A beautiful, calm, sunny day in 1628 greeted the Swedish warship Vasa as it made its maiden launch into Stockholm harbor. About three-quarters of a mile later, it promptly sunk, not to be seen again for 333 years.
But you can see it in all its glory at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, and over 25 million people have done so since 1990. The ship was rediscovered, mostly intact, in 1961 and now stands fully rigged. You can view the ship from every angle and multiple levels to see the 64 cannons and intricately carved bowsprit and ornately decorated stern transom. Traces of pigments have allowed restorers to approximate the original color scheme of the ship, which as you can see, was rather unlike the battleship grey of today’s ships.
It turns out all these heavy wood sculptures and cannons made the unfortunate ship a wee bit top heavy. All went well with the launch, with the ship being towed out to the southern edge of Stockholm harbor, where Captain Söfring Hansson ordered the setting of four sails. With the gun ports open to fire a salute as they gloriously departed in front of a crowd of giddy admirers, a sudden gust of wind filled the sails and rolled the ship onto its port side. Those open gun ports magnificently allowed thousands of gallons of water to fill the hold, and in minutes 30 souls joined the ship at the bottom of the harbor, a mere few hundred feet from shore.
While the ship itself is impressive (you’ll experience one of those “Wow!” moments as soon as you enter the main hall), the Vasa Museum does much more. Along the perimeter are cut-away models of the ship showing life on board (as it would have been had it stayed afloat longer), examples of the science used in the preservation and restoration processes, and original artifacts. One of the coolest, though also the spookiest, were displays of the skeletons of lost sailors and modern anthropological recreations of sailor’s faces.
There is so much more to see at the Vasa Museum (you can even hold your special event there), so check out the Vasa Museum website for more information.
Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.
Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.
You also follow my author page on Facebook.
David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
The thing about traveling is that travel plans change. They changed a lot last year, with anticipated trips to Machu Picchu, China, and Michigan being bumped. Now here we are a third of the way through January 2017 and travel plans are nearly non-existent, in part because of the lingering uncertainties from 2016.
My third year of science traveling ended up being a lot different in execution than it was in design. Trips planned were dropped, trips not planned were added, and I was forced to work around an unforeseen distraction. And yet I still managed to hit several new countries, at least one new state, and enjoyed what most would consider a very good year in Science Traveling. I’m finished traveling for the year so it’s time for a quick recap.
Even if you’ve never traveled to Dubrovnik, Croatia, if you’ve watched The Game of Thrones you’ve see it. Many of the outdoor scenes of the hit HBO series are filmed in the city, along with other Croatian locations in Split and Trsteno. Ironically, the main filming is done at the Titanic Studios in Belfast, Northern Island. But Dubrovnik provides some of the most stunningly ancient auras of any of the locations.
This is Science Traveler, right. So let’s begin with some recent travel posts. I recently returned from a tour of “Lincoln’s Illinois” where I visited Lincoln’s home in Springfield, his earlier village of New Salem, and several other Lincoln related venues. I even got to hear songs Lincoln listened to on the very piano on which he heard them played. Here are 
Another major event this year was the release of my new book, Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World. This set up a competition, of sorts, between 
In addition to the travel out to Illinois, I’m currently working on a new book for the same publisher as Edison and Tesla on, you guessed it, Abraham Lincoln. That book will be released some time in the summer of 2017. Recently I wrote about the progression from 
