from Pedro who um said that I just listened to your Maximilian podcast, and although it was a sad affair for or Maximilian, I wanted to let you know that he's not seen as a bad guy in Mexico. At least that's something right. Historians have done good work spreading the word that he was basically cheated into accepting the job and that he was actually rather cool towards Mexican. Nevertheless, the myth of Warez his defense of Mexican rights remains a strong part of our chosen history. So I think most Mexicans will see Maximilian as some sort of failed conqueror. So two perspectives there are our Habsburg emperor. That last one makes me feel a little better for poor Maximilian. And I know a lot of people recommended a Kate Beaten comic too. Basically, Basically, Pedro's email sums up how how Maximilian is depicted in the comic. Um. Yeah, I just I like hearing, I think with the Ludwig one to Bavaria, I like hearing about how these historical figures are considered in different countries today, what people's opinions of them are. Before we sign off with this, listener mail Mega listener mail me, Yes, we need to visit a segment that we have introduced recently, which we're having a lot of fun with and apparently listeners are too, And that's the love I listen while I blank segment. So we're gonna just run through a few of these, and I think you're going to be impressed by what your fellow listeners do while they're well they're checking out the podcast. So Melissa, for instance, in Jakarta, listens while she's riding a motorcycle taxi. Rachel and long Beach, says, my labmates and I now listen and learn free from you guys while sorting mud samples, identifying insects, and sequencing d NA cool. Brian in Ohio listens while working on a dairy farm. He says, I manage a dred cow dairy farm in Ohio, and I check cows to determine if they are pregnant while I listened to stuff you missed in history. Thank you for giving me some thing interesting and fun to listen to while I'm out with the cows. You're very welcome. Brian Margaret, who works at Albert Einstein University, says that she likes to listen to our podcast while trying to catch nematode worms for research. Jacob listens while he or he listened while he took this huge bike trip from Shanghai to Beijing. So we went to China this year, Dablina, and we didn't even know it. And Rebecca and Minneapolis says that she's a graduate student in industrial hygiene and she works in my college e lab culturing fungal spores for identification and remediation, and that's what she does while she's listening to the podcast. I look at mold spores under microscopes. And finally we heard from twelve year old Maddie, who listens so much that sometimes she said her mom takes away her iPod ship so that she won't stay up all night. So we thought that was cute. Thank you guys. Will share some more on the next episode for sure, because y'all are doing some interesting things all over the world. Yeah, and if you want to keep sharing those things with us, please write us where History Podcast at how stuff Works dot com or you can look us up on Facebook, or you can hit us up on Twitter at myston history. And as always, you can find tons of articles on tons of topics and a year end recap I believe your end slideshow recap of by searching our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes.

Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to bling a chuk reboarding, and I'm fair out and strange as it might seem, especially since we're history podcast, the news can actually play a pretty big role in what we choose to cover as topics. And that's because history, or at least what we know about it, is constantly changing. It's always evolving, and new discoveries are made, theories are formed, old mysteries are sometimes solved, or sometimes they're made even more complicated Ned Kelly case in point exactly. And in all of these cases, one thing holds true. The breaking news gives us a great opportunity to review what we know about a particular topic, so it makes a great opportunity for us to talk about them again. But of course we don't have a chance to cover all of the historical finds that are unearthed in any given years. So last year we decided we would do a real Newsy kind of topic a year end wrap up, and we ended up recording an episode that covered a few of big discoveries that we thought were either cool or just I don't know. It's fascinating in some way that appealed to us, and this year we've decided to do the same, but we're going to step it up a not too We're gonna do two episodes of historical finds, things that have been unearthed in TWN that we just thought were really neat. Yeah, and we've called it an Earth in twenty eleven. That's the title. But of course, not all of these discoveries literally came as the result of digs and archaeological work. Some of the some of them are just finds that came from all sorts of places, from the ocean, for example, or even from someone's musty old attic you never know, or somebody just putting two and two together and making a new discovery from research, or or finds that were already existing. Yeah, that's true. Some of these that we're going to discuss our findings based on things that were up either within the last couple of years or in some cases decades ago. So it's not something that was necessarily unearthed this year, but the finding was unearthed, it just had some important component of the process that happened in to make our list. But this is of course by no means a comprehensive list. I mean, we really had to to whittle it down, pick and choose here. The only common thread, though, is that there are discoveries that we found interesting, ones that had some kind of interesting story behind them, and most of them had some kind of tie into themes that we've covered a lot, And I mean I found that appealing for a yearine wrap up podcasts, we have hit on themes this year. I don't know, shipwrecks comes to mind, medicine, medicine, historic alcohol, historic dogs. So you're gonna notice a few of those themes popping up in both of these episodes, Yes you will. And that goes for the first one that we're going to talk about, which is pirates. A lot of people know Captain Morgan as a brand of rum, Captain and Coke anyone, but Captain Henry Morgan was an actual seventeenth century Welsh pirate and the wreck of one of his ships was found off Panama by a team of U S archaeologists this August. So just a little background on Morgan and his ships. He was a privateer sailing on England's behalf, so part of his work was defending England's interests, and he also pioneered expeditions to the New World. In the late seventeenth century, he went up against Spain, which at the time had a pretty tight grip on the Caribbean, and Morgan wanted to weaken Spain's influence a bit by taking Panama City, and so in sixteen seventy one he set out to capture a Spanish fort called Castillo de San Lorenzo, which was on a cliff overlooking the mouth of the Chagres River, the only water passageway between the Caribbean and Panama City, and Morgan and his men ultimately succeeded here, but they lost five ships, including their flagship called the Satisfaction, in the process, and that was due to some pretty rough seas that were surround the fort and also a reef known as the Lajas Reef nearby. So the discovery that these u s archaeologists made this year is presumably from one of those five ships, right. They made it by doing a magnetometer survey, which looks for metal by finding any kind of deviation in the Earth's magnetic field, and what they ended up pulling up to the surface included a portion of the starboard side of a wooden ships hall and a set of unopened cargo boxes and chess that were covered in coral, and of course everybody including us, thinking like, maybe this is some kind of pirate treasure, maybe this is Captain Morgan's treasure. So we were unable to find out whether the cargo was opened at the time the story broke um it had, it was yet to be determined, and we haven't heard anything since then. But according to a Discovering News article about the fine, there are at least a few people out there who are hoping that the boxes and chess contain gold or something that contain liquor. And you can probably figure out why some folks might be hoping for that. Yeah, it's because there's kind of an interesting twist to this story. To the story of this discovery. Though the research team included archaeologists and divers from Texas State University and some other volunteers, the project was actually funded by Captain Morgan, USA, the maker of Captain Morgan's Room, and they stepped into help when the research team ran out of funding, and that funding actually allowed the team to do that magnet a meter survey. So in a statement, Tom Herbs, the brand director of Captain Morgan USA, said, quote, when the opportunity arose for us to help make this discovery mission possible, it was a natural fit for us to get involved. The artifacts uncovered during this mission will help bring Henry Morgan and his adventures to life in a way never thought possible. So there you go. I'm kind of envisioning these Captain Morgan commercials maybe in with like footage from the archaeological dives, and maybe could if they were really willing to put out some more money, some rolling stones satisfaction. I mean, who knows it's it's a brilliant marketing move on there, it sounds like it. But prior to making this discovery, the team also found a collection of iron cannons in the same general area last year. But I think we're really most excited, as probably most people are, to find out what's in the chest. Yeah, I mean, maybe it'll be another entry for our Historical Spirits episodes. Maybe. So moving on to the next couple entries on our list. We mentioned earlier that we have talked about dogs some this year, specifically war dogs, and they come up in random podcast too. But we've got two interesting pieces of news from that have to do with our canine friends. We do. There were a couple of discoveries this year that gave us some insight into the history of domesticated dogs and the role that they played in humans lives. The first for dog lovers especially maybe somewhat disturbing, though so just be forewarned. In January, scientists released a new analysis of a bone fragment found in Hine's Cave in southwestern Texas, which evidence shows was occupied by a group of hunter gatherers about nine thousand years ago. And scientists performed genetic testing on the bone fragment and figured out that it belonged to a dog rather than a coyote or a wolf, for a fox or something else, making it the earliest known evidence of dog domestication in the Americas. It predates other examples by about eight thousand years, and the dog was probably around twenty to thirty pounds and may have been similar to some breeds of Mexican or Peruvian dogs. But we mentioned some of you might not like this story very much, and that's because this dog was not just man's best friend. The bone fragment was found in dried human feces, which suggests the dog might have been man's best meal too, So it's good. Yeah, there's a lot to learn about the rural domesticated dogs played in humans lives over the years. I mean, they could have been used for tours and things as well, but they were food. We do have a more uplifting dog related story though, hopefully yeah, hopefully, depending on how you look at it. In February, Discovering News reported that the burial remains of a husky like dog that lived seven thousand years ago were found in Siberia, and it was an unusual kind of grave pit because the dog was buried uh in a in a site that also contained the partial remains of five different human skeletons, and DNA and stable isotope analysis showed that the dog ate what humans ate today, probably better than most people can say about their modern pampered dogs today. But this well pampered dogs and on Sara eating pete or something. Um. This dog, however, ate staff like fish and deer and some small plants, so um. Researchers assume that it probably lived and worked right alongside humans. Yeah, and there was certain wear and tear on the dog skeleton that showed that it probably helped transport loads during the course of daily chores. Some fractures also suggested the dog may have participated in hunting, although there's always the chance that its injuries were the result of being struck by humans. However, the fact that the dog was advanced in age when it died and the way in which it was buried indicates that it was likely cared for and cared about too. Robert Losey, lead author of the study about the dog burial, said in a Discovery News story about it quote based on how Northern Indigenous people understand animal in historic times, I think people burying this particular dog saw it as a thinking, social being, perhaps on par with humans in many ways. When I think it was even buried with objects, to which seems like a very very kind of human touch for for something like that. Moving on, though, we have been talking about medicine a lot this year, and this is kind of the ultimate entry in the medical medicine related category. And this is a good example two of a fine that the actual discovery happened decades ago, way back in the seventies, but it's only recently that new interpretation of what was found has has come up. So back in the nineteen seventies, divers excavated the shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany, and items aboard the ship suggested that it was about two thousand years old, that it had originated in Greece, and that when it went down it was on some sort of trading mission. But what caught the attention of researcher Emmanuela A. Petiti when she later read about the ship's cargo, you know, the discovery was this cash of medical supplies that had on board, for instance, a copper bleeding cup we talked about blood this year, to about that, to a surgical hook, viles, a mortar, and most importantly a tin container that still contained these quarter sized gray green pills, two thousand year old pills that were underwater for all of that time. Appetiti's husband, Alan Twade, is a historian in the Botany department at the National Museum of Natural History who studies just such ancient medicines. Except for that the whole of his career, he's basically had to work off medical texts alone. So Appetiti and to Wade knew that these tablets weren't just interesting as shipwreck artifacts. They were the first known samples of ancient medicine, according to Smithsonian Magazine. To Wade said quote, I was going to do everything I could to get them, and it took a little while. After eighteen months negotiating with Italy's Department of Antiquities, to Aid got two samples of the tablets and recruited Robert Fleischer, who was the head geneticist at the Smithsonian Center for conservator Shin and Evolutionary Genetics, to tackle the analysis aspect. Because two aids work normally requires looking at tax as he mentioned illustrations. I think already he speaks twelve languages, so he needed to get somebody who could look under the microscope on this one. And Fleisher was skeptical at first because he didn't really think any viable genetic material would be left after two thousand years, but he was convinced. He got to work and started to extract DNA from the tablets and compare it to the National Institutes of Health gene Bank, which of course has records of all sorts of plants. The first few ingredient lists that he came up with weren't right. Twade could tell that they contained plants not yet present in Greece two thousand years ago. But finally, after seven years and using the most sophisticated DNA techniques, Fleisher discovered a genetic makeup that jelled with historical texts and that include carrot, parsley, alfalfa, celery, wild in radish yarrow, hibiscus, and sunflower bound in clay sunflower aside, which the researchers believe was a modern contaminant, those ingredients fit the bill for a two thousand year old cure for stomach ailments common of course among sailors exactly so to Aid even thinks that this kind of tablet, I mean, we mentioned it was a quarter size, so it's not something you would just take as is. He figures it was probably something you would drop in a glass of water or wine or even vinegar, which sounds like it would turn your stomach and then settle it. But who knows. So there's one interesting last point to this uh this story, though, in May of to Aide and his wife presented the findings in Italy, and by chance they met with some of the divers who had explored the wreck in the nineteen seventies. And the divers were able to explain that sunflower contamination. They said that they had kept their off cygen tanks outdoors near the place where they were staying before going out on the dive, and the area they were staying was filled with sunflower field. So it's quite possible that something got onto their dive tank and ultimately onto the aluminum container or the tin container rather and um onto the pills. It's good to have that explanation. It was a big deal for to Wade to finally see some of the medicine he studied in action, and he told History dot Com quote, the information that you have in a text is always exposed to the risk of being only theoretical, and so until you have physical evidence of what you have in the texts, you never know what you're working on has been used in ancient daily life and practice. And I thought this was such an interesting multidisciplinary example here that both of uh these researchers really needed the other researchers work to to make sense of the find I thought it was pretty cool. So our final entry for this list is probably the favorite author of many of our listeners, at least she's a common request just this month, the news broke that British author Dr Paula Byrne had an earth a portrait of none other than Jane Austin. And Austin is of course best known for writing books like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, but she initially published her books anonymously and she wasn't well known until after her death. So why is this new portrait such a big deal. Well, according to a BBC news story about the recent discovery, there are currently only two recognized portraits of Austin, which I never realized before. One was a watercolor painter by her sister Cassandra, whom Jane was really close to, and that's the only portrait that's never been contested, and I believe it shows her from the back, so not much of a detailed portrait. Yeah. The new portrait, though, which Burns husband Jonathan Bate picked up in an auction, is a pencil drawing on vellum that has the words miss Jane Austin inscribed on the back and it was probably drawn around eighteen fifteen. Uh just for comparison there, Austin died in eighteen seventeen, so late in her life and it's supposed to bear a pretty good resemblance to Jane Austen, or at least, since we don't have a terribly great idea of what she looked like, at least bears a resemblance to her family. Apparently, the sitter in the portrait has quote the long straight Austin news. Burne is consulting with various experts to have it authenticated. But of course there are several reasons why people might be skeptical of her new find. For one thing, it's been around for a couple hundred years, so you could ask, okay, why has it been authenticated before. Obviously the person who sold it to her husband didn't think that it was genuine. Also, Burne has a new book on Austin ready for a release, so the timing of the story is really good publicity for her in that respect. Maybe we should mention too that the inscription on the back doesn't spell Austin with any yes. If new story is correct, it spells it with an eye, so that's a little a little twist to although spellings from the eighteenth nineteenth century are a little hard to rely on in the first place. But that wraps it up for our News Minds of Part one and brings us to Mega Listener Mail, an extended listener mail segment. We have missed out on doing the amount of listener mail we've wanted to lately, but we've gotten so many great letters, postcards, emails from people about episodes that we've done recently, which we've really enjoyed. We've had a lot of fun with our research in the last couple of months, and so we wanted to kind of give you guys an idea of what people are saying about some of the podcasts and some of the little tidbits that they're throwing out us that we didn't know before. Okay, so first we want to look at a few emails regarding our Gunpowder Plot episodes. We did two episodes about the Gunpowder Plot and received just tons of emails and letters from people about it. People really seem to enjoy it, or at least have something to say about it from their own experienceal bonfire story. Yeah, so we wanted to share a few of those. The first one is from Heather and she says, my family and I have just moved back to the States after living in England for four years. My husband is a brit and both my children were born there. We celebrated Guy Fox Day each year while there. The local village usually had a party at the village hall with food, sausages, candy, apples, etcetera, and drink from the bar. For the adults. There was a judging of the Guy, where the best of the half dozen guys made by the village children was chosen. These look basically like a scarecrow, old clothing, stuff with straw or newspaper and decorated to look like anyone the child wanted, usually someone famous. The winner got a prize and then the guys may or may not have been tossed on top of the bonfowery pile, depending on the children's wishes. I liked that you could keep your effigy if you wanted to. The patch of grass under the bonfire site was usually black for the rest of the year, which was funny to me. And she also corrects us on one point which a few people did, so we should mention this. She says, the penny for the guy thing that children used to do in England was not selling the guy, but collecting change to fund the guy and the celebration. So thank you, Heather, Yeah, it does make sense. Thank you for writing in and telling us your traditions and for letting us know some more about the Guy. And I think most of the people we heard from writing in about Guy Fox Day were based in England or they were transplants. But we did hear from Jason who lives in Newfoundland, and he wrote that Guy Fox Night is celebrated every year in my native Newfoundland as well. Newfoundland, the most easterly point of North America, was part of Britain until nineteen when it joined the Confederation and became Canada's tenth province. Newfoundland's very unique culture is heavily influenced by Ireland, Scotland and England, where most of its people can lay claim to their ancestry. Um. So that was neat to know that Guy Fox Day really is something that people people take with them wherever they go. It seems we had another one from Adam which is on a more somber note, but I still thought it was interesting to share. He says. Each year, the government tries to promote the safety aspect of bonfire Night by warning people to take care with sparklers and not to pour petrol on the flames and things like that. However, this year it seems that there may have been a completely unforeseen tragedy from a fireworks display. One of the worst motorway accidents in the UK, in which seven people died in a multi car pile up, may have been the result of fireworks smoke obscuring driver's vision. I don't want to leave my letter on a somber notes, so I will say that as a new dad, I had the pleasure of taking my nine month old baby boy Dylan to a public fireworks display in my hometown of Harwick, Essex, which he loved and I can see us having many happy bonfire nights to come, thanks in part to Guy Fox. Probably the coolest piece of Guy Fox related mail we got though with from Kelsey and Vermont. She's a bartender there and she sent us a note on some lovely stationary saying I'm finally writing to tell you that I am a self proclaimed dork who enjoys creating drink specials based on your historical tidbits, as I also like listening on my way to work. Most of the drinks are more clever than tasty, but I was pretty proud of this one, so I thought i'd share. I call it the Guy Fox, and the specials board would read remember remember the fifth of November with Pama Campari and Gin You'll dance in the street. It's bitter and sweet as is all revolution. And she shared the recipe. Maybe we could post that. We probably want to try it too, don't we. Yeah, we need to try it. It sounds good. I don't know all of the the ingredients, but she has suggested brands and everything, so um, maybe we'll give this a shot, uh and report back to you guys in the new year. Next, we want to share a few emails and letters related to the Emperor Maximilian episode. We got a lot on this as well. People love Maximilian, yes, And this first letter from Sarah we get a great example of some thing that we see a lot, which is people with their own expertise writing in to kind of give us a different angle on a topic that we've discussed, which we really liked. So Sarah has a background in art history and archaeology and that's where she's coming from, and she says, I was excited to see that you released a podcast on Emperor Maximilian, and even more so that you mentioned Edward Manet's series of paintings on the subject of Maximilian's execution. I know you like art history, so I thought i'd share a couple more things about these works. In terms of what we see in the painting, Manet's composition is clearly referencing a work from the early nineteenth century, Francisco Goya's Third of May eighteen o eight. Like in Mena's work, Goya is addressing a contemporary political event involving an occupation by French troops in this case of Spain, and the central incident of the French soldiers firing on the Spanish is mimicked in Mena's Maximilian paintings. Mane sited Goya in a number of paintings, and in the case of these works, one of the few times that either artist overtly referenced a highly political event, and that email struck me too, because people do often recommend that we cover the Third of May, so it could be another one of these political art history combo episodes. We also heard from a few people who had some kind of personal insight on the Maximilian story because they are from Mexico and they could give us a little feel for how people really really what opinion they have of Maximilian. There. The first is from Christo Ball, who lives in California, and he says he's from Mexico, and he says the mrs and I were visiting her family near Berlin during the Christmas holiday, and since we were so close, we decided to hop over to Vienna and play tourists for a week. We did all the typical touristy things like visiting castles, churches, Christmas markets and so on. During the middle of our stay, we signed up for a day tour that would take us to a couple of different palaces and other landmarks throughout the city. Sometime between visiting a three hundred year old church and a four hundred year old palace, I asked the guide if she knew where Maximilian was buried. Being from Mexico and having visited some of the historical locations in the Motherland having to do with that whole episode, I thought it would be interesting to check out his crypt or wherever he was interred for myself. Well before I was even able to finish asking where he may be, the guy gave me a really sour face and proceeded to explain to the entire group how Maximilian was tragically murdered in Mexico, to which I answered back that my understanding of events was that he was executed as the leader of a foreign nation that had unlawfully overthrown the true government of the people. Surprisingly, she did not agree with my As she put it, interpretation of events just goes to show how history can be interpreted depending on where or how you or yours were affected by it. So that was pretty cool. He gives this perspective for both countries here a rare thing. And we also heard from Pedro who um said that I just listened to your Maximilian podcast, and although it was a sad affair for or Maximilian, I wanted to let you know that he's not seen as a bad guy in Mexico. At least that's something right. Historians have done good work spreading the word that he was basically cheated into accepting the job and that he was actually rather cool towards Mexican. Nevertheless, the myth of Warez his defense of Mexican rights remains a strong part of our chosen history. So I think most Mexicans will see Maximilian as some sort of failed conqueror. So two perspectives there are our Habsburg emperor. That last one makes me feel a little better for poor Maximilian. And I know a lot of people recommended a Kate Beaten comic too. Basically, Basically, Pedro's email sums up how how Maximilian is depicted in the comic. Um. Yeah, I just I like hearing, I think with the Ludwig one to Bavaria, I like hearing about how these historical figures are considered in different countries today, what people's opinions of them are. Before we sign off with this, listener mail Mega listener mail me, Yes, we need to visit a segment that we have introduced recently, which we're having a lot of fun with and apparently listeners are too, And that's the love I listen while I blank segment. So we're gonna just run through a few of these, and I think you're going to be impressed by what your fellow listeners do while they're well they're checking out the podcast. So Melissa, for instance, in Jakarta, listens while she's riding a motorcycle taxi. Rachel and long Beach, says, my labmates and I now listen and learn free from you guys while sorting mud samples, identifying insects, and sequencing d NA cool. Brian in Ohio listens while working on a dairy farm. He says, I manage a dred cow dairy farm in Ohio, and I check cows to determine if they are pregnant while I listened to stuff you missed in history. Thank you for giving me some thing interesting and fun to listen to while I'm out with the cows. You're very welcome. Brian Margaret, who works at Albert Einstein University, says that she likes to listen to our podcast while trying to catch nematode worms for research. Jacob listens while he or he listened while he took this huge bike trip from Shanghai to Beijing. So we went to China this year, Dablina, and we didn't even know it. And Rebecca and Minneapolis says that she's a graduate student in industrial hygiene and she works in my college e lab culturing fungal spores for identification and remediation, and that's what she does while she's listening to the podcast. I look at mold spores under microscopes. And finally we heard from twelve year old Maddie, who listens so much that sometimes she said her mom takes away her iPod ship so that she won't stay up all night. So we thought that was cute. Thank you guys. Will share some more on the next episode for sure, because y'all are doing some interesting things all over the world. Yeah, and if you want to keep sharing those things with us, please write us where History Podcast at how stuff Works dot com or you can look us up on Facebook, or you can hit us up on Twitter at myston history. And as always, you can find tons of articles on tons of topics and a year end recap I believe your end slideshow recap of by searching our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes.