Yo mamma!
Depending upon one’s definition of forgotten, I would say either Greenland or Australia. Or potentially the continent of America, depending upon what you think about early European sea fishermen.
Obviously there are those who would rather query that, but most of their ancestors died from smallpox or huffing petrol or whatever, so they can’t complain about our one true version of history…
I think the Nazca lines, if treated as a single “thing”, is larger than the lost cities already mentioned.
How about Comet Swift–Tuttle? It was “discovered” by a Japanese astronomer, Tsuruhiko Kiuchi, in 1992. But when its orbit was tracked, astronomers realized it was the same comet that astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle had discovered in 1862. Having determined its orbital period, historians checked Chinese astronomical records and found the comet had previously been identified in 69 BC and 188 AD.
That was my first thought, Or perhaps Chichen Itza or Angkor Watt.
But it appears likely the Amber room was destroyed, not lost.
The set of the 10 Commandments?
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114780,00.html
Pompeii. It was thought of as a myth even though it had happened in historical times and it was described in detail by Pliny the younger whose writing have survived and also Pliny the Elder died while observing it in situ.
We also lost the Minoan civilization in Crete until it was rediscovered early in the 20th century.
There’s also a number of lost asteroids which have since been recovered. Which is the largest is probably impossible to say, but is almost certainly larger than anything suggested in this thread.
I have to wonder about that golden statue-- Supposedly, the gold was rediscovered when it was dropped while being moved, and some of the plaster chipped away. But if it’s really solid gold, then it would have been impossible not to notice this fact well before then: Gold is far more dense than any other material a statue would be made of, and so the movers would have noticed that it was too heavy the moment they started trying to move it.
Maybe the statue miraculously turned into gold?
They were probably just thinking in terms of “just get the job done”; if it’s heavier than it should be they aren’t paid to wonder why, they just heave harder. If they thought about it at all they probably thought it had some kind of internal iron bracing or something like that; “it’s probably filled with gold” isn’t the normal thing that leaps to mind when something is heavier than you expect after all. And it being so much heavier than it should may well explain why it was dropped.
Er… What Der Trihs said. I cannot imagine a worker moving a statue thinking, “This feels heavier than it should be. Maybe it is made of solid gold!” They would certainly question their own perception before entertaining fantastic causes.
IIRC it was discovered to be of gold when they tried to move it and it was too heavy for the crane.
You’re referencing the book of a couple years back? Yeah, they did make a convincing case.
Dammit.
This made me think of Commandments 11-15
Carry on.
What book? I need to read it.
According to Father Guido Sarducci, the additional commandments include “Always wait one hour after eating before going swimming,” and “Never give a chicken bone to a dog.”
I remember a math class in Middle School where the teacher set some ground rules for the class in the style of Commandments 11-20. I think one of them was “Thou shalt reduce all fractions.”
Plenty of ships have gone missing at sea, but as for being misplaced the first example that springs to mind is the infamous USS Indianapolis, which was forgotten about for three days. Quoth Wikipedia:
“Operations plotting boards were kept at the Headquarters of Commander Marianas on Guam and of the Commander Philippine Sea Frontier on Leyte. On these boards, the positions of all vessels of which the headquarters was concerned were plotted. However, for ships as large as the Indianapolis, it was assumed that they would reach their destinations on time, unless reported otherwise. Therefore, their positions were based on predictions, and not on reports. On 31 July, when she should have arrived at Leyte, Indianapolis was removed from the board in the headquarters of Commander Marianas. She was also recorded as having arrived at Leyte by the headquarters of Commander Philippine Sea Frontier. Lieutenant Stuart B. Gibson, the Operations Officer under the Port Director, Tacloban, was the officer responsible for tracking the movements of Indianapolis. The non-arrival of that vessel on schedule was known at once to Lieutenant Gibson who failed to investigate the matter and made no immediate report of the fact to his superiors.”
By the time the ship was being removed from the board it had actually been sunk, and for three days the officers in HQ were presumably convinced that it had docked safely and was being resupplied. You can imagine how entire carrier battle groups might go missing this way. Lieutenant Stuart B. Gibson must have seen his career flash before his eyes when news of the vessel’s sinking came out.
“We have reports that the Indianapolis was sunk. Is this true?”
“Nonsense. It arrived. It must have. I took it off the board myself.”
“But this man says that he spent three days in the water with his friends being eaten by sharks.”
“Well, he must be lying. Presumably he fell overboard in the night. The ship is currently docked at Leyte. The board says so.”
“But our man in Leyte says that it never arrived.”
“In that case our man in Leyte is blind. Or drunk. Our procedures are one hundred per cent reliable. The board cannot be wrong.”
Etc. You could turn it into a Monty Python comedy sketch.