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  1. Oak Island Treasure – The Money Pit

    January 31, 2014 by Melissa Shallcross

    Have you ever found yourself fascinated with a story of adventure? A story of mystery? One that spans years and years and even has taken the lives of people who have previously tried to look for that treasure, to solve that mystery?  These adventures, these real life treasure hunts are so exciting to me, and so I’ll devote my new set of passion posts to searching for these famous tales of buried treasures and mysterious clues. I’m not sure what I’ll find, but I do love a good real life mystery.

    The other day, I stumbled upon the inspiration for this series of passion posts: The Oak Island Treasure. A small island in Nova Scotia, Oak Island is home to a mystery over two centuries old. In 1795, a teenage boy named Daniel McGinnis was exploring Oak Island when he spotted a circular depression in the ground by a tree. Having heard old rumors of pirates in the area, he returned the site with two friends and they began digging. Now, this is a mystery, and a really old one at that, so keep in mind that different sources report different findings. According to one source, upon reaching 10 feet deep, the boys hit a layer of oak logs laid in the earth. Other sources report that it was in fact a layer of slate. Nonetheless, people seem to agree that there was some sort of layer of items slowing down the boys’ dig.

    After removing the logs, I’m sure the boys were excited, first thinking that their intuition of something being buried there had been true and, second, that the treasure or whatever it was was right below this obstacle. But they were wrong. As they kept digging, the boys hit another layer of some obstacle, whether logs or slate. Once past, nothing again. Ten more feet, down 30, and the boys hit some sort of clay layer. Realizing that they were in way over their heads, quite literally, the trio gave up.

    Diagram of Money Pit http://www.nothingaboutpotatoes.co.uk/pics/Things007-money-pit.jpg

    Diagram of Money Pit
    http://www.nothingaboutpotatoes.co.uk/pics/Things007-money-pit.jpg

    Years later, they returned, this time with professional help, with the goal of finally excavating the treasure they envisioned their since they were young. There was still no success. To this day, the cumulative efforts of over two centuries of treasure hunters still have not recovered the “Oak Island Treasure”.

    Years and years of excavating the “Money Pit” have resulted in some astonishing discoveries. Every ten feet, a new layer of some sort of obstacle is unearthed. The treasure hunters have reported finding oak logs, clay, slate, charcoal, and coconut fibers. One of the things I find most interesting is a set of “booby traps” that were set up by the pit’s creators. At around 100 feet down, and again later on, a tunnel was dug from the nearby beach to the pit, where, once struck, the pit would flood by up to sea level. Among other things, some of the most substantial claims of findings over the years have been slates with unknown etchings and even human remains.

    The most ironic part, though, is that nobody even knows what they are searching for. So far, treasure hunters have reached around 200 feet down, and yet, the search continues. What could be down there? Who, prior to 1795, designed and had the tools and ingenuity to create such a pit? Maybe one day we’ll find out…

     

    Oak Island Treasure Information:

    http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/topics/oakisland/story.html

    Category The Thrill of the Hunt | Tags: ,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  2. Fondue Anyone?

    January 31, 2014 by Melissa Shallcross

    America, the “melting-pot” of culture.

    Let’s travel back in time and see how the land of the free came to get its nickname. It all started after Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. The first waves of daring steps onto the new land were the feet of the British, Spanish, and French, all seeking to create colonies on the new, unknown land. In the early 1600s, a flood of immigrants came from Britain, seeking religious freedom in America. Settlements grew and grew as more people from a mix of countries got up, packed their bags, and sailed over to the Americas, leaving their homes in search of something a new beginning seemed to promise them. In the 1600s and 1700s, our country began to take a solid shape as an independent land. Throughout this time and onward, however, even after laws and bans forbidding the act, slaves from Africa were being imported and sold across the states, adding another layer of culture into our growing pot pie of people. Then we add a layer of Germans after massive crop failures and a touch of Irish culture during the potato famine, all during the 1840s. 1848 brings discoveries of gold in the west, attracting Chinese immigrants, while the end of the Mexican-American welcomes Mexicans into the U.S.  That covers a lot of the cultures that defined the early years of our country, but immigration doesn’t stop there, not by a long shot. Let’s jump ahead a few decades to the late 1800s. 1882: Ellis Island opens. Within the next century, 16 million immigrants would be admitted through Ellis Island alone.

    16 million. Irish, British, German, Polish, Italian; I’m sure there has been at least one person from almost every country in the world that has passed through Ellis Island to this day.

    Here’s a question for you. What are you? Sounds like a weird question. What I mean is what is your heritage? Where does your family come from? This is always a fun question to answer. Oh, I’m Polish, Italian, English… but what I get out of this answer, this listing of grandparents’ bloodlines, is that I am American. I’m not from Italy. I’ve never set foot in Poland. I was born and raised in Pennsylvania. How come I identify as all these different cultures? In America, my grandparents’ generation seems to be the last pure bloodline connecting to other countries. For me, at least, all of my grandparents’ parents were immigrants directly from other countries. Over the past century, our country has gone from a colorful, mess of a cultural stew to a kind of chili. It’s getting harder to distinguish one foreign culture with another because several generations of mixed marriages have produced this similar cultural sense, as the only people who are directly related to a country are the new immigrants who still come here every day.

    So what does it mean to be American? Is this old “melting pot” metaphor still  relevant? How about the relatively new idea of the American salad bowl where everyone is distinct, but still come together to form one country?

    While researching into this idea, I stumbled upon this article. What Timothy Taylor argues in the Star Tribune is that America is

    America Fondue http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/213593491.html

    America Fondue
    http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/213593491.html

    neither a melting pot of cheese nor a crunchy, full salad from a buffet line. Rather, he sees America as chocolate fondue. People from different countries come to America and represent their culture, whether as a pineapple, a strawberry, a marshmallow, pretzel, or any other deliciously dippable snack. He argues that each person keeps their culture, but when they come to the U.S., they are effectively covered in America. They delve into the “American culture”, but still are the snack they were before, just with more flavor, or more experience in cultures.

    This is an interesting and unique argument. I stick with my thoughts about Americans of recent generations identifying less with their lineage and more with the resultant mix of “American culture”, but I also like this idea of chocolate fondue (and not just because I love chocolate). I feel that this is a good way to describe direct immigrants and probably their children as well, but as the generations continue, this chocolate fondue turns back into that classic melting pot of culture, still delectable, just in a different way.

    So what do you think? Is America the classic melting pot, a salad buffet, or more like a chocolate fondue?

     

    Immigration information:

    http://www.history.com/topics/united-states-immigration-to-1965

    http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/timeline.html

    Category Civic Issues | Tags: ,,,,,, | 2 Comments

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