Two large fin bones belonging to male sperm whales were discovered at a light rail system construction site by workers on the port of Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland. Experts confirmed the bones could be nearly 800 years old.

A wall from 1790 surrounding a graveyard, a historic graveyard, a cannonball, and the South Leith Parish Church wall were some of the other interesting discoveries from the Trams construction site.

42 skeletons were dug up by construction workers in Buckingham, southern England while workers were developing former farmland. Archaeologists think the skeletons were from Anglo-Saxon Britain or the English Civil War from 1642 to 1651.

The official report is highly classified resulting in the townspeople demanding information from the discovery given the “historical significance” of the site.

Vincent Marcello hired archeologist Ryan Gray in 2011 to dig at the site of the pool. He suspected they would find remains, and they did. Gray uncovered 15 wooden coffins that were interred in the larger Saint Peter Cemetery of New Orleans.

Gray and his team then sent the coffins and human remains to Louisiana State University where they would be studied and cared for.

Ancient historical ruins in Yucatan, Mexico were discovered in 2006 during a housing project. The National Institute of Anthropology was asked to step in and check the construction site where the remains of a Mayan ballgame court was found.

Researchers Fernando Acevedo and Donato Espana said that the huge court was 2,500-years-old with a maximum length of 82 feet and a width of 15 feet. It was used for a ballgame and played an important cultural role in the Mayan religion.

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced that construction workers uncovered the 2,200-year-old long-lost temple of Pharaoh Ptolemy IV. The discovery happened while drilling for a new sewage drain in Kom Shakau village in Tama township, northern Sohag, Egypt.

Ptolemy IV was Ptolemaic Egypt’s fourth pharaoh from 221 BC to 205 BC.

On October 2, 2019, construction was put on hold while archaeologists attempted to uncover the temple ruins. Limestone walls with inscriptions were uncovered showing Ptolemy IV’s name.

Remains of a 1,500-year-old Byzantine church were discovered by the side of an ancient road when construction workers began maintenance work on a modern highway. The church had a white marble floor with a cruciform-shaped baptisterium for those wishing to be baptized in water.

Other items were discovered and saved like mother of pearl shells, glass jars, marble, and oil lamps.

In March of 2017, an apartment complex in Philadelphia undergoing some work unearthed fully intact human remains and coffins. They could have been from the 18th century, with the Betsy Ross House nearby allegedly an old burial ground for the First Baptist Church.

The church wanted to move in 1860 and obviously did not move all the remains. The forensics lab at Rutgers-Camden took the remains hoping to identify, clean, and study them. Their final resting place is in Mount Moriah Cemetery.

Underneath a residential building in Seattle, a single, fossilized tusk of mammuthus columbi, was unearthed. Paleontologists measured the tusk at over eight feet long.

Upon closer inspection and study, they estimate the tusk to be at least 60,000 years old.

AMLI, the residential company that owned the building and land, took the necessary precautions and steps needed for the tusk to be removed and preserved.

The bubonic plague overwhelmed hospitals in Europe and many were closed down and abandoned when no one else was available to treat plague victims. 2013 saw one of those hospitals unearthed in Madrid when Spanish construction crews began digging at a site for a new Apple Store.

Dating from the 15th century, the hospital was dedicated to sufferers of the bubonic plague. It was closed and torn down in the 1850s after being used well into the 19th century.

Workers excavated a seventeenth-century burial ground in 1991, north of what is now Chinatown in lower Manhattan. The intention was to build a new federal building between Broadway and Centre Street, near Thomas Paine Park.

The remains were those of African slaves from the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam interred at the site between the 1690s and the 1790s.

Construction was halted so further archeological excavation of the site could be carried out and the site was later recognized as a national historic landmark.

The foundations of a 13th-century mansion were discovered by excavators working for a housing development in 2013. Archaeologists also found that there were no historical records of the building in Wellington, England.

Large estates would have deeds and other paperwork kept by the local lords, or church officials but that wasn’t the case for this discovery. Archaeologists couldn’t find much information save for a segment of tile with a knight painted on it.

The tiles were similar to the ones at Glastonbury Abbey, making the find one of great historical value.

All the artifacts uncovered from the site were moved to the Museum of Somerset for study and preservation.

A 121-year-old time capsule was unearthed by construction workers in the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland. The discovery was at a section of the Ruthven Road bridge. The capsule, a metal box, looked similar to a safe-deposit box used in banks.

The contents of the capsule were a bottle of whisky, a newspaper from 1894, a scroll, and other items. The capsule and its contents were donated to the nearby Highland Folk Museum for further studies. The capsule was said to have been placed within the structure during the bridge’s construction at the end of the 19th century.

The well-preserved remains of a woman were found by a construction crew working on a road in the city of Taizhou, eastern China. The woman was a member of the Ming Dynasty, and the crew found her submerged in a “‘brown liquid.”

The woman was under five feet tall, dressed in silk finery complete with robes, slippers, jewelry. The hair and eyebrows were still intact considering Taizhou Museum director Wang Weiyin estimated the mummy to be about 700 years old.

A little boy named David wrote a letter addressed to Santa Claus during Christmas of 1943. 72 years later, contractor Lewis Shaw found the letter hidden in the chimney. He and his crew were demolishing the home when they found the letter that read:

“Dear Father Christmas,

Please can you send me a Rupert annual, and a drum box of chalks, soldiers and Indians, slippers and any little toys you have to spare,

Love

David”

Shaw amazingly found David through Facebook!

A Parisian couple having work done in their apartment in 1850 were shocked when the mummified remains of a baby fell out of a wall. Naturally, people eyed the couple as suspects but Dr. Marcel Bereget used common house flies to determine the amount of time since death. Dr. Bereget soon found that the child had passed quite some time ago.