Oh, but they found a nail on Oak Island!
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I saw that…I was so excited. Gave me goose-bumps
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A couple of months ago, I found a large hand-wrought nail in a field that had been the site of a Revolutionary War encampment. If I contact The History Channel, do you think that we can stretch that day’s hike into a season-long cliffhanger?
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I get a kick out of how they latch onto the earliest date that something likely occurred, implying that someone from that era was there. This is more reasonable for equipment found, but other artifacts like jewelry or coins could easily have been around for several hundred years before someone lost it. They gotta get the easily swayed involved with suppositions like this. I’m hooked because I love treasure hunts. They probably found a lot they haven’t told us about yet, but telling is now wouldn’t be good for next season and the seasons after that.
The Revolutionary war started in Lexington MA. You can go to the site and walk around the fields. To this day people are still finding stuff.
… and more Revolutionary War encampments and battles took place in NJ than in any of the other colonies. That is why NJ is referred to as The Cockpit of The American Revolution.
Today, on my way to Princeton, I will drive past the Kingston Cemetery, where Washington and several of his officers held the famous Conference on Horseback, following his victories at both Trenton and Princeton. That is about 9 miles south of my home.
The field that I mentioned is approximately 3 miles from my home. Rochambeau’s French Army marched South about 1.5 miles from my home.
About 25 miles North, there is the Morristown National Historical Park which commemorates a winter-long encampment that was probably as bad as the one at Valley Forge. I could go on, but the list of Revolutionary War sites in NJ is probably too long for this forum, and would definitely be off-topic.
And, I have visited Faneuil Hall, Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, Ticonderoga, and Yorktown simply because of my father’s interest in history, and that was the main reason for my undergraduate major in history.
Cockpit of the Revolution: New Jersey in the War for Independence (americashistoryllc.com)
The show glosses over several early cars to focus on Benz and the others, Peugeot used a Daimler engine starting in 1890 although reportedly the top end was about 16mph. One went through the auction that’s held on the Friday before the London-Brighton race in 2018. Around 1900 if you were brave enough you could attempt to build your own car from a series of publications over 31 weeks, published anonymously at first but a former Daimler engineer is belived to be behind the publication.
Relatives bought an old farm, I went metal detecting and found an old ax head. He was so excited, these old ax heads buried in the ground are the best at retaining an edge etc. he was a country boy, sorry to divert.
Again, I tuned-in late, so I don’t know if the segment on Ferdinand Porsche made any mention of Dr. Hans Ledwinka.
While Porsche was clearly very gifted, it is also undeniable that his automotive designs changed–forever–after working at Steyr (an Austrian auto firm), along with Ledwinka. Ledwinka was the pioneer of air cooled rear engines, “backbone” chassis design and swing-axle rear suspension, and after working next to Ledwinka for a couple of years, it seems that virtually everything Porsche designed henceforth for other companies was “adapted” from Ledwinka’s pioneering work.
Ledwinka’s Tatra V570 prototype and his later Tatra T97 production car were clearly copied by Porsche for his VW.
If the program didn’t show the pioneering work of Hans Ledwinka and if it didn’t mention the… shall we say… similarity between his totally original designs and Porsche’s later designs, then it omitted information and essentially white-washed Porsche’s reputation.
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Was it a Templar ax head? 
Not templar but late1800s his guess.
Just a comment about Oak Island, as I am a fan. Agree that physical stuff found could have been dropped there at anytime. But wooden structures buried on the island have been dated in the 13th, 16th, and mid 17th centuries. None of that was just dropped there.
In the early seasons, it was a treasure hunt. In later seasons, especially the last one, it has become an archeological dig with very significant finds.
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I’m not sure if this was mentioned in any of the early episodes, but people have been searching for treasure at that site for over 100 years.
Prior to becoming POTUS (and probably even before he was elected Governor of NY), Franklin D. Roosevelt was part of a consortium that dug there for treasure. Their pumps pulled-up a fragment of an old gold jewelry chain from far below, so there was an indication of… something… down there, but the costs kept mounting, and the water level kept rising, so Roosevelt’s group eventually called it quits.
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Yes, they mention the previous searches regularly and include Roosevelt since he was a Mason, and POTUS. The origional “find” was in 1795 when the Money Pit was discovered. People have been searching for it ever since! The last two serious searchers spend 45 years competing with each other on the island.
I haven’t watched the next Cars That Made the World episode, but I’ll bet Ledwinka is not mentioned. Given what I have read, it is hard to say which of the 2 had the ideas first or if they discussed these ideas when the worked together and each developed the ideas concurrently. After all each were Czech by birth so it would be natural for them to discuss their ideas over lunch or drinks.
And none of those structures have anything to do with the treasure.
I don’t mind the show, but they do take a lot of liberties with the items they do find. They find an old coin and they automatically conclude here’s proof the treasure was buried here. It means NOTHING. So far they haven’t found any proof of a treasure.
I do agree that it’s become an archeological dig. Not too sure about significant finds. The stuff they find there are found all around New England almost every year.
When asked to comment on whether Porsche had “adapted” his ideas, Ledwinka said, “Well, sometimes he looked over my shoulder, and sometimes I looked over his shoulder”.
He was being charitable, because none of Porsche’s designs were adapted by him, whereas almost everything that Porsche designed thereafter was adapted from Ledwinka’s designs.
Ironically, both men spent time in prison after WW II following convictions for having collaborated with the Nazis, but they were not imprisoned together as far as I know.
I’ve viewed that segment again (all 4 parts are on Amazon for rental or purchase) and there’s no mention of Ledwinka. Lots of information is left out to focus on the core group that the producers wanted to highlight.
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It’s still a treasure hunt. Canada forced them to expand their operations to include archeological investigations. The Oak Island group agreed to it so that they could still hunt for treasure. Oh, and that Templar comment was a joke. You missed the 
? Templars and aliens are two of the History Channel’s most “studied” subjects.
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No, I got the joke @jtsanders … they gotta fill the airtime! And there is too much Templar discussion on Oak Island for my taste.
Aliens? Never too many aliens… Ha! At least I haven’t seen the crazy hair guy lately.