In 1648, the Water Board of Lekdijk Bovendams faced the challenge of raising funds for essential embankment repairs. They decided to issue a unique bearer bond, promising annual payouts to its holder...
Water has a destructive nature that is hard to contain - calm and peaceful in one moment, it can turn violent in another. These days, however, many coastal cities and regions have effective, modern...
An exceptionally well-preserved ship figurehead, in the form of a wooden statue, was “caught” by a shrimp boat crew off the coast of Texel Island in the Dutch Wadden Islands. This super-rare ship...
When you think of Spain, you don’t normally think of ice skates. Yet, that’s exactly what the King of Spain wanted back in 1572. And it wasn’t just a single pair; the king specifically requested 7,...
In June 2011, a Finnish treasure hunting company was scanning the Baltic Sea in the Gulf of Bothnia when “they claimed” their sonar captured what tabloid newspapers reported was “a sunken UFO.” While...
The UK coastguard has “arrested” a 230-foot (70 meter) Noah's Ark replica ship in Ipswich, England. Without the correct paperwork and “anti-fouling paint” to deem it seaworthy, the $3.6million (3-...
Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton was an American socialite and philanthropist who lived between the 18th and 19th centuries. She is perhaps best-known for being the wife of Alexander Hamilton, one of the...
Marine archaeologists are bringing many shipwrecks to light and changing our view of the past. In the Baltic Sea , off the coast of Denmark , divers have found the wreck of the Delmenhorst, a famous...
Sri Lanka, a beautiful country renowned for its beaches, is also a historic country with many Buddhist sites. Among the most important temples in the largely Buddhist country is Kelaniya Raja Maha...
The Netherlands is a remarkable society in many ways. Much of the country was once underwater and still remains at risk of being inundated by the sea. The country has developed an ingenious system...
The Dutch have had a long presence in the Caribbean and Latin America and a form of Dutch is still spoken in parts of the region. The European nation has left many architectural and archaeological...
Puerto Rico is a unique island with stunning scenery as well as a complex history and fascinating culture. It was part of the Spanish Empire for approximately 400 years and there are many reminders...
Dutch police in the town of Leiden are on a manhunt for archaeological thieves who audaciously broke into an outbuilding of the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave. Looking for cash they raided the museum safe and...
On June 4 th 1629, a contrived dispute in order to instigate a mutiny on the Duch East India Company vessel, the Batavia, culminated in the deaths of over more than 120 people. The bodies of the dead...
It wasn’t just an ordinary day at work for employees of a water company in the Netherlands, who earlier this month stumbled upon an earthenware cooking pot containing around 500 gold and silver coins...
Snared in a fishing net at the bottom of the North Sea, on the edge of the continental shelf, the “oldest Dutch work of art” has been found, according to an article published in Cambridge Antiquity...
Volcanic activity in the Indian Ocean gave rise to the island we know today as Mauritius. Undetected for millennia, like a tiny green emerald dropped in the azure blue Indian Ocean, it lay virginally...
According to Australia’s established history, European adventurers and explorers were the first foreigners to step foot on the continent – first Dutchman Willem Janszoon in 1606, and later Captain...
A new gene study suggests that large groups of newcomers arrived in Britain during the building of Stonehenge, around 2500 BC. The new study also implies that the possible invaders could have...
400 years ago travels across the sea were quite difficult. Bad weather conditions often meant tragedies. One example of a difficult journey comes from February 1642, when a ship was crossing from...
Today, Manhattan is one of the iconic locations of the United States of America. It is also the place where New York was born. However, the origins of Manhattan are often forgotten these days. Modern...
Nostradamus (1503 – 1566) was best known as an author of prophesies. He is credited by some with predicting a number of events in world history, including the French Revolution, the atom bomb, the...
A cache of bones and artifacts buried at a site near to where the Waal and Meuse rivers meet testify to a genocidal slaughter of tragic proportions. As recorded by Julius Caesar himself, a bloody...
Several years ago, a teenage boy stumbled upon an old swivel gun in Darwin, Australia that was found to predate the arrival of the acclaimed Captain James Cook to the continent in 1770. New research...
