4 Relics that the government somehow managed to lose

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By Webdesk


If there’s one thing the government is good at, it’s holding on to stuff. They hold onto your money, hoping you die before they have to pay anything back; they hold people in elected positions for countless years; and they hold on to treasures, which are currently being worked on by top men. They have entire archive departments devoted to these relics, as well as huge underground complexes that serve as storage areas.

Yet something slips through the cracks of the net. Then, finally, some humble government clerk scratches his head one day and says: Hi. Whatever with the…

Moon Trees

When Apollo 14 left for the moon in 1971, it was carrying three astronauts, a bunch of smuggled souvenirs they wanted to sell for a profit, and also a large number of tree seeds. These were seeds of sycamores, Douglas firs and sequoias, and while the astronauts had no intention of planting them immediately as part of a lunar terraforming expedition, they did hope to see if being near the moon would change the seeds in particularly revealing ways.

The experiment encountered some hiccups. On return, the seeds had to be decontaminated, risking them being altered in a way the experiment never planned. During this fumigation, the canister holding them burst, exposing the seeds to a vacuum, again separated from the planned experimental conditions. Despite all that, the seeds seemed to germinate, something no one was sure would happen.

The moon tree of Arlington National Cemetery

Nasa Goddard

This one is located in a graveyard and feeds on corpses and grief.

Sprouting achieved, NASA gave away the seedlings. Some trees (and their descendants) went to prominent places, such as the White House or Arlington National Cemetery. But we don’t know where they all went, as one NASA curator recently pointed out when he searched the current locations of the moon trees and found no recorded answer anywhere. He has now managed to track down about 50, thanks to some of these trees making headlines when they were planted. However, Apollo 14 carried about 2,000 seeds, so many lunar trees remain lost.

They will also likely remain hidden. Those who know their location have certainly been killed. Killed and swallowed. Killed and eaten – by the moon trees.

The Smithsonian Endowment

The Smithsonian Institution is a repository of relics, from Lincoln’s hat to Vietnam War lace knickers. But no matter how good the museums are at storing things, the government lost everything early on.

We’re not talking about how the Smithsonian lost track of individual items (although that’s a pretty interesting story in its own right). We’re talking about the institution’s original endowment, which came from the estate of a man named James Smithson. Smithson was a scientist, and in addition to the Smithsonian, he lent his name to a zinc mineral, now known as Smithsonite. All of this should have solidified his legacy, except you’ve never heard of the man today.

Smithsonite, named after Smithson

Sanjay Acharya

Here’s a photo of Smithsonite, which looks remarkable, unlike a photo of James Smithson.

Smithson left the money to the U.S. government in the form of 105 sacks of gold coins, just as we imagined 19th-century wealthy men stashing their money. Despite its skill at storing things in vaults, the government didn’t just put the gold in a vault or deposit it in a bank. Public finances don’t work that way. Instead, it used the coins to buy state-issued bonds.

Government bonds are just about the safest place to put your money. It’s almost as safe as throwing it away in a bank – maybe even safer, since the bank can go bust, but the government can’t, right? Still offer bonds some risk. The federal government bought bonds from the state of Arkansas, which promptly spent all the money with reckless abandon. They defaulted on the debt. When the government called because they were ready to cash in some bonds and build a new pedestal for George Washington’s codpiece or whatever, Arkansas told them: I’m sorry, it’s all gone.

Congress ended up funding the Smithsonian with fresh money of its own, so we ended up getting the institution after all. In fact, it still ended up with the Smithson name even though it didn’t use its money. So Smithson found immortality after all – if the Smithsonian led everyone to remember him, which (again) didn’t happen.

The amnesty of Robert E. Lee

When the Civil War ended, Andrew Johnson pardoned people who had fought for the Confederacy, because prosecuting and imprisoning half the country would have been a bit much, even for America. However, he did not forgive everyone. His pardon included 14 exceptions, which meant that senior officers were among many categories that were not automatically amnestied.

Such people can still apply for amnesty individually. That included General Robert E. Lee, who wrote a personal request to Johnson to restore his rights as a citizen. Later that year, he signed an Amnesty Oath pledging allegiance to the United States. The government lost both documents.

Robert E Lee Amnesty Oath

National Archives

Even if they are written on the best writing pad there is.

The application? The Secretary of State gave it away to a friend as a memento. And the amnesty oath? The people knew about it at the time, and it was instrumental in persuading former Confederates to join the country peacefully without trying anything else, but the government lost track of the paper so that history would forget that it ever existed. Anyway, Lee was not pardoned and he did not regain his citizenship.

At least, not during his lifetime. However, in 1970, someone at the National Archives found the old Amnesty Oath buried in a dusty pile that no one had properly cataloged. A few years after that, Congress responded by voting to make Lee a citizen after all, with the change working retroactively all the way back to 1865. By the way, this move was not an attempt by neo-Allies to honor slavery, but a almost unanimous vote to recognize Lee’s post-war efforts to reunite the country. The small bloc that voted against the move did so only because it did not also add an amnesty for conscription dodgers.

So that happened a century after Lee died. But when he died, Robert E. Lee died stateless. He also died estateless: the government confiscated his property and turned it into Arlington National Cemetery. Today, Arlington contains the bodies of many soldiers and famous figures, as well as a moon tree, which stops the rising dead.

A large atomic bomb

In 1958, two planes collided in mid-air. This would be a big deal even if there were no additional details, but one of these US Air Force aircraft was a fighter jet, while the other was a bomber carrying a Mark 15 nuclear bomb. During this failed flight exercise, the bomber’s crew realized that if they attempted an emergency landing, it could detonate the nuclear bomb. So before they made that attempt, they jettisoned the atomic bomb. It fell into the water off the coast of Georgia. The Air Force never managed to recover it.

Mark 15 thermonuclear bomb

United States Atomic Energy Commission

To this day, the Atomic Energy Commission refers to the capital as ‘Hotlanta’.

They did attempt to restore it. The next day they sent a squadron to comb the area. They searched for it for months before admitting defeat. Today the official word is that no one should attempt to retrieve it, as even attempting to retrieve it risks detonating it more than leaving it to be nudged gently by passing sharks.

That position seems to contradict the military’s previous efforts to retrieve the bomb. Also conflicting: Reports on how nuclear this nuclear bomb really is. The Air Force is now assuring everyone that the bomb never contained a plutonium core, leaving it with several thousand pounds of explosives that could still explode spectacularly, but not nuclear. That’s a consolation, but it contradicts a 1966 Congressional report that said it was indeed a fully functional bomb, complete with a core brimming with plutonium and uranium.

Don’t worry if this sounds terrifying and unprecedented to you. Turns out the world has really lost track of dozens of nuclear bombs over the years, and this is just one of them.

Relief. No problem then.

To follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for more things no one should see.





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