In 1633 a ferry loaded with one fifth of the wealth of England capsized in the Firth of Forth and was lost with all aboard, as the horrified King of England, Charlies I, watched helplessly from shore.
Many believe this to be the world’s largest unrecovered treasure, and now there is a possibility that it has been found.
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CBS News is reporting that the anthrax used in the attack at the offices of American Media in Boca Raton was stolen from a lab in Iowa. The strain of anthrax had been manufactured in the 1950s. The spores were over forty years old and still hearty.
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Investigators are trying to determine if a letter that arrived in the mailroom of a Florida tabloid publishing company could be the source of anthrax bacteria that killed an employee. Robert Stevens, 63, died Friday of inhalation of anthrax. He was a photo editor at The Sun, a supermarket tabloid published by American Media Inc., which employs about 300 people. Traces of the deadly bacteria were found in his work station. A second employee, Ernesto Blanco, 73, who worked in the company?s mailroom, was also exposed to the bacteria. A third employee, who was taken to the hospital, did not have anthrax.
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With the world facing biowarfare after the recent Anthrax cases in Florida, scientists say they have mapped all the genes in the plague bacterium which could speed up research into vaccines and treatments. Along with smallpox and anthrax, the bubonic plague is one of the most feared potential biological weapons.
A 30 member team of scientists at Britain?s Wellcome Trust Sanger Center in Cambridge has discovered how the bacterium turned itself from a irritating stomach bug into the Black Death that killed 200 million people, or a third of Europe, in the 14th century. They have sequenced the 4,012 genes of the plague bacterium, or Yersinia pestis, and believe it evolved into such a lethal agent by gaining and losing bits of DNA around 1,500 years ago.
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