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History (Education)

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English metal detector hobbyist finds a real treasure near Nottingham.

If you know the song, sing along! "Robin Hood and Little John, walking through the forest/Laughing back and forth at what the other'n has to say/Reminiscing this and that and having such a good time/Oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, golly, what a day...

"Never ever thinking there was danger in the water/They were drinking, they just guzzled it down/Never dreaming that a scheming sheriff and his posse/Was a-watching them and gathering around."

There never was a greater set of foes than Robin Hood and that evil Sheriff, whose greed was even more legendary than Robin Hood's archery skills.

In a deliciously ironic turn of fate, a retired merchant navy engineer in England has found a treasure that would have made his country’s most popular folk hero proud. Graham Harrison, a 64-year-old metal detector enthusiast, discovered a gold signet ring that once belonged to the Sheriff of Nottingham.

The discovery was made on a farm in Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire, 26.9 miles from Sherwood Forest. The forest is known worldwide for being the mythological home of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. A central road that traversed the forest was notorious in Medieval times for being an easy place for bandits to rob travelers going to and from London.

Today, the forest is a designated National Nature Reserve. It contains ancient oaks that date back thousands of years, making it an important conservation area.

“It was the first big dig after lockdown on a glorious day. We were searching two fields. Other detectorists kept finding hammered coins but I'd found nothing,” Harrison said according to the Daily Mail. “Then I suddenly got a signal. I dug up a clod of earth but couldn't see anything. I kept breaking up the clod and, on the last break, a gold ring was shining at me. I broke out into a gold dance.”

Harrison sent the ring to the British Museum's Portable Antiquities Scheme to have it authenticated.


 metal detector, sheriff of nottingham, robin hood, antiques, historic artifacts, amazing finds, explorers, history "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" is one popular adaptation of the tales.  Giphy  

After doing some research they found that it was once owned by Sir Matthew Jenison, who was the Sheriff of Nottingham between 1683 and 1684.

The first accounts of Robin Hood, then known as Robyn Hode, first appear in the 12th century, a few hundred years before Sir Matthew served as sheriff.

But there’s no doubt that the archer and leader of Merry Men would have been delighted to know that an everyday guy came into possession of the Sheriff of Nottingham’s ring.

Sir Matthew was knighted in 1683 and acted as a commissioner to examine decaying trees in Sherwood Forest. He was later elected to Parliament in 1701. However, a series of lawsuits over shady land dealings would eventually be his ruin and he’d die in prison in 1734.

The gold signet ring bears the coat of arms of the Jenison family, who were known for getting rich off a treasure trove of valuables left for safekeeping during the English Civil War.

The valuables were never claimed, so the Jenisons took them for themselves.

The whole thing makes you question how much of the legend of Robin Hood is actually true. Experts debate whether Robin Hood stories are based on one person or accounts of multiple different people. Various versions of the mythology begin and end in different time periods, but all share some similarities: Namely, Robin Hood shooting a bow and arrow and being constantly at odds with the evil Sheriff of Nottingham.

 metal detector, sheriff of nottingham, robin hood, antiques, historic artifacts, amazing finds, explorers, history For my money, it doesn't get better than Disney's "Robin Hood"  Giphy  

In the end, Robin Hood was said to have been murdered by his aunt. As he bled to death, "Little John placed Robin’s bow in his hand and carried him to a window from where Robin managed to loose one arrow. Robin asked Little John to bury him where the arrow landed, which he duly did. ... A mound in Kirklees Park, within bow-shot of the house, can still be seen and is said to be his last resting place," according to Historic UK.

Another site, a cemetery in Yorkshire, features a tombstone that reads:

Here underneath this little stone
Lies Robert, Earl of Huntingdon
Ne’er [never] archer was as he so good
And people called him Robin Hood
Such outlaws as he and his men
Will England never see again.


 metal detector, sheriff of nottingham, robin hood, antiques, historic artifacts, amazing finds, explorers, history Robin Hood's alleged tombBy Richodee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

As for Harrison, he decided that he would sell the ring to someone who appreciates its importance.

“There can't be many people who've found anything like that. I'm only selling it because it's been stuck in a drawer,” Harrison said. “I hope it will go to someone who will appreciate its historical value.” It was sold at auction by Hansons Auctions for £8,500 ($11,115).

 

You can witness the intense final moments of the auction here:

 

Let’s hope that the man who sold the ring does what Robin Hood would have done with a piece of jewelry that adorned the hand of a nobleman whose family came into money by taking other people’s loot. Surely, he’d take the proceeds from the auction and give them to the poor.

This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.

A woman holding a "time for change" sign.

A trend appears when looking at the generational battles over the past decade. Millennials (1981 to 1996) are trying to create a more equitable world and repair the damage done by the generations before them. However, they have an uphill battle because baby boomers (1946 to 1965) still hold power in many aspects of American life.

Millennials grew up in an era impacted by 9-11, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cultural awakening that happened after the George Floyd murder. It’s wrong to paint an entire generation with the same brush. Still, millennials have favored progressive politics with a strong interest in helping to reverse the effects of climate change and fighting for equality. Culturally, millennials have preferred authenticity, whether it's the hipster movement or their love for craft beer, farmhouse decor, and all things chuegy.

@marilyn_mckenna

Baby boomers need to pass the baton of leadership to Millennials. Do you agree? #boomers #millennials #millennialsoftiktok #fourthturning #generationtheory #genx #genz

What type of generation are the millennials?

Marilyn McKenna, 62, an intentional aging expert, says all of this makes sense given their generational trajectory. In a video with over 300,000 views, she says that, according to Neil Howe's 1997 book The Fourth Turning, millennials are considered a hero generation. In Turning, the authors postulate that every 80 to 100 years, there is an archetypal generational cycle in the order of prophets, nomads, heroes, and artists. Therefore, millennials are heroes whose job is to rescue America from a crisis that shakes it to its core.

“Hero generations come of age as community-based young adults during a Fourth Turning Crisis,” Alden Guzman writes. “If the outer world crisis is handled well, the hero generation is active participants in the building and championing of new values and institutions to face the crisis at hand.”

climate protest, milennials, climate, hero generation, enviornmentalismA climate change protest. via Linh Do/Flickr

McKenna believes millennials have a significant job ahead of them, but there’s one big problem: it isn’t the task at hand; it’s baby boomers. "Whether in politics, media, corporate leadership, or the economy, boomers still occupy the majority of decision-making roles," McKenna said. "Many are reluctant to make space for new voices—not just millennials, but also Gen X and Gen Z. There's an unwillingness to acknowledge that the world has changed, and that old solutions aren't working."

Unfortunately, she believes that millennials are “screwed” because the boomers won't concede their power. She adds that boomers could play an essential role in changing society if they finally decided to step down. "It doesn't mean disappearing—it means mentoring, stepping back from dominance, and actively helping to prepare and elevate the next generation of leadership. But, too often, boomers have mistaken staying relevant for staying in control," McKenna continued.

milennials, occupy wall street, protest, march, anti-capitalismA group of people marh in the streets.via John Smith/Flickr

McKenna says that the problems we face today stem from a crisis in agency because those who want to help are being stifled. "The historical patterns may be interesting and instructive, but they don't soften the day-to-day experience of living through a crisis. People are burned out, isolated, and losing faith in institutions,” she told Newsweek. “It's hard to know how to motivate people when they feel they have no real agency, and that's where I think we're stuck."

History (Education)

A historic plantation went up in flames, but people's reactions to it are the real story

The Nottoway Plantation had been turned into a luxury event space that glossed over its history of enslavement.

Bogdan Oporowski/Wikimedia Commons

The 53,000 square foot Nottoway mansion before it burned down in May of 2025.

For generations, the way Southern plantations have been portrayed and viewed by the American public has been a point of contention. For some, the sprawling grounds and grandiose mansions are viewed romantically, the beauty of them hearkening to wealthy aspirations and a nostalgic allure of Southern charm a la "Gone With the Wind." For others, plantations are a painful reminder of the plight of the Black Americans who worked the grounds and tended the crops of white plantation owners who enriched themselves off the backs of enslaved people trapped in a heinous system enforced by racism.

It's easy to see how those two perspectives can clash. And the tension between them was placed front and center on May 15, 2025, as the Nottoway Resort, the largest remaining antebellum plantation in the U.S., went up in flames. The 64-room mansion was built between 1857 and 1859 for its wealthy owner John Hampden Randolph, who enslaved 150+ people to work his sugar cane farm. As news and images of the blaze went viral, reactions were starkly divided. While some lamented the loss, others cheered with cries of "Good riddance!" and "Burn, baby, burn!"

The fact that Nottaway was marketed as a "resort" and a popular event venue, as opposed to a museum dedicated to sharing the full history of the plantation, is a big impetus behind the celebratory sentiment. Some plantations have been converted into purely educational facilities in which visitors learn how those beautiful places were built and maintained by slaves, but Nottoway wasn't one of them.

Historian and lecturer on the history of slavery Dr. Andrea Livesey visited Nottoway in 2019 and was horrified by how the slavery history was glossed over.

The plantation does have a museum, Livesey shared, which only included one board about slavery. "It tells visitors that 'various records indicate they were treated well for the time," she wrote, adding that those records likely all came from the enslavers.

Even the Nottoway website is thoroughly lacking in historical information. As of the day of the fire, the History section of the website shares details about the 16 historic oak trees on the property. That's it. (There's literally nothing else about the property's history, which is an odd choice.)

But it's the drastically different reactions to the mansion's destruction that mark this moment in time more than anything else. Over 150 years after slavery was officially abolished, we are still grappling with that history, intellectually and viscerally. In some cases, we learned drastically different versions of that part of our history, which of course doesn't help. But even if we're looking at the same exact historical record in its accurate entirety, we see that history through different lenses colored by our individual and familial histories, experiences, and biases.

What shouldn't be hard to see is the pain that enslavement caused generation after generation of Black families and how plantations being relished in for their architectural beauty while ignoring how and why they were built and the atrocities that took place on them could feel like a slap in the face. Even the elementary knowledge of the history of slavery in American ought to make that clear.

But many Americans have been conditioned to downplay the history of slavery, as if it wasn't the long atrocity that it was. Is holding a wedding or a party at a plantation markedly different than throwing a picnic at Auschwitz because the train station makes a beautiful backdrop? Some would argue it's not.

And yet, some people are sad to see the mansion burn, lamenting the loss of its magnificent architectural grandeur. Instead of "Yes, it's beautiful, but the slavery part ruins it," some see it as, "Yes, slavery was terrible, but it's still a beautiful building." Whether those are equally valid perspectives or not, those different lenses is where much of the debate over slavery-era historical places and monuments lies.

Marketing a plantation as a luxury event space while ignoring its oppressive history feels wrong. But does watching it burn to the ground feel right? For some, it definitely does, which begs some questions: What role do visceral feelings have in the debate over what to do with places and things that were created via and for the perpetuation of slavery? What role does white supremacy still play in who gets to make those decisions? Is it possible to turn a plantation into a place where everyone feels like their ancestral history is being honored? These and other questions need serious consideration and discussion as America continues to reckon with its own history.

One plantation that has been turned into an educational monument seems to have struck a reasonable balance. Less than an hour's drive from Nottoway, the Whitney Plantation is a non-profit museum "dedicated to truth-telling about America's past." It does not shy away from its history, but rather invites visitors to dive in. Like Nottoway, Whitney was primarily a sugar plantation, which made it all the more tragic for the enslaved people forced to work there. Sugar was a particularly brutal crop. The life expectancy for slaves on sugar cane farms was dramatically lower than those on cotton plantations—around 7 years—and being sold to Louisiana for sugar production was often considered a death sentence.

Knowing that full history, it's hard to see a plantation used as a resort and event venue and it's understandable that people might revel in its demise. Would there be the same kind of sentiment if Whitney burned? Probably not, or at least not to the degree that Nottoway's destruction has seen. Perhaps now's a prime time to discuss the respectful, appropriate ways to handle historic places with problematic histories, to let the ashes of the past fertilize our collective future.


French YouTuber Lucile.

One reason people fall in love with Paris when they see it for the first time is that it looks exactly as it does in the movies or photographs. It is romantic, charming, and effortlessly beautiful, with its elegant boulevards, old stone buildings, cozy cafés, and iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.

A significant reason why Paris is so absorbing is that it is architecturally consistent, and the city and its citizens put a great deal of effort into maintaining that consistency. In a new video by Lucile, a French woman who creates cultural commentary videos about Paris and French culture, the city even goes so far as to create “fake” buildings to maintain its consistently beautiful appearance. "A lot of the fake buildings in Paris really blend in nicely with their surroundings and are so hard to spot. Just by looking at them, it would be impossible to notice,” Lucile explains.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

In the video, Lucile reveals that one building in her neighborhood appears to be a quaint French apartment building that was once social housing. Still, a little investigation shows that it's actually a massive data center complete with air conditioners on the roof—a rarity in Paris. The A/C units are there because the servers generate an incredible amount of heat.

Another building, 145, rue La Fayette, which has been called the "entrance to the underworld," is holding a secret. The doors are fake, allowing it to blend in with the neighborhood, and the roof is entirely flat. However, in reality, the entire building is actually an air vent for a French Metro.


Why do a lot of buildings in France have a similar design style? It’s because they underwent a massive redesign in the mid-19th century by an architect named Georges-Eugène Haussmann, a French official who served as prefect of Seine and demolished many of the old, cramped buildings from the Middle Ages. “In 1853, Haussmann came in, and he was basically given full powers to redesign Paris in a better way,” Lucile explains. “So, he went ahead, and he tore down entire neighborhoods and thousands of buildings. And instead, he built the elegant buildings and wide avenues we still have today in Paris. Haussmann really wanted to achieve a uniform look, so he put some really strict rules in place. And this is why a lot of the buildings in Paris look the same—they have the same height, the same façades, and the same balconies. Haussmann's influence on Paris was huge because today, around 60% of all of Paris' buildings are Haussmann-type buildings.”

 france, paris architecture, seine, georges-eug\u00e8ne haussmann, paris buildings, historic paris2 Boulevard Haussmann, Parisvia Neoclassicism Enthusiast/Wikimedia Commons


Lucile also notes that 1972 is an important year for the city because, at a time when it was losing many classic buildings, a proposal for a brutalist block building was made to replace L'Amandier d'Or, a beautiful Haussmann design. "Luckily, people pushed back, and it became a pretty big thing. The French government had to step in, and they blocked the project, requiring the bank to preserve the façade,” Lucile explains. The amusing thing is that if you walk to the back of the preserved façade, it's actually a 1970s office building.

 


“This was one of the first times that Paris did the fake buildings,” Lucile says. “A lot of people wish they had kept the original building and renovated everything, not just the front. But, some other people think it's a great way to keep Paris’s charm while making room for more modern buildings. And wherever you stand, either way, this building set the trend.”

There’s something very satisfying about learning that there is a small amount of artifice in keeping Paris’s magical charm, like the false-front buildings you see at Disneyland or on a film set. But there’s something even more wonderful to know that the people of Paris, and its leaders, put so much effort into preserving its incredible ambiance.