5 Priceless Historical Items That Turned Up In Random Places

A volunteer for the museum was casually browsing the auction site when he spotted a listing for a "telegram machine," on sale for the kingly sum of 9.50 pounds ($12.47). He grabbed a colleague and drove to the seller's home in Essex, where the device was kept under a layer of trash in a garden shed, but still in its original carrying case. They gave the seller 10 pounds, told her to keep the change, and hauled ass to the museum. After they cleaned it up, they were certain that this was a genuine, military-issue Lorenz teleprinter, complete with decorative swastikas and even a nifty special key just for typing the Waffen-SS symbol. We're surprised they weren't outbid by 8chan for that feature alone.

Even in a city like Rome, where residents park on millennia-old Roman roads and rugby stadiums have archaeological dig sites in the basement, this was a mind-blowing discovery. Curti called unexpectedly walking into an ancient tomb near his house "the most incredible experience of [his] life." And really, if it wasn't, we'd be pretty damn curious about the rest of his day.

In 1984, Henken finally remembered the house and gave it to the TV station WNET, to be auctioned as part of its annual fundraiser. The news of this casual donation caused the architecture world to completely flip its collective shit. The head of the archives at Taliesin, Wright's old estate, said, "We were completely unaware that this house still exists.'' A former president of the Society of Architectural Historians called it "quite a find, a really exciting rediscovery." And one of Wright's biographers commented, ''It is something somebody will be able to make a lot out of -- there will have to be takers for this."

He was right. Bidding for the house started at $50,000, but after a spirited war, Tom Monaghan (the founder of Domino's, owner of the Detroit Tigers, and a noted Wright buff) finally managed to snatch it up for $117,500. However, Wright himself would have probably preferred that the structure moldered away in storage. Although Monaghan bought the house to put up in a museum he was building to honor the architect, said museum is located at Domino's corporate headquarters.

When police arrived at the home, they found that the "shed" wasn't any old dilapidated shack, either. It was a specially built two-story building with 20-inch-thick doors, chock-full of valuable paintings, the oldest one hailing from 1532. You'd think that somebody who cared enough to house their collection in a vault would take relatively good care of the collection itself, but no. It was all lying there, with garbage strewn around, and many of the paintings were in poor condition.

Since there were almost 300 works, experts couldn't price the collection immediately. All they could say for sure was that it was worth millions of euros. The owner, known only as "Antoni M.," was promptly charged for handling stolen art, because obviously. Some paintings bore marks from museums, and one lithograph was recognized as "lost" during the Nazi reign.

Regardless, nobody knows exactly how this happened. Maybe Antoni got his hands on a bunch of looted art the Nazis left behind as they retreated in panic from Soviet forces. Another theory is that he somehow dug up the collection in the 1960s during a building project. Yet another possibility is that an art dealer used to own the house, and he merely left a whole bunch of paintings there when he moved away, the same way you'd leave a broken futon.

Whatever the story, Antoni M. isn't talking. No, really -- by the time his "collection" was revealed to the authorities, he'd suffered two strokes which left him unable to communicate. That, or he was deeply committed to not snitching.

But there was one tiny, little problem: That precious, well-traveled symbol of perseverance was never the real flag. The actual 3-by-5-foot flag from the photo disappeared on the evening of 9/11.

What with it being a rather busy day for everyone involved, it's still a mystery who took the OG flag, and where it ended up, but tracking it down was obviously a point of some interest. In October 2014, the History Channel ran a show about the lost flag, explaining that the authorities had precisely zero leads and asking anybody with information to come forward. Shockingly, this worked. Not only was someone actually watching the History Channel, but that person even knew something about the case!

Four days later, a man who identified himself only as "Brian" unexpectedly dropped off the original flag at a fire station in Everett, Washington. There was something off about Brian. He said he was an ex-Marine who received the flag one Veteran's Day from an NOAA official, who in turn got it from a 9/11 widow. However, he offered nothing to back up that story. Clearly this was a con man, trying to snake the $10,000 finder's fee with some random flag he'd bought on sale from Target, right? Except he never asked for the money. Also, right after giving the flag to authorities, he fucking disappeared. A lot of people had questions for him. Everett detectives went searching for him, and released a sketch to the local newspaper, but nothing panned out. No one knew where -- or who -- the guy was. Brian was gone.

Also, the flag was totally authentic. The Washington State Patrol forensic laboratory ran extensive chemical tests, confirming that the flag had traces of that unmistakable dust cocktail from Ground Zero.

They even brought in the couple who owned the yacht from which the original flag was taken. They recognized it by its extremely particular and detailed halyard (the clip/rope thing you use for raising the flag). A former FBI detective working on the case felt confident enough to declare: "This flag is more authenticated than Rembrandts at museums."

"Brian" might have left us with more questions than answers, but he also definitely turned in the correct flag, and asked for nothing in return. Not even a slow, building clap. Which he is definitely getting from us right now, at least.

Make sure you never lose an important flag with a beautiful preservation case.

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