TAMPA - A 17-ton haul of silver coins, lost for two centuries in the wreck of a sunken Spanish galleon, began its journey back to its home country yesterday after the deep-sea explorers who lifted it to the surface lost their claim to ownership.
Two massive cargo planes - Spanish military C-130s - took off just from a Florida Air Force base with 594,000 silver coins and other artifacts aboard. They were packed into the same white plastic buckets in which they were brought to the United States by Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration in May 2007.
“This is not money. This is historical heritage,’’ Spain’s ambassador to the United States, Jorge Dezcallar de Mazar, said as he stood on the tarmac.
Odyssey made an international splash when it discovered the 1804 wreck, believed to be the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, off Portugal’s Atlantic coast near the Straits of Gibraltar. At the time, the coins were estimated to be worth as much as $500 million to collectors.
Odyssey lost every round in federal courts trying to hold on to the treasure, as the Spanish government painted them as modern-day pirates plundering the nation’s cultural heritage.
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"Robot examines Picasso’s ‘Guernica’" Associated Press, February 25, 2012
MADRID - Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,’’ one of the world’s most iconic paintings, is getting a full health check as it marks its 75th anniversary.
A giant robotic machine is taking tens of thousands of microscopic shots of the black-and-white antiwar masterpiece to allow experts to penetrate the work like never before and see its real condition after a hectic life traveling the globe....
Picasso created “Guernica’’ as a commission for Spain’s Republican government to represent the country at a Universal Exposition in Paris in 1937, as Spain writhed in a bloody civil war started by future dictator General Francisco Franco.
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