[History] 1/4th of the Silver Supply, Recovered at WTC Building 4
The Untold Story of the WTC Building 4 Underground Vaults
Image Source: Original
Little is known about the Scotia-Mocatta Depository at WTC building 4. Here's what we are told concerning the treasure vaults, deep in the bowels of WTC 4.
In the basement were stored:
- About 30,000 silver bars (1,000 Troy oz each) or 1000 tonnes (!) This is about 1/4 of the world supply of silver
- About 3,800 registered gold bars (100 Troy oz each) or 12 tonnes
- Unknown quantity of US minted Gold and Silver Eagles
- Unknown quantity of platinum and palladium
- Caches of drug
- Boxes of FBI evidence, including firearms
- Thousands of Godiva chocolates
In the Basement?
The basement vault was about 70 feet underground, sitting on the bedrock of Manhattan.
Attempted Theft
Scorch marks around the basement door to the vaults suggests that there was an attempt to break in and steal the metals belonging to the Bank of Nova Scotia. Although the bank denies any attempt, police have gone on record saying that a blowtorch and crowbar was used at the vault's entrance, sometime prior to October 30th. Because of the difficulty of getting on site and down to the vault, it is suspected that it was an inside job. Yes, you read that right... inside job.
Relocation
It has been estimated that it would take full 50 tractor trailers to transport the 30,000 bars weighing 1,000 Troy oz per.
NYBOT and Scotia-Mocatta said that the metals had been relocated:
All of the silver, gold, platinum and palladium stored in the vaults at 4 WTC had been successfully relocated y an Exchange approved carrier to a newly Exchange licensed Brink's Inc depository in Brooklyn.
Emergency workers uncovered the vaults on October 30th, 2001 and got the first glimpse at the gleaming booty worth at that time an estimated $230 million. All this treasure sat in the rubble for over a month. One has to wonder... is thermite hot enough to melt chocolate?
Silver Angels of Courage
Arthur Piccalo, The chairman of the Manhattan neighborhood betterment group, contacted the Bank of Nova Scotia who owned the silver and made a request: could he purchase some of the 935 tonnes of recovered silver to make Christmas ornaments as tribute to the fallen?
Scotia bank provided 38 silver bars (237lbs), valued at about $17,000 for the ornaments. Morvillo & Sons of North Providence, melted the silver bars into a sheet, buffed it into a mirror finish and stamped angel shapes to make ornaments. They are about as long as a brick and about an inch thick, each weighing about 2 Troy Oz.
The National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations and the Bank of Nova Scotia donated the silver used to create the 427 angels that honor the fallen uniformed officers who served on September 11th. Each officer's name has been engraved on an angel and the ornaments will be later given to the family members. At this time, the Angels of Courage memorial is the only authorized use of metal recovered from Ground Zero.
In all 427 Angles were made for the New York Christmas Tree near Ground Zero. Additionally, 50 were made for each US State, which were presented to President Bush for the White House Christmas tree. 5 were presented to the Mayor of New York, 5 for the police commissioner of New York and 5 for the fire commissioner of New York. 13 were presented to Prime Minister Jean Chretien, one for each province and territory as a gift to the people of Canada.
Sources:
http://www.rense.com/general16/inside.htm
https://www.dawn.com/news/6748
https://www.nycgovparks.org/news/media-advisories?id=11738
Hey Ironshield! This is a great piece. I really like it. I knew about the vault, How can anyone who has watched the Die Hard movies NOT know about the vault? haha
So you asked for a Curation review of this piece, so here goes.
I think this is awfully close to qualifying for ANY curation guild. Only a couple of things stand out to me as possible negatives.
This is NOT in the rules, but some people don't like the Conspiracy tag, just a personal preference, and they may turn their nose up at any post with that tag. This doesn't feel realy conspiracyish, so unless it is pretty hard core consipracy, I would probably shy away from that tag.
I would never have found this post because I would not have hit any of the tags you have here. Find a tag that is suitable AND on the popular tags list. You are writing a story about the Silver here, so I would use Story. That tag would put it on my radar. Remember, tags are like search words, so if you want someone to see your post who is not already a follower, use tags people might be searchign for. Yes, this is a story about the silvereagle, but how many people are going to search for silvereagle? Steemsilvergold is a community, so that is a perfect first tag to get on the community page, make sure your other four get you as much exposure as possible.
Word count. The mentor I was working with would not consider anything under 700 words. This is certainly not a rule, and I had set my own minimum at 500. You meet the 500 word limit if the quoted text is included, if the quoted text is taken out, you fall a few words short at 491. This probably isn't going to make the difference between getting curated and not, but you asked, so I am trying to give you any possible answers.
Reuptation Score. I see you have hit 53 for your reputation score. If that happened before this post was published, Curie would not have looked at you unless there is a curator for the steemsilvergold community. Unfortunately, By Curie standards, you've made it! Congratulations. hahaha (doesn't feel that way in your wallet does it? I can relate!)
So there you have it my friend. This is a great piece! Well worthy of being curated. It's just a matter of being seen by the right curator to get nominated! Primarily, I would work on using tags that are likely to be "high priority" tags for curators. As I said above, tags = exposure, so work on that part. Otherwise, your content is awesome!
Hope this helps somewhat!
Wow, thank you for your feedback. I knew about the reputation issue, I figured I was sort of "out of bounds" for a curie award, but I'm always looking to improve the quality of my posts and maybe I could catch the eye of a curie curator.
Thank you for your advise on tags. I didn't know that the curators payed that much attention to them. It's funny that I added the "conspiracy" tag as an afterthought.
I appreciate your kind comments and taking time to review this article. Curie award or not, I hope to practice the kind of posts that a curator would say, now this is worth some attention. @ironshield
Thank you for this advise. I'll try to find more popular tags in the future to get more visibility. I wouldn't have thought to use the tag "story" but I can see how this could be seen as a story. It's probably not a bad idea to review the popular tags and select which is most appropriate. I use the "life" tag sometimes, is that frequented by the curators?
Well... With 700 some Curators on Curie's team, 25 on OCD, and a handful on other curation teams, there is probably someone for just about every tag out there.
Life is a very popular tag, but it is also a "high abuse tag", meaning there is a lot of content there that does not really fall under the life tag. If you want to see tag spam in action, check out any of the tags @surpassinggoogle has started with steemgigs, untalented and the like. People post to any tag they think will get them an upvote.
Again, this is only personal opinion, but I am going to the Life tag as a last resort because of that tag spam factor. But there may be curators who live in Life. But really want you want to focus on is the right niche tag. Art, sports, science, history, music, fiction. Those niches will get hit. Just because I didn't search the History tag doesn't mean there aren't curators who do. And if there aren't, if I ever become a curator I will pay attention to the history tag. Unsearched tags are a potential gold mine for a curator.
For me personally, I am a fan of creative writing, so the tags I was spending the most time in were fiction, story, writing, creative, and creativity. It's what I am familiar with, so felt the most comfortable recommending.
another small Curie tidbit for you. New curators get to submit Two posts in their first week, if they do not get both of them approved the following week they can submit one. If both get approved they can submit up to 15. Once you get a good curator rating, then you can take a few more risks and experience the occational rejection. But curators, especially new ones, are going to stick to posts they are comfortable with getting approved so as not to risk their curator status.
Good on you for trying to continue to improve. We all should strive for that sort of continued growth!
Out of all the things I've heard about the WTCs, this is something I did not know. Thanks for sharing. It's incredible to think about that much physical bullion in one place. I think it would be neat to tour a place like that just to see it.
I thought this was interesting because it's not widely reported or talked about. I didn't know about it until I saw the Silver Eagle "WTC Recovery" round for sale shown in the photo. I purchased it and it came with articles telling the story of where it came from. I used these articles as source material for this post. @ironshield
Very cool read! I had never heard about all the silver, I have seen the WTC Silver Eagles and had always wondered what the story behind them was. Thanks for sharing!
I was glad to discover the story behind the WTC Silver Eagles too. @ironshield
Great info!! Thanks for this!!
Thanks for checking it out! @ironshield
holy crap thats alot of silver! you could build a house out of silver bars! :)
Yes, that's a lot of chocolate... i mean silver! @ironshield
Wow that's crazy. The ornaments made ne smile. That's got to be some expensive ornaments made out if silver. Very cool lol
I looked for an image to post of these brick sized, inch thick engraved angels, but couldn't find anything. They are probably pretty valuable, even though they are only 2 oz of silver each. Less than $40 melt, but value is worth in the magnitude of $1000's or more for their historical significance. @ironshield
A 2 oz ornament that's too pretty big. That's awesome. Maybe you will see one on the Antiques Roadhouse LOL
Nice read, just think 30,000 bars @1,000 oz each. Thats crazy. Thanks for the read.
Thank you @raybrockman, yes that's a lot of silver. It's hard to imagine what that would look like. I wonder if the excavators knew about all that treasure buried under their feet? @ironshield
Ye old story, power greed corruption etc! I thought that America did it to steal from America (which they did) for their gold, but alas it was their silver they were after (no surprises here) Gold, silver, salt, pepper, peanuts, regardless it was greed driven and who paid with their lives? Who will be held accountable who has? Sick. TY for the insights brother I just can't wait for the evil on earth to be eradicated and get what they deserve this been on of many cases thereof.. Cheer$:)
There is a lot going on that we're not aware of, especially concerning 911. The silver was owned by Canada, and returned to Canada. The real goal of 911 wasn't for the gold/silver, it was something far greater. @ironshield
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by ironshield from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
This post has received a 0.03 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @dreamingirwin.