Italian Explorer Christopher Columbus Leveraging Astronomy to Manipulate the Indigenous Taíno of Jamaica

During Italian explorer Christopher Columbus’ 4th voyage and while still stationed upon the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean, Columbus’ crew and flotilla did not have the supplies necessary to travel back to Europe. Columbus appealed to the indigenous Taíno people of the island and requested they share their resources. The Taíno informed Columbus that they had only sourced enough supplies to see themselves through the season and that they did not have access to a surplus. Columbus responded by telling this group that if they did not comply, he would summon divine forces and cause the moon to disappear within 1 weeks time; the key to this being that Columbus understood that a total lunar eclipse was scheduled to occur within the coming week. The Taíno were skeptical of this claim initially, but when a total lunar eclipse occurred as predicted, it caused this group to believe that Columbus held a seat beside the hand of God. Unsurprisingly, Columbus was almost immediately provided all of the material he desired to fund his return voyage to Europe. During the middle of the total lunar eclipse, Columbus stated that his god, the Christian God, would now reverse the destruction of the moon and return the moon to its former position as the Taíno had complied with his crews demands

The Discovery of the Sunken Titanic

The Titanic’s shipwreck site was found by the U.S. Navy whilst embarking upon a clandestine military submarine sea voyage operation in 1982. The intent of the mission was to surpass the Russians on every front, including land, sea, air, and space. Geologist and Navy Captain Robert Ballard was the person who developed the mission idea by suggesting that the U.S. Navy scour the seafloor to gather intelligence and search for evidence of Soviet placed hardware. The original intention of the mission was to locate and recover 2 U.S. Navy submarines which were classified as top secret nuclear attack vessels and lost during the 1960’s. The first submarine was the U.S.S. Scorpion, lost in 1968 with 99 onboard, and the second was the U.S.S. Thresher, lost in 1963 with 129 onboard. Recovery of these vessels during the 1960’s was limited to the Sound Navigation and Ranging technology of the era, commonly abbreviated as “SONAR”. Ballard only had 12 days to locate the S.S. Titanic during the mission without exposing his cover story, a feat which was unable to be completed by the French and the Americans, despite having much longer time spans and multiple expeditions to achieve this goal. Ballard narrowed down the search area to 80 square kilometers and focused towards the south as he believed that ocean currents would have carried sunken debris in that direction. Ballard continued searching for a trail of scattered debris from the S.S. Titanic and on the 9th day of the expedition, with time quickly running out, the operators of the remotely operated vehicle ARGO, found wreckage from a modern iron ship which appeared to be from the early 20th century. It was confirmed shortly after on September 1, 1985 at 12:48 AM that these remains were 1 of the 29 boilers belonging to the S.S. Titanic. It had been 73 years since the S.S. Titanic was last seen, resting nearly 4 kilometers below sea level, with it’s 1500 onboard passengers and crew