Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Can an 8.8-ton metal octagon save a 300-year-old secret? In 1686, the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, lost his most important ship, La Belle, in the murky, zero-visibility waters of Matagorda Bay, Texas. For three centuries, it lay hidden in the clay—along with a "colony kit" designed to build a French empire in the New World.

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