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Beyond Darwin The Galapagos are dots of land on a vast Pacific From the 1600s on they were a lonely stopping place for pirate vessels and ships drifting off course Now, instead of a place you get to by accident or bad luck the Galapagos are a magnet for travelers and especially scientists attracted by the chance for dramatic discoveries It’s silly to think age of discovery is over Never by over going going going with all kind of new thing I can’t wait to be old and gray and come back here and have some new person tell me how wrong I was Be no problem, be fun In 1835 these humble unknown islands were visited by a humble unknown scientist, (more…)

Giddings His presence to shoot the Discovery documentary was a bonus for the expedition’s scientific record The normal scientific expedition could never afford his state-of-the-art video equipment or his sophistication in underwater cinematography At times, especially when I’m shooting interiors with a hand-held camera and exteriors with the pan-and-tilt exterior underwater camera… sort of like a video game… you’re trying to use the lenses creatively uh, a lot of the time rather than pan or tilt I’ll draw pilot’s attention from what he’s seeing through the front of the submersible to the monitor Actually, have him fly to the monitor and I’ll say “Don, keep animal, you know in the center of frame” and so he’s there with the joy stick I’m pulling focus changing aperture doing whatever I’m doing and he’s trying to keep the sub centered up on the monitor The JSL submersible are only 59 inches They worked in a 5 feet sphere two people with a ton of electric gear So, it takes us sometimes an hour to prepare install, plug everything in and then the end of dive you take it all ou.

Laura Okmin, spent only three weeks ashore in the Galapago visiting four of the 16 islands He took notes and filled his bag with specimens Then he left He may have had inklings of evolution but he didn’t see the light Understanding what he’s seen… and working out a theory explaining it… took a quarter of a century It’s one of the great sagas in the history of science Darwin’s theory of e volution shook not only the scientific but also the religious and social foundations of the western-world The reverberations of Darwin’s theory are still felt today felt with a passion It’s the passion of Fundamentalist religion raging against Darwin… insisting on a Biblical version of creation It’s also the passion of scientist who believe that Darwin opened new worlds of knowledge… who build on his insights in an on-going process of science… who regard such fundamental evolutionary principles as natural selection as an unshakable premise of their work You know, the irony of all this is that here we are on a very very modern ship - in fact with the Discovery program we’ve had e-mail and one of the first e-mails we got we someone asking the question, “Does you experience in Galapagos change your view about that controversial theory of natural selection?” My response was “Madam, it’s not controversial and it’s not a theory it’s a fact.” Laura Okmin.

Timing is everything. Just a year later, a major strike on the farm would forever link the name De Beers with diamonds and leave the De Beers brothers far behind, a footnote to history. Over the years, this fertile ground has produced some of the world’s most famous diamonds. One of the most extraordinary finds was a golden stone that has resided in New York City for the last century, the Tiffany Diamond. It was found in, in the Kimberley mines in ghostland observatory.
There had never been such a large canary diamond found before. It was enormous. It weighed carats. Charles Tiffany purchased the stone in Paris for the equivalent of , dollars in today’s currency. He brought the trophy home to New York City, where it became the symbol for his flagship store. Audrey Hepburn is one of the lucky few who has actually worn the gem.

Washington socialite Evelyn Walsh McLean was offered the Hope by the jeweler Cartier in . Some say Cartier actually invented the legend of the curse to entice the daredevil aristocrat to buy it. Whatever the story’s origins it worked. But just to be on the safe side Mrs. McLean had her new bauble blessed by a priest. She was a, a little bit of an eccentric lady. She would entertain lavishly in America. And she used to take the Hope Diamond off her necklace and at parties, would throw it up in the air and her dog would retrieve them, which was so, quite wild. But the party didn’t last forever.
The son of the wealthy heiress was killed in an automobile accident, her husband was committed to a mental hospital, rocking around the christmas tree, amelia, för fet för min ubåt, tommy nilsson, fransk filmkompositör and her daughter died from an overdose of sleeping pills. She had a lot of personal tragedies although she didn’t ascribe them to the Hope. She said the Hope was lucky for her extraordinary thing to say in view of these tragedies. After Mrs. McLean died of pneumonia at the age of , her estate decided to sell the ill-fated diamond. But who would dare risk the curse?

Louis XIV had so many diamonds in his tunics I think he would have sunk like a lead balloon probably, if he put in the sea. While King Louis didn’t drown he did eventually contract gangrene and suffered a long and painful death. Marie Antoinette and Louis X VI inherited the beautiful blue diamond next, but didn’t have much time to enjoy it. They both lost their heads at the guillotine during the French Revolution. I think that’s one of the tragic fates one could meet. Whether the diamond was the cause of it I’ll leave it to the imagination.

ln the holiest shrine of the ancient Egyptian capital, Solon was shown records of unsurpassed antiquity the secrets of a long-lost age when a civilization of incomparable power and prestige had dominated the world nine thousand years before. The empire of Atlantis. The description the Egyptian priest gave to Solon of this mighty vanished civilization is the starting point for every search ever undertaken to find Atlantis.
A description which Plato says: ” has the great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction.” Atlantis was said to lie beyond the Pillars of Hercules outside the Mediterranean Sea in an ocean we now call the Atlantic. Plato was very, very specific about where Atlantis was and what size it was and he described it as being larger than the continents of Africa and Asia put together and he located it very carefully outside the Pillars of Hercules. (more…)

This submersible is diving in some of the richest most exotic, most un-explored waters in the world Scientist aboard the sub-using its unique ability to chase and capture live fish and other creatures in deep water are bringing back extraordinary sea life including specimens never seen by human eyes I’ve seen more new critters on this dive than I’ve ever seen on any other dive in my life On expedition in waters of the Galapagos Islands they are discovering on average a new species every day The fish that was taken on this s great Fish everywhere For a marine scientist, this is the ultimate Those are actually sea cucumbers We’ve seen shallow water sea cucumbers but now you’re seeing what a sea cucumber looks like in the deep sea These are really strange This is a scientist’s dream come true to spend a month in Galapagos working every day in water in the sub Working with these animals this is a high that will take a long time to come down from But there’s gonna be a lot of wor when we get home lt’ll probably be 6 months or a year before we really even understand all of the information that we’ve gathered from this expedition No doubt about it Galapagos is Mecca for a biologis and here we are in the holy land On station in the world’s foremost natural laboratory of … the Discovery Expedition to the Galapagos…

Pyramid becomes Noah’s Ark the Temple of Artemis becomes the Temple of Solomon. Look, there is something else very interesting in this tapestry here. These poor workers that made these things in Brussels really had to follow these grand designs. But in the borders, they were allowed to do their own thing. And these guys in their little dark workshops were thinking about the Seven Wonders of the World. Not the grand vision, the little common ordinary visions. And say you get up there, another of the gothic Seven Wonders, the magic bird the phoenix that builds its funeral pyre and is lit by the sun. And as it burns to death it rises in resurrection as an image of Jesus Christ. And there is another very local wonder here too. And that is a little hot spring by the french town of Grenoble. Very wonderful to have warm water without having to heat it. Now, Heemskerkjust did not do Seven Wonders, he did eight. And the eighth was his beloved Coliseum in Rome. The only one of the wonders he actually would have seen There it is. And look what is standing in the middle. In the Middle Ages it was thought that the Colossus of Rhodes had actually been taken to Rome and stored in the middle of the c oliseum which was a great temple of the sun. So there is the statue, standing now in the middle of a wonderful Gothic landscape with millions of people enjoying the games. You see, what Heemskerk did, he brought the Seven Wonders alive and he put them back onto the stage of history. Piro Ligorio actually got to build a model of his Rome and all its wonders too here in the magical gardens of Carlo d’ Este at Tivoli outside Rome. Sad to say, there is not much left of Piro’s Rome today. Enough though to see something of a dream. For four hundred years Tivoli has been one of the West’s most influential gardens. From here, the ghosts of wonder have seeped into the West. When it was new, before the great trees grew up, Piro’s design was overwhelming. It began with the Biblical Deluge a single massive waterfall running down the hill. The hill greater even than Babylon’s great hanging gardens. Piro’s garden, in fact is nothing more or less than a huge model of the universe. A cosmos with echoes of the ancient wonders. Piro’s model Rome stood for civilization. (more…)

The fact that Plato originated the story of Atlantis gave it a great amount of weight. Plato was essentially the father of Western philosophy and because what he had to say was so important, has remained so important it became much more acceptable, much more respectable, if you will, than if someone else had written it. Plato wrote his account of Atlantis towards the end of his life, but it was first told at a dinner party that took place when he was only a young boy.

An account that somehow he must have overheard. The gathering hosted by Plato’s uncle was traditional to the day, where wealthy and learned Greek men would eat, drink, tell stories and exchange ideas. Among the guests was Plato’s teacher the great philosopher Socrates and perhaps it was to be near his brilliant mentor that the young Plato sneaked in to listen to all that the men had to say. The legend of Atlantis, he learned, was already generations old, handed down by a famous Greek sage and law-giver called Solon who learned the tale in Egypt. Solon was one of the seven sages of Ancient Greece. He was a very, very important person historically because he was a law-giver and he established the basis from which Athenian democracy eventually developed.