On July 24, 1911, American archeologist Hiram Bingham gets his first look
at Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca settlement in Peru that is now one of the
world’s top tourist destinations.

Tucked away in the rocky countryside northwest of Cuzco, Machu Picchu
is believed to have been a summer retreat for Inca leaders, whose civilization
was virtually wiped out by Spanish invaders in the 16th century. For hundreds
of years afterwards, its existence was a secret known only to the peasants
living in the region. That all changed in the summer of 1911, when Bingham
arrived with a small team of explorers to search for the famous “lost” cities
of the Incas.

Hiram Bingham III
(November 19, 1875 – June 6, 1956)

On this day in 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a
French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing
near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly
shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in 3 different scripts:
Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on
the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests
honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C. More
startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of
identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000
years.

The Rosetta Stone on display in The British Museum.

"Lithograph image depicting a group of scholars inspecting the
Rosetta Stone during the Second International Congress of
Orientalists, 1874.

(Fox News) – Alabama historical officials announced Wednesday,
researchers have located the remains (above) of the last known
ship to have brought slaves to the U.S. from West Africa.

The Alabama Historical Commission confirmed that the Gulf
schooner Clotilda was identified and verified after months of assessment.

The commission said in a statement, "For nearly 160 years, the
waters around Mobile have concealed the final destination of
the Gulf Schooner Clotilda.”

An artists rendering of the schooner Clotilda.

This diagram of a slave ship is probably the most widely copied
and powerful image used by the abolitionist campaigners. It
depicts the ship loaded to its full capacity with slaves.

ROSS SIMPSON

On this day in 1848, James Wilson Marshall
(October 8, 1810 – August 10, 1885) found
a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in northern
California. The discovery led to the gold
rush of ’49’.

John Sutter’s sawmill in 1850. The historians at Marshall Gold State Historic Park concluded the person seen in the above photo was
the photographer’s assistant who was used to show scale.

James Marshall’s cabin in Coloma, California.

James Marshall Monument

Recently discovered mummies seen in a mummification workshop.

Cairo (AP) – Archaeologists in Egypt stumbled upon a new discovery dating
back to more than 2,500 years ago near Egypt’s famed pyramids at an ancient necropolis south of Cairo.

The discovery on Saturday, which includes a mummification workshop and a
shaft, used as a communal burial place, is located at the Saqqara necropolis
of Memphis, the first capital of ancient Egypt.

A news conference in front of the step pyramid of Saqqara, in Giza 
where Archaeologists say they have discovered a mummification workshop.