biometrics
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- Thread starter satanboy
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Düber
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It strikes me as obvious now, but it didn't even cross my mind before that a pyramid would have a decorative capstone.
biometrics
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And then these fuckers stole it.
Düber
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True, I was thinking the same but then I thought the fate might be worse if it was left there so I'm undecided.
biometrics
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Lesson is: your grave will be desecrated some day, best to burn yourself
Düber
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I agree, let people spread your ashes somewhere interesting if they want and be done with it.
In the colossal, cathedral sized water tank beneath the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey, several heads of Medusa have been used as pillar bases for the past 1.500 years. It is not entirely known where the heads came from, but they were believed to be taken from some other Roman ruin. The heads are upside down or sideways to inhibit the power of the Gorgon Medusa's gaze.
The water tank's existence was forgotten for hundreds of years, despite being beneath the Hagia Sophia. When it was rediscovered, explorers found fish inside of it.
The Grosvenor, a sailing ship belonging to the British East India Company, ran aground in Lambasi Bay, north of Port St. Johns, on 4 August 1782. The ship was on her final voyage back from India, after which she was due to be decommissioned. Upon arrival in South African waters, several days of bad weather made accurate navigational readings very difficult; according to the captain’s calculations, the ship was at least 300 kilometres out to sea, whereas in reality she was perilously close to the shore.
In the early hours of 4 August, the lookout saw strange glowing lights on the horizon which he assumed to be some kind of atmospheric anomaly, similar to the northern lights; what he was actually seeing was fires on the mainland. By the time he realised his mistake it was too late, and the vessel was caught in a powerful current and driven onto a reef.
Of the 150 passengers and crew on board, 125 of them managed to get safely to the shore. The survivors decided to embark on an overland trek to Cape Town, a journey which they had optimistically estimated would take two weeks. This proved to be a gross miscalculation, however, and with virtually no provisions to survive the 2000-kilometre walk, the journey became one of the Wild Coast’s grimmest tales. The hardships of the trip took a heavy toll, and women and children, as well as the elderly, weak and sick, were abandoned as they fell behind. After more than three months of walking, only a handful of survivors reached the border of the Cape Colony. Some of the stragglers were reputedly integrated into local tribes, but the majority perished along the way.
The legend of the Grosvenor rests on a belief that the ship was laden with a king’s ransom in diamonds, rubies, silver, and gold. It is also said that the priceless gem-studded golden “Peacock Throne” of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (builder of the Taj Mahal) was on board the vessel during her last fateful voyage.
Over the years, attempts to retrieve these fabulous treasures from the sunken ship have ranged from the bizarre to the ridiculous. The first person to attempt a salvage of the Grosvenor was Sidney Turner, a trader from Port St. Johns. In the 1880’s, he blasted the reef with dynamite and recovered some 800 coins, although this was not nearly the reward that he was hoping for. In reality, Turner probably only managed to destroy what was left of the wreck.
In 1921, the Grosvenor Bullion Syndicate began another attempt to retrieve the alleged treasure, which they estimated to be worth over a million pounds. They set about digging an undersea tunnel from the rocky shore to where the wreck was supposed to lie. Once under the wreck, the idea was to breach the tunnel, allowing what was left in the ship to collapse into the diggings, from where the artefacts could be winched out. The tunnel flooded long before it even reached the wreck site, and the effort was abandoned.
Subsequent salvage attempts included the use of steam-driven cranes, heavy-duty chains to comb the seabed, another tunnel, and numerous dive expeditions. Someone even came up with an overly ambitious plan to enclose the entire bay with a 400-metre breakwater in order to drain it. None of these attempts or ideas ever yielded any significant finds, and the Grosvenor continues to guard her secrets until the present day.
If you ever drove through Simons Town and wondered what are those metal pylons on the mountain slopes. This could have been a beautiful tourist attraction but sadly I think that this ship has sailed.
About Simons Town Aerial Ropeway
The original Simons Town Aerial Ropeway, built in 1903, swung both supplies and people through the air between the West Dockyard and the Royal Naval Hospital and Sanatorium (recuperation for injured and sick seamen) up on Red Hill. A series of 17 wooden pylons supported the ropeway system that passed over St Georges Street (rather a tight fit for carts and pedestrians below), over three houses (the owners of which were paid an annual ‘right of way’ fee) up to Red Hill.
The metal pylons that you see, have stood unused since 1934. They were once an aerial ropeway that took 15 minutes to carry people or supplies up the hill. There were a total of six cable cars - a couple for passengers, another two for patients that included a couple of cots, and two for carrying supplies.
The lower station of the Simons Town Aerial Ropeway stood next to the Sail Loft in the West Dockyard, in amongst a series of buildings whose close proximity necessitated that one of the ropeway cables passed through a hole in the nearby Mast House wall.
From there the ropeway had two landing stations: one at the Navy Hospital, and another right on the summit of Red Hill. At the second of these was the engine room that drove the ropeway, initially with a diesel engine, later by an electric system.
A few brush fires on the hill later, and the wooden pylons were replaced with metal ones that remain sentry-like above the harbour today despite the closure of the system in 1934 after they built a road up the hill in 1932.
Magnificent misty view of the old Pier and Lions Head, Cape Town, South Africa. Date: postcard circa 1910's.
The harbour pier was built at the bottom of Heerengracht in 1910 and included a pavilion where ballets and concerts were hosted. It was demolished in 1939 as the boundaries of the current foreshore were pushed further out to sea.
The most interesting recent discovery we made is that you can see the original Pier Weather Vane at the City Museum in City Hall Darling St. A lovely museum that exhibits Cape Town related items.
