Mexico's president replaced a 1791 time capsule discovered atop Mexico City's cathedral with a new one containing messages from golf star Lorena Ochoa, novelist Carlos Fuentes and a boy genius.
This is wonderful. I once years ago, when Oliver Stone's "JFK" was playing met the head of historical monuments at a close-range photogrammetry update at Schneider Optics in Hauppauge, NY on Long Island. They were interested in recording the stonework inside the Metropolitan Cathedral where the time capsule was found. I've also read there was a fire and the giant pipe organ had to be restored and the US had something to do with. As I recall they wanted to document where the building stones are, and in case some have moved or may move in earth tremors, record those distances. They used a 35mm version of the Rollei metric camera system. I had used a medium format one on a few archaeology sites, one the EPA National Priority Superfund Marathon Battery Site, in Cold Spring, NY on the periphery of the historic West Point Foundry, across the Hudson River from the West Point Military Academy, though Constitution Island to which a "great chain" had once been stretched under the Hudson River to stop the British Navy in the American Revolution is today a part of the Academy. That island, whose fortifications were drawn up by cartographer and Dutch patriot Bernard Romans for General Washington, is next to the former foundry, where many iron things were made, i.e., the US's first locomotive, cannons, sugar mills, iron cladding for ships, tin roofs, boilers, etc., in Cold Spring, NY. Assistance there was also provided by a Mexican archaeologist, who works currently in the prehistory of Mexico there, Victor Ortiz.
We recovered an R.P. Parrott "gun platform" used for the incendiary bombardment of Charleston, South Carolina in 1863 in the American Civil War. It was known as the "Swamp Angel" and the rifled muzzle-loading cannon with brass "sabot" equipped shells exploded on the "island" in the swamp built there for it. The gun is in Trenton, NJ today. Scenic Hudson, Inc. owns the West Point Foundry property today.
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