This weekly feature is a place to discuss new developments in fields of history and archaeology. This can be newly discovered documents and archaeological sites, recent publications, documents that have just become publicly available through digitization or the opening of archives, and new theories and interpretations.
Over the weekend it was announced that Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, had actually made another major undersea discovery following up on their 2015 discovery of the wreck of the IJN battleship Musashi.
Allen and his team with aid from the US Navy found the site of the USS Indianapolis in the Philippines Sea. Famous for both its service prewar as a flagship, and its delivery of the components of the Little Boy bomb to Tinian in summer of 1945 and later sinking(with the tale of the survivors related by the character of Captain Quint in Jaws). The ship rests at nearly 5500 meters down, which also should hopefully protect it from thee scavengers that have worked over many of the wrecks elsewhere in the Pacific that were in shallower waters. USNI article announcing the findings and a few pics of the wreck.
Confederate submarine crew killed by their own weapon
This was a really interesting article. Lance, a recent doctoral student, argued in her dissertation and now PLOS One publication that the crew of the Confederate submarine Hunley was killed by their own weapon. Attached to a 16 foot pole called a spare, the Hunley rammed a powder keg into the Union vessel Housatonic. The explosion would have caused fatal lung and brain trauma to the crew as the shockwave traveled through the water and then into the air of the cabin. This would explain why the crew were found in their positions, the bilge pump not turned on, the air hatches closed, and no apparent breeches in the hull.