Few who hear the story of the Endurance could avoid reflecting on the aptness of the ship’s name. A year after setting out on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914, it got stuck in a mass of drifting ice off Antarctica. There it remained for ten months, while leader Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 men waited for a thaw.
But the Endurance was being slowly crushed, and eventually had to be left to its watery grave. What secures its place in the history books is the sub-expedition made by Shackleton and five others in search of help, which ensured the rescue of every single man who’d been on the ship.
This harrowing journey has, of course, inspired documentaries, including this year’s Endurance from National Geographic, which debuted at the London Film Festival last month and will come available to stream on Disney+ later this fall.
“The documentary incorporates footage and photos captured during the expedition by Australian photographer Frank Hurley, who [in 1914] brought several cameras along for the journey,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Sarah Kuta. “Filmmakers have color-treated Hurley’s black-and-white images and footage for the first time. They also used artificial intelligence to recreate crew members’ voices to ‘read’ their own diary entries.” READ MORE...
Researchers excavating Roman ruins at Los Villaricos in southern Spain have discovered a well-preserved coffin adorned with geometric patterns and interlocking ivy leaves.
As local news outlet Murcia Today reports, the sarcophagus likely dates to the sixth century C.E., when the Visigoths, among other Germanic tribes, invaded territories formerly held by the fallen Roman Empire.
Archaeologists from the University of Murcia found the 6.5-foot-long coffin during a summer dig at Los Villaricos, a large-scale agricultural settlement established by the Romans around the first century C.E.
Per Heritage Daily, the sarcophagus was buried at a Roman villa repurposed by the Visigoths following its abandonment around the fifth century C.E. The Germanic conquerors used the structure’s central patio area as a necropolis. READ MORE...
About 2,000 pages of historical documents related to the lives of free and enslaved Black Americans from the 1600s to 1800s were discovered in the attic of a house in Maryland. The 200-year-old house was being demolished, and the papers were put up for sale by a local auction house. Historians and members of the local Black community raised funds to preserve the documents and archive them for the public.
Thousands of papers, some documenting the auction and sale of enslaved Black Americans, were headed for the auction block themselves before Black historians and community members stepped in to reclaim ownership over their past. 
About 2,000 pages dating from the late 1600s to early 1800s were found in a plastic trash bag in the attic of a 200-year-old house near Chestertown, Md., as the owner, Nancy Bordely Lane, was cleaning it out this spring. The foundation of the house, built in 1803 on property that had remained in the family since 1667, was reportedly damaged and the structure was going to be demolished. The documents were headed for the garbage, but were rescued and delivered to Dixon’s Crumpton Auction in waxed seafood boxes, John Chaski, an antique-manuscript expert, told the Washington Post.
Darius Johnson, a Washington College alum, was one of several people who saw pictures of the documents up on the auction house’s Facebook page. After moving back to Kent County from Baltimore, Johnson became part of the Chesapeake Heartland project at Washington College, in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and local partners. For him, the documents couldn’t have shown up at a better time. TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...
