Curio Cabinet

It’s not often that a mystery starts solving itself. Around 100 years ago, two British mountaineers, George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine, disappeared during their attempt to be the first to summit Mount Everest. Mallory’s remains were found in 1999, but Irvine's were missing until recently, when his boot and foot were discovered by a National Geographic documentary team. Born on April 8, 1902, Irvine was a young but talented mountaineer serving as the oxygen officer in Mallory’s doomed expedition to Everest. Since the pair went missing during their ascent, they have been the subject of the most famous mountaineering mystery in history: did they reach the summit? When Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999, it shed some light on the matter. Inside one of the mountaineer’s pockets were his dark goggles, indicating that it was dark when he became injured. Missing was a photograph of his wife, which he had promised to leave on the summit. These two bits of evidence suggested that Mallory may have been descending later in the evening, possibly having reached the summit. However, there wasn’t anything definitive to prove the expedition’s success. What might settle the debate once and for all is Irvine’s film roll. Irvine was known to have carried a camera on the expedition, and had they reached the summit, he surely would have snapped a photo or two. Although Irvine’s complete remains are yet to be discovered, a 1933 expedition located his ice ax on the northeast ridge of the Central Rongbuk Glacier. Back in September, the National Geographic documentary team led by filmmaker Jimmy Chin discovered an oxygen tank belonging to that expedition, giving them a clue as to Irvine’s final resting place. Soon after, they found a boot—still containing a sock-covered foot—that had melted out of the glacier. Chine immediately knew who the foot belonged to, because stitched into the sock in red thread were letters that spelled out “A.C. IRVINE.” For now, the remains are in the custody of the China-Tibet Mountaineering Association, though Chin took a DNA sample to confirm that it truly belongs to Irvine. But even that may not be entirely necessary. As Chin told National Geographic, “But I mean, dude. There's a label on it.” After 100 years though, what’s a few more days of waiting?

 
[Image description: Mount Everest and surrounding mountain peaks.] Credit & copyright: Gavin Challand (Gavidipus), Wikimedia Commons. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Gavidipus at English Wikipedia. This applies worldwide.

For better or worse, modern American politics are a bombastic affair involving celebrity endorsements and plenty of talking heads. Former President Jimmy Carter, who recently became the first U.S. President to celebrate his 100th birthday, has lived a different sort of life than many modern politicians. His first home lacked electricity and indoor plumbing, and his career involved more quiet service than political bravado.
 
Born on October 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia, James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr. was the first U.S. President to be born in a hospital, as home births were more common at the time. His early childhood was fairly humble. His father, Earl, was a peanut farmer and businessman who enlisted young Jimmy’s help in packing goods to be sold in town, while his mother was a trained nurse who provided healthcare services to impoverished Black families. As a student, Carter excelled at school, encouraged by his parents to be hardworking and enterprising. Aside from helping his father, he also sought work with the Sumter County Library Board, where he helped set up the bookmobile, a traveling library to service the rural areas of the county. After graduating high school in 1941, Carter attended the Georgia Institute of Technology for a year before entering the U.S. Naval Academy. He met his future wife, Rosalynn Smith, during his last year at the Academy, and the two were married in 1946. After graduating from the Academy the same year, Carter joined the U.S. Navy’s submarine service, although it was a dangerous job. He even worked with Captain Hyman Rickover, the “father of the nuclear Navy,” and studied nuclear engineering as part of the Navy’s efforts to build its first nuclear submarines. Carter would have served aboard the U.S.S. Seawolf, one of the first two such vessels, but the death of his father in 1953 prompted him to resign so that he could return to Georgia and take over the struggling family farm.
 
On returning to his home state, Carter and his family moved into a public housing project in Plains due to a post-war housing shortage. This experience inspired him to work with Habitat for Humanity decades later, and it also made him the first president to have lived in public housing. While turning around the fortunes of the family’s peanut farm, Carter became involved in politics, earning a seat on the Sumter County Board of Education in 1955. In 1962, he ran for a seat in the Georgia State Senate, where he earned a reputation for himself by targeting wasteful spending and laws meant to disenfranchise Black voters. Although he failed to win the Democratic primary in 1966 for a seat in the U.S. Congress (largely due to his support of the civil rights movement), he refocused his efforts toward the 1970 gubernatorial election. After a successful campaign, he surprised many in Georgia by advocating for integration and appointing more Black staff members than previous administrations. Though his idealism attracted criticism, Carter was largely popular in the state for his work in reducing government bureaucracy and increasing funding for schools.
 
Jimmy Carter’s political ambitions eventually led him to the White House when he took office in 1977. His Presidency took place during a chaotic time, in which the Iranian hostage crisis, a war in Afghanistan, and economic worries were just some of the problems he was tasked with helping to solve. After losing the 1980 Presidential race to Ronald Reagan, Carter and his wife moved back into their modest, ranch-style home in Georgia where they lived for more than 60 years, making him one of just a few presidents to return to their pre-presidential residences. Today, Carter is almost as well-known for his work after his presidency, as during it, since he dedicated much of his life to charity work, especially building homes with Habitat for Humanity. He also wrote over 30 books, including three that he recorded as audio books which won him three Grammy Awards in the Spoken Word Album category. Not too shabby for a humble peanut farmer.

 
[Image description: Jimmy Carter’s official Presidential portrait; he wears a dark blue suit with a light blue shirt and striped tie.] Credit & copyright: Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Naval Photographic Center. Wikimedia Commons. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.

This shipwreck ain’t big enough for all of us! That’s pretty much what several countries, companies, and other groups are saying to each other regarding the world’s most valuable shipwreck, over which they each claim ownership. The San José, a 64-gun Spanish battleship, was sunk by the British in 1708. Onboard were countless treasures, including precious metals and jewelry, which today makes it one of the world’s most valuable shipwrecks, worth billions of dollars. Though it might seem like something out of a pirate movie, a fierce battle is now raging for the treasure—though it involves arbitration rather than physical fighting.
 
Spain is the first (and most obvious) entity to claim ownership of the San José. It was their ship, after all, and it was gunned down during the War of the Spanish Succession. The war was fought to decide who would rule Spain (and control its valuable shipping routes). Needless to say, the British were keen to see the ship’s treasures at the bottom of the ocean rather than in the hands of the Spanish, who could use it to fund their military chest. While it makes sense that modern day Spain would claim ownership of the San José’s wreck, Columbia also has a claim since the shipwreck currently lies in their waters (though its exact location is a closely-guarded secret.)
 
Another compelling claim comes from U.S. salvage company Sea Search Armada. They found the wreck’s location back in the 1980s (the company was then called Glocca Mora). At first, the company offered to split the ship’s treasure with Columbia in exchange for help in getting it off the seabed. The San José is nearly 2,000 feet underwater, so exhuming it would be no easy task. But the two entities couldn’t agree on a fair split of the treasure, and negotiations eventually broke down. Then, in 2015, Columbia announced that the San José wasn’t actually resting where Sea Search Armada had said, but that the ship had been independently located in a different spot. That meant that, according to them, Sea Search Armada wasn’t entitled to anything aboard the ship. So, then, who’s going to decide who actually owns the wreck and all its bounty? That unenviable task falls to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, an intergovernmental organization created back in 1899 to solve disputes just like this one. Their ruling might decide who gets to keep the booty, but it's safe to say that tongues will keep wagging afterward.

 
[Image description: A close-up photo of water’s surface.] Credit & copyright: Matt Hardy, Pexels