Most of us have already figured out that our money isn’t real (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show). Manhattan gold merchant Ibrahim Fadl discovered this we he found that several 10-ounce gold bars, normally worth around $100,000, were counterfeits filled with tungsten, a much less valuable metal that has the same weight as gold. This immediately dropped their worth 80%.
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Archeologists assumed that the legend of the Queen of Sheba, who ruled what is now Ethiopia and Yemen 3,000 years ago, was simply a Biblical legend–until now. She purportedly brought the then-ruler of Jerusalem–King Solomon–a vast quantity of gold from her private mine, but nobody has was able to locate the treasure or the mine. But now the goldmine may have been found: An enormous mine has been located in the territory that was once the Kingdom of Sheba, along with the ruins of a temple and a battlefield (implying that battles were fought over the gold). Locals still pan for gold in the nearby river, but were unaware of the ancient mine.
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A shipwreck containing 200 tons of silver has been discovered in the Atlantic ocean. It’s the large haul of precious metal ever discovered at sea. The question is: Who gets to keep it? The SS Gairsoppa, a UK cargo ship sunk by a German U-boat in 1941, was found by the US exploration firm Odyssey Marine, using a small submarine to search the bottom of the sea where they suspected the ship had been sunk.
Only one person from crew of 85 survived the torpedo attack. Three crew members survived in a lifeboat that reached the Cornish coast two weeks later, but two died trying to get ashore.
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Nadav Shragai writes in Haaretz.com that Rabbi Yehuda Meir Getz tried for years to find the lost treasure of the Knights Templar by tunneling underneath the Dome of the Rock in Israel, where the Second Temple once stood. He believed the Ark of the Covenant, which is the box that held the tablets engraved with the Ten Commandments, is buried there. But Palestinians discovered the tunnels and objected. Finally then prime minister Menachem Begin had the opening sealed up.
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