In 1708, old adversaries, the British and the Spanish, were fighting the War of Spanish Succession. One fateful day in the Caribbean, the Spanish ship San Jose was going back to Spain when passing English ships casually blew it up off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia, and continued on their way.
Via Wiki Commons
They probably just wanted to see the awesome explosion.
What the British didn't know was that the San Jose was carrying six years of accumulated treasure on board the ship, including 344 tons of silver and gold, 116 chests of emeralds and pretty much the entire life savings of the Viceroy of Peru. All in all, it is worth about $2 billion in today's market, and some estimate that collectors might cough up as much as $10 billion to secure it. Despite many desperate searches in the area they're pretty sure it went down, nothing has been found.
As the years have passed, more and more people have been trying to find this elusive treasure. By the 1980s, actor Michael Landon and former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman got in on a few expeditions to find it. But since 1984, legal expeditions have dropped dramatically ever since the Colombian government dropped the finders share slightly, from 50 percent to, well, five percent.
And if 70s television star Michael Landon can't do it, what hope is left?
However, there is one imposing nonlegal hurdle to all this: We still don't know where the hell the wreck is. The Colombian government doesn't really allow things like SONAR and other remote methods of searching, so all treasure hunters really know are vague descriptions given by a few British sailors who helped deep six the boat, as well as a few murky videos from 1982 that may or may not be the San Jose. So the $2 billion is still out there, waiting to be rediscovered.
Getty
"Once we find that ship, we'll be filling our oxygen tanks with caviar."
Read more: 6 Objects You Won't Believe People Managed to Lose | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19201_6-objects-you-wont-believe-people-managed-to-lose_p2.html#ixzz1NAM8ALAC
Via Wiki Commons
They probably just wanted to see the awesome explosion.
What the British didn't know was that the San Jose was carrying six years of accumulated treasure on board the ship, including 344 tons of silver and gold, 116 chests of emeralds and pretty much the entire life savings of the Viceroy of Peru. All in all, it is worth about $2 billion in today's market, and some estimate that collectors might cough up as much as $10 billion to secure it. Despite many desperate searches in the area they're pretty sure it went down, nothing has been found.
As the years have passed, more and more people have been trying to find this elusive treasure. By the 1980s, actor Michael Landon and former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman got in on a few expeditions to find it. But since 1984, legal expeditions have dropped dramatically ever since the Colombian government dropped the finders share slightly, from 50 percent to, well, five percent.
And if 70s television star Michael Landon can't do it, what hope is left?
However, there is one imposing nonlegal hurdle to all this: We still don't know where the hell the wreck is. The Colombian government doesn't really allow things like SONAR and other remote methods of searching, so all treasure hunters really know are vague descriptions given by a few British sailors who helped deep six the boat, as well as a few murky videos from 1982 that may or may not be the San Jose. So the $2 billion is still out there, waiting to be rediscovered.
Getty
"Once we find that ship, we'll be filling our oxygen tanks with caviar."
Read more: 6 Objects You Won't Believe People Managed to Lose | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19201_6-objects-you-wont-believe-people-managed-to-lose_p2.html#ixzz1NAM8ALAC
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