Belitung Shipwreck
The dhow is an Arabic sailing ship. This must have gone down on the way back from China in 830 CE. It was a long way away from the planned route, but no one knows what it was doing in Indonesian waters. The discovery revealed a lot of things. The ship came with one of the biggest collections of artifacts from the Tang Dynasty. In 2005, the Sentosa Development Corporation and the Singaporean Government bought 60,000 items for $32 million! The collection came with storage jars, funeral urns, bowls, and gilt-silver boxes. It also came with the biggest Tang Dynasty known to exist! If you want to check it out, all you have to do is to head to the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. It is going to blow you away!
Belitung Shipwreck
Baghdad Batteries
There is an abundance of theories about what this object is. Sadly, the truth is that no one knows when it was made and what it was used for. The 5-inch tall terracotta pot is full of mystery. It has a single iron rod and a rolled copper sheet cylinder. Found in the Khujut Rubu region of Iraq, it is possible that it was once used to store something acidic like wine or vinegar. The theory goes that this once generated an electric current. The Discovery Channel show Mythbusters made ten replicas to see if this process would work for electroplating and electrostimulation. They saw that the batteries created four volts of electricity. Upon connecting them, they managed to electroplate a small item. The only catch in this scenario is that they did not find any indication that the jars were connected in that way.
Baghdad Batteries
