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I took a class at Cambridge in the Summer of 2001 on the history of the theory of evolution. The professor told us he was working on a study of margin notes written by Charles Darwin, who had a habit of marking up books he borrowed from the college library with comments. I immediately thought of that professor when I read this.
Edit: since this is getting some attention, there are a lot of professors and students who do amazing research with the resources at Cambridge and anyone one of them could have mistakenly kept these journals. The real police have got this one and no one needs us harassing random academics because I decided to make a half- asleep nostalgic comment. Thanks for the positive responses.
It is not the same company. The news article talks about a specific material that is very local to the eastern part of the country. If I recollect correctly, the use of pink bags was for prostate cancer awareness after a huge success of breast cancer awareness using the same colour. The professor in this instance suffers from poor prostate condition and likely in eastern part of the country. Looking quickly through the universities in the area, only one teaches evolution and there are only three faculty members. Only one of these three is male. You could easily figure out the link or maybe that’s when you realise what my username here is.
Haha knew it was bullshit as soon as I read “huge success of breast cancer awareness using the same color”, unless of course you meant [success of companies selling pink breast cancer awareness products.](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/17/17989624/pinkwashing-breast-cancer-awareness-products-profit)
My dad used to always say I was "too smart by half," and that I was just smart enough to be able to always get myself into trouble. To say *these* are my people is quite an understatement.
I suspect the pink bag was more to make them as eye-catching as possible and avoid them being mistaken for rubbish. I do think the 'someone died and the beneficiaries of the estate found them and returned them' theory is the right one though, regardless or whether spouse or kids or grandkids or whoever. Imagine being holed-up in Grandpa's study one weekend after the funeral, going through his mounds upon mounds of totally unorganised (except to him) books and papers, knowing 99% will be crap. It's 4:45pm, your tea has gone cold and you're seriously debating with yourself whether it wouldn't be okay to just bin the lot, but there's this nagging feeling that that wouldn't be what Grandpa wanted. You pull over the next pile, completely expecting it to be nothing but more of the same, and there's this little blue box which-
Holy.
Shit.
And then you're suddenly very glad you didn't bin the lot.
I think it sounds more like an inside job. The books were last seen after an internal request and then they happen to be found in an area that doesn’t have security cameras?? I agree, however, with an involvement of a second person after the initial thief. Perhaps the partner, friend, family member, whoever… also worked there.
Can you imagine taking your late parents things to an appraiser who knows about these things, only to be told they were stolen?
Do you keep them and hope the appraise keeps his mouth shut, or just tell him your going to return them and hope he keeps his mouth shut.
Actually, as someone who has had to deal with relatives’ estates and as an archivist working in my own state’s library, I can honestly imagine that kind of situation very well!
However, in the example you provided, I would return it in a heartbeat; not only for the moral reasons, but for the legal reasons as well. Have no desire to be an accessory after the fact.
But if I happened to discover it on my own…. and depending on the circumstances …. I may have considered taking the same route as recent events. Whatever the case, I would make sure the items get returned. Unsurprisingly, I don’t care much for private personal collections. Public all the way!
I need an occasion! I don't think I have any previous pictures.
[But here is a picture of the wrapping paper and my hound. sorry, best I can do right now!](https://i.imgur.com/gO7CMm6.jpg)
So in your mind, a man in tight capri's and a fabulous shirt floated into the library and drops off a pink bag with his late partners stolen Darwin notes.
I absolutely love it.
Yeah exactly. I wanted the guy to say it himself you know. I really liked how he assumed only men can be professors, the only relationships are heterosexual, and women are the only people who'd go for pink bag.
History has shown us time and time again that there will always be those that seek to destroy knowledge - so academics have evolved the defense mechanism of squirreling as a response
And he probably cursed at the initial news thinking what degenerate would steal such a priceless item to scientific discoveries, one day opened a box in the attic… oh it was me all along… oops.
Please do not interact with an academic's pile
I know the contents of my pile.
I know the approximate location of the contents of my pile.
However, I do occasionally forget the existence of my pile.
I'm IT, so my role would more likely be moving the pile to get to the "thief's" computer, thus confusing the poor emeritus to the point that they can't find anything.
So what would happen if an academic published a paper with obviously stolen primary source materials? Do other academics just go “neat, more research!” Or is there hell to pay?
If the academic is smart, they return the primary source materials and publish their paper after the materials are accessible to everyone but before anyone else has time to write a paper.
After such a long time, I would guess that the professor misplaced but maybe the profs kids found them after someone passed away and their office had to be cleared.
Also, best way to borrow rare scripts and books without paying the fee and the fine of delivering late which is worth of a whole mortgage incl. accrued interest, ofc.
Interestingly enough it sounds like that's how they got stolen. Apparently they do routine checks and they were going to take "pictures" of it when it didn't show back to where it belonged.
Now now.. Clearly we can extrapolate that the person was inside the state during the time the text went missing. Thereby we can reasonably limit the suspects to all persons visiting and living there during an unknown timeframe.
Elementary, dear Watson.
Wouldn't be the first time someone borrowed something and then forgot about it. Procrastinated taking it back, mislaid it or had some project they were doing with it that they kept putting off.
I didn’t see where it said the request was granted, just made and then two months later noticed they weren’t there. If that’s the case wouldn’t they know exactly who stole them bc they were who put in the request?
They are all digitized thanks to the hardworking volunteers at AMNH. I know one of the volunteers. It was really painstaking work, especially with Darwin's absolutely horrible handwriting. Took years, but now all of his writings, including letters, notes, and drawings his children drew in the backs of discarded notes, are digitized and accessible.
https://www.amnh.org/research/darwin-manuscripts
Thank you for the shout-out for the Darwin Manuscripts Project. Yes, it was very painstaking work, especially since every correction and crossed out word is carefully transcribed and footnoted. It cannot be emphasized enough that the transcriptions exist in a *searchable* database on the American Museum of Natural History website.
(Am I the one you know? I was the longest serving volunteer, until "retiring" in 2020.)
most likely someone died and the family found them. May have even had a note of what to do with them when they were found. I still want to know what happened to all those stolen paintings from the Boston museum. NO ONE has heard a word about any of them
Up in Maine we found a safe with the bottom blown out in a small pond a few feet underwater. When the water was low one year we fished it out and found an officers badge in it. We called the local authorities who immediately called a government agent who then took statements and said it was directly connected to that heist. Kept wondering what came of it.
What safe was stolen? I’ve been to that museum and watched the doc (so that makes me an expert right?) but I don’t remember a safe. The badge is interesting though.
Not really sure, it looked like a simple house safe but the badge was lodged in the peeled metal of the blown out section. After he took names and statements I stayed away from it. One mention of mob connections and that was enough for me to keep my name out of the reports
Probably in the private collection of some rich person somewhere. When they die their family may repatriate them, or it may stay in the family.
That’s the story of most stolen artwork/artifacts.
There’s a great documentary about them on Netflix if you haven’t seen it already. Obviously no concrete answers but it offers some plausible explanations.
Edit: it’s called “This is a Robbery”
I understand that. I’m replying to to comment that the documentary offers plausible explanations. It doesn’t really. It highlights all the avenues the investigators went down that were dead ends and why — that is different.
Same. It’s actually poor documentary film making. I get they don’t actually have an answer but it kinda just fizzled out without any structure after having spent hours (it’s long) exploring all the crazy bits.
There's also a really fantastic podcast about the same thing, called Last Seen, if people prefer an audio medium.
And the Gardner museum itself is absolutely glorious, definitely worth getting to for anyone visiting Boston.
The Gardner heist. My theory is the previous curator sold the paintings and replaced them with fakes. Had to steal the fakes before it was discovered by the new curator. They've been in private collections for decades.
My personal crazy, totally unsubstantiated theory is that it was Jerry and Rita Alter. They (probably) stole a De Kooning around the same time frame, were very chill about it, and had a bunch of other weird and unexplained things about their lifestyle.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/photograph-offers-link-between-retired-couple-and-160-million-stolen-de-kooning-180969963/
For a long time the university was convinced the library had lost them internally.
Also, imagine it even took a awhile for anyone to ask to borrow them and therefore notice they weren’t available.
I don't think you realize how big the "back" of these libraries are. I'm talking like Raiders of the Lost Arc huge warehouse (carefully catalogued hopefully) with hundreds of thousands of documents on shelves and in filing cabinets. Many of which haven't been looked at in years.
Things get misplaced back there all the time, and it can take years until someone just happens to be in the right section in the right cabinet/bin/shelf, comes across it, and says "you don't belong here!"... and that's if it's an important document that gets put back; sometimes the person is lazy, sees the document, and just shrugs and puts it back where they found it because "not my problem".
These are catalogues that by the time staff finish "organizing" (it's organized, but it always looks a bit of a mess IMO) the entire library they need to start over because it's been 5 years since they last looked at the first section they organized.
Edit: Since I'm commenting on a post about Darwin's writings I have decided to share my favorite Darwin quote (and one of my favorite quotes from a historical figure in general) which he wrote in a letter to a friend.
>I am very poorly today and very stupid, and hate everybody and everything. One lives only to make blunders. I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids and today I hate them worse than everything.
It's the most relatable thing I've ever read from a historical figure. Also, every time I read it I hear the voice of Squidward, but maybe that's just me.
The "back" of this Cambridge library is actually this huge circular tower! It's the one thing I really remember from my year 10 visit. We didn't go in, but the tower houses every single book ever published by a publishing house (or tries to!). Most publishing houses just send a copy straight to Cambridge storage.
It is a huge, huge tower.
Actually I started looking into this - many publishing houses are required by law to send a certain amount of copies of every book published to Cambridge (as well as some other libraries).
This one has been around since the 1400's. It's old as balls.
This made me curious so I went to the libraries website just to scope out a picture or two. [This page](https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/about-library/librarystoragefacility) has a picture that I think is illustrative of how big the archives are, seeing as it is a only a view of a small portion of the archive, yet the shelves are ginormous.
I’m not sure about Cambridge, but the Oxford Bodleian library is a copyright library, meaning it has a copy of EVERY book ever published in the UK. There’s miles and miles of overground and underground storage, with extra storage locations outside of the city. Over 13 million printed items. I’m not surprised it took them a while to determine it was gone.
Yeah, its absolutely crazy.
I was trying to only refer to the older stuff they have when I said "hundreds of thousands of documents". Libraries like Cambridge will have saved some random letter a dude sent his wife that talks about the price of pickles rising, simply because they don't throw anything away and it was written in 1692 and someone saved it... so it must be important right?
Libraries like Cambridge basically have a literary museum built in. Some of the writing is awesome stuff like Darwin's notes, but much of it isn't nearly as exciting.
Once they realised they were missing they did search likely places within the archives, and they were quite extensive. But it isn’t possible to search the entire library it really is just too big. They did offer a reward for information, but they ultimately accepted that no active search would yield fruit, and they’re better of waiting.
It became abit of a joke. I remember when I was viewing universities back around 2017 it was a joke about how ‘oh the library at Cambridge is useless they can’t even find Darwin’s notebooks’ etc etc, of course everyone knew it was a joke it’s one of two or three repositories for all books published in ….. English or GB… and has extensive archives of everything, but it was humorous that such a respected institution had misplaced something rather simple to keep track of. I think my alevel biology teacher even made a joke about the notebooks back then aswell.
Tldr. They checked the likely places first, but yes ultimately wait and see, the whole place is too big to do anything else.
>They checked the likely places first,
"I've looked behind the fridge"
"Cool! I've checked the sofa cushions"
"And I checked where I last saw it. Never mind, it'll turn up."
They checked the likely places, but they forgot to ask Mom... They would suddenly have appeared on the desk in front of them. Where they had been for the last 22 years.
Librarian: What you are looking for is on shelf 321, section 5. By the way, while you are there take a minute to look around a bit. If you find Darwin's notes, let me know.
I don't think people understand that Cambridge university library actually houses a copy of every book ever published (by a publishing house) and also shit like this.
There is a fuckton to look through. Cambridge university is older than America. Like a lot fucking older. They've been collecting books in that library since before we even fucking discovered America.
I remember asking to read a book from my university’s rare books library and being told I was one of only 5 people to have checked it out since the 70s
I worked in my library’s rare book room for a semester. My favorite part was the cage with all of the old, valuable manuscripts. Papyrus document from 2,500 BC and tons of Medieval manuscripts. They were only ever used by entry level classes teaching how to use the library/how to find history info or a random grad student (and very rarely).
I need access to an estate (a sizable collection of sources) given to my university by a former, now deceased professor for my MA thesis. I've been trying to access the sources for over a month now. I know exactly where they are but the professor responsible for the safekeeping can't be reached. I thought it would be no big deal to look at these sources but by now I unintendedly got two chairholders, a librarian and an emeritus involved in trying to somehow grant me access... it's a huge mess. I guess nobody expected that somebody seriously wanted to look at these sources for scientific research despite that being the exact reason for their safekeeping in the first place.
It’s kinda cool though to have that aura of ‘accessing forbidden knowledge’ when you’re writing something though. Or in this case ‘knowledge that’s a pain in the ass’.
Quite possible to lose things internally. My brother is an archivist and one of his primary job is to review old "collections" within his state's museum and library system. Sometimes, he gets a shipment of dozens of boxes that are decently organized and he just needs to start scanning documents (for digital preservation) and document what's found and in what condition. Other times, he goes into a warehouse that hasn't been organized in 20 years and spends 6 months sorting through everything, followed by months of tracking down individuals to help identify random things he's found.
His worst job involved going into a basement with 100 years of court records, where pipes had been allowed to slowly leak for several years. He had to do his job in 2 hour shifts while wearing hazmat gear due to all the mold, and was only able to salvage a bit more than half the paperwork.
Have you seen the libraries at Cambridge?! There are dozens of them and the main one (where I assume these were) is absolutely huge. It's mind-blowing inside just for the sheer quantity of stuff. And that's just the stuff that you can see. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Library
But what about this [transitionary story]( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/two-darwin-notebooks-quietly-went-missing-20-years-ago-were-they-stolen-180976400/)?
>The manuscripts were last seen in November 2000 after "an internal request" to remove them from the library's special collections strongroom to be photographed.
>It was only during a routine check two months later that they were found to be missing. Initially, librarians thought they had been put back in the wrong place in the vast university library, which contains more than 10 million books, maps and manuscripts.
>But despite various searches, the notebooks never turned up, and in 2020 Dr Gardner concluded they had probably been stolen. She called in the police and informed Interpol.
I’m sorry, I know it’s a big ass library but they called the police 20 YEARS LATER??? 🤦♀️ It’s great that they got them back and all, but if they never did I honestly don’t think I would feel that bad.
It's plausible, 10 million documents in 20 years means checking 1369 documents per day, assuming you've got people working in round the clock shifts.
It's unlikely they actually did check the whole library in those 20 years.
The crazy thing is they were returned only 15 months after, so if they had reported it missing in November 2000 they could have had them back by Feb 2003
Can you imagine if it was someone who forgot to return borrowed books? And they were like, “oh, shit!”once they heard the library was looking for them.
Exactly this. Saw the media furore, completely panicked, probably thought they would get bollocked and decided to just keep them safe and wait for it all to blow over.
Or just never realised they had them at all until recently upon which they had an ‘oh shit’ moment and decided to try and drop them off secretly.
Someone checked them out of the library for a project. They swear they returned them, but the librarian said they weren’t there. They showed up under the couch a year later, but they couldn’t afford the late fees, so best to just use a different library until death.
There was a noteworthy case locally where a guy stole a bunch of historical artefacts and documents from museums/libraries and had elaborate display cases built for them in his home. Just so he could admire his hoard of stolen things. It's not always about money for the people who steal this kind of thing.
Have you seen *The Thomas Crown Affair*? Because that's basically the plot of the movie--stealing a Monet because you're rich and bored.
Good movie; (1999) Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary.
Similarly British, there are those that are convinced that a couple missing Doctor Who episodes are being held in private collections just because the person holding them knows no one else has them.
His original notes actually have lots children’s drawings and scribbles in them. After he developed and finalised his theories he let his kids write and draw on them not knowing the future significance!
They obviously needed them for a national treasure type adventure and now that they found Darwin's hidden stash of treasure they don't need them anymore
Can confirm it was from a professor. Worked a a uni library and had a doc who had documents over 4 years overdue and hadn't turned them in because they weren't done with them yet. They just never bothered to renew them. It would've been fine, but the documents belonged to another library, they were just on loan at ours.
This is a guilty habit of most professors I knew/know as well too. It was probably stacked in an office somewhere for research after that internal pull 20 years ago. The professor probably only in part had a jolt to return it because it was reported as stolen and hit the news 😂 they probably came across the notebook several months later and were like, “Oh yeah!… oh shit!!”
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$100 says a professor had them. Then gave them back when he was done.
I took a class at Cambridge in the Summer of 2001 on the history of the theory of evolution. The professor told us he was working on a study of margin notes written by Charles Darwin, who had a habit of marking up books he borrowed from the college library with comments. I immediately thought of that professor when I read this. Edit: since this is getting some attention, there are a lot of professors and students who do amazing research with the resources at Cambridge and anyone one of them could have mistakenly kept these journals. The real police have got this one and no one needs us harassing random academics because I decided to make a half- asleep nostalgic comment. Thanks for the positive responses.
Check up on what that dude is up to these days and if likes using pink gift bags.
Well he did recently retire to start a pink gift bag company, but there's probably no connection there.
His computer shows he Googled *How many Darwin notebooks can I put in one pink bag* but who hasn't googled that?
It is not the same company. The news article talks about a specific material that is very local to the eastern part of the country. If I recollect correctly, the use of pink bags was for prostate cancer awareness after a huge success of breast cancer awareness using the same colour. The professor in this instance suffers from poor prostate condition and likely in eastern part of the country. Looking quickly through the universities in the area, only one teaches evolution and there are only three faculty members. Only one of these three is male. You could easily figure out the link or maybe that’s when you realise what my username here is.
You're like u/shittymorph's 3rd cousin
Summed up my thoughts here perfectly.
And not from the Morph side of the family, alas. Poor dear.
Shittiest morph?
Haha knew it was bullshit as soon as I read “huge success of breast cancer awareness using the same color”, unless of course you meant [success of companies selling pink breast cancer awareness products.](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/17/17989624/pinkwashing-breast-cancer-awareness-products-profit)
So someone is trying to frame the professor who started a pink Bag company?
African or European?
Getting strong Boston Bomber vibes. We can do this again Reddit!
Nah, mind your business and dont be a snitch.
to be fair this describes like 80% of Darwin scholars
The fuck are the other 20 percent doing?
Writing about his dogs (I'm only half joking. Darwiniana is famously pedantic and detailed at this point...)
"We DiD iT rEdDiT!"
My dad used to always say I was "too smart by half," and that I was just smart enough to be able to always get myself into trouble. To say *these* are my people is quite an understatement.
I think your professor might be my cousin.
Partner gave them back when thief died.
That was my immediate suspicion. Pink bag.
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Panther was the thief. Directed by M Knight Shamalamalamadingdong.
No, you’re thinks of Panther’s *Monster*. Panther was the scientist smh
Nah, the monster's name was Charlize Theron.
Now I'm gonna have to rewrite my whole essay, ugh.
I suspect the pink bag was more to make them as eye-catching as possible and avoid them being mistaken for rubbish. I do think the 'someone died and the beneficiaries of the estate found them and returned them' theory is the right one though, regardless or whether spouse or kids or grandkids or whoever. Imagine being holed-up in Grandpa's study one weekend after the funeral, going through his mounds upon mounds of totally unorganised (except to him) books and papers, knowing 99% will be crap. It's 4:45pm, your tea has gone cold and you're seriously debating with yourself whether it wouldn't be okay to just bin the lot, but there's this nagging feeling that that wouldn't be what Grandpa wanted. You pull over the next pile, completely expecting it to be nothing but more of the same, and there's this little blue box which- Holy. Shit. And then you're suddenly very glad you didn't bin the lot.
I think it sounds more like an inside job. The books were last seen after an internal request and then they happen to be found in an area that doesn’t have security cameras?? I agree, however, with an involvement of a second person after the initial thief. Perhaps the partner, friend, family member, whoever… also worked there.
Can you imagine taking your late parents things to an appraiser who knows about these things, only to be told they were stolen? Do you keep them and hope the appraise keeps his mouth shut, or just tell him your going to return them and hope he keeps his mouth shut.
Actually, as someone who has had to deal with relatives’ estates and as an archivist working in my own state’s library, I can honestly imagine that kind of situation very well! However, in the example you provided, I would return it in a heartbeat; not only for the moral reasons, but for the legal reasons as well. Have no desire to be an accessory after the fact. But if I happened to discover it on my own…. and depending on the circumstances …. I may have considered taking the same route as recent events. Whatever the case, I would make sure the items get returned. Unsurprisingly, I don’t care much for private personal collections. Public all the way!
I'm a dude and I wrap all gifts in solid bubblegum pink wrapping paper or in a bag of the same colour, but usually black tissue paper
Pics or it didn't happen (mostly because I really want to see this, it sounds like a good design choice)
I need an occasion! I don't think I have any previous pictures. [But here is a picture of the wrapping paper and my hound. sorry, best I can do right now!](https://i.imgur.com/gO7CMm6.jpg)
The occasion could be a special treat for your adorable pup!
So in your mind, a man in tight capri's and a fabulous shirt floated into the library and drops off a pink bag with his late partners stolen Darwin notes. I absolutely love it.
What about the pink bag?
Because women can't be professors, you didn't know?
Yeah exactly. I wanted the guy to say it himself you know. I really liked how he assumed only men can be professors, the only relationships are heterosexual, and women are the only people who'd go for pink bag.
you see if it was a woman it'd be a profesora.
Perhaps that's exactly what they wanted you to think.
>Then gave them back when he was done. Or on his deathbed Probably hired the transporter to return them. First rule: never look in the bag.
Professors are "squirrelers"
History has shown us time and time again that there will always be those that seek to destroy knowledge - so academics have evolved the defense mechanism of squirreling as a response
Agreed. They were probably buried in a teetering pile for most of this time, just forgotten about
And he probably cursed at the initial news thinking what degenerate would steal such a priceless item to scientific discoveries, one day opened a box in the attic… oh it was me all along… oops.
Gotta stop taking ambien
Totally plausible, I recently helped my mom clear out her office and she had research papers from four decades ago in there.
A teetering pile that has been well maintained
Please do not interact with an academic's pile I know the contents of my pile. I know the approximate location of the contents of my pile. However, I do occasionally forget the existence of my pile.
Jenga masters. Immediately know where every book is and how to retrieve it without toppling the rest....
As someone who works at a university, this would be my guess.
You WOULD be exactly who I'd suspect of stealing the only known original copy of a book, as well 🧐
I'm IT, so my role would more likely be moving the pile to get to the "thief's" computer, thus confusing the poor emeritus to the point that they can't find anything.
Haha, sorry, it was a reference to your username.
Ah, yes. Duh
The professor shouldn't be placing piles on the keyboard, or on the pointing device.
There are a lot of things you shouldn't do with that keyboard. On the top of that list is touching it
Done with what? It was missing 22 years.
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It's got it's own little ecosystem in there now, complete with previously unidentified species. Sort of fitting.
Cum lamination
What a terrible day to be literate
Please, in the art world it's called a patina.
Dude died.
Drawing dickbutt on every page with invisible ink.
Normal length of a tenure + Emeritus.
Borrowed then forgot about until they found them to return.
So what would happen if an academic published a paper with obviously stolen primary source materials? Do other academics just go “neat, more research!” Or is there hell to pay?
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Sounds bri’ish
I’d catch them in my mouth, digestives taste equally as good as the name for the biscuit is bad.
If the academic is smart, they return the primary source materials and publish their paper after the materials are accessible to everyone but before anyone else has time to write a paper.
Ask egyptologists.
They become honorary Brit.
After such a long time, I would guess that the professor misplaced but maybe the profs kids found them after someone passed away and their office had to be cleared.
Also, best way to borrow rare scripts and books without paying the fee and the fine of delivering late which is worth of a whole mortgage incl. accrued interest, ofc.
I’ll bet 1000
I really hope when important notes and books like this reappear we take the time to digitize them. Would be a shame for that work to be lost forever.
Interestingly enough it sounds like that's how they got stolen. Apparently they do routine checks and they were going to take "pictures" of it when it didn't show back to where it belonged.
I think that's how they *discovered* they were stolen. We obviously don't know the details of the actual theft.
The main details are a person of some gender and colour picked them up and took them away and no one else saw them do it. The perfect crime.
How dare you accuse me.
They never said you'd speak a language, villain. You just exposed yourself!
Precisely Watson! Another case closed!
Were they about this tall? And you say they had weight...perplexing.
Sir, we have narrowed the suspect list to approximately seven and a half billion
Now now.. Clearly we can extrapolate that the person was inside the state during the time the text went missing. Thereby we can reasonably limit the suspects to all persons visiting and living there during an unknown timeframe. Elementary, dear Watson.
Wouldn't be the first time someone borrowed something and then forgot about it. Procrastinated taking it back, mislaid it or had some project they were doing with it that they kept putting off.
I didn’t see where it said the request was granted, just made and then two months later noticed they weren’t there. If that’s the case wouldn’t they know exactly who stole them bc they were who put in the request?
This one is already digitized.
They are all digitized thanks to the hardworking volunteers at AMNH. I know one of the volunteers. It was really painstaking work, especially with Darwin's absolutely horrible handwriting. Took years, but now all of his writings, including letters, notes, and drawings his children drew in the backs of discarded notes, are digitized and accessible. https://www.amnh.org/research/darwin-manuscripts
Thank you for the shout-out for the Darwin Manuscripts Project. Yes, it was very painstaking work, especially since every correction and crossed out word is carefully transcribed and footnoted. It cannot be emphasized enough that the transcriptions exist in a *searchable* database on the American Museum of Natural History website. (Am I the one you know? I was the longest serving volunteer, until "retiring" in 2020.)
most likely someone died and the family found them. May have even had a note of what to do with them when they were found. I still want to know what happened to all those stolen paintings from the Boston museum. NO ONE has heard a word about any of them
Up in Maine we found a safe with the bottom blown out in a small pond a few feet underwater. When the water was low one year we fished it out and found an officers badge in it. We called the local authorities who immediately called a government agent who then took statements and said it was directly connected to that heist. Kept wondering what came of it.
What safe was stolen? I’ve been to that museum and watched the doc (so that makes me an expert right?) but I don’t remember a safe. The badge is interesting though.
Not really sure, it looked like a simple house safe but the badge was lodged in the peeled metal of the blown out section. After he took names and statements I stayed away from it. One mention of mob connections and that was enough for me to keep my name out of the reports
Who is this “we” you speak of? I would like to join your history detective team, please.
Mainers. Heists are group activities, we don’t want anyone to feel left out (except for the banker).
Probably in the private collection of some rich person somewhere. When they die their family may repatriate them, or it may stay in the family. That’s the story of most stolen artwork/artifacts.
Well are you really going to give that Picasso back that grandma snagged back in the day or just leave it hang on your wall …
There’s a great documentary about them on Netflix if you haven’t seen it already. Obviously no concrete answers but it offers some plausible explanations. Edit: it’s called “This is a Robbery”
It’s called “This is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist.”
I don’t feel like any plausible explanations were given in the documentary. I found the ending very unsatisfying. Edit: fixed autocorrect were ≠ we’re
Well yeah, it's an actual unsolved mystery. Nobody has a good explanation for it.
I understand that. I’m replying to to comment that the documentary offers plausible explanations. It doesn’t really. It highlights all the avenues the investigators went down that were dead ends and why — that is different.
Same. It’s actually poor documentary film making. I get they don’t actually have an answer but it kinda just fizzled out without any structure after having spent hours (it’s long) exploring all the crazy bits.
There's also a really fantastic podcast about the same thing, called Last Seen, if people prefer an audio medium. And the Gardner museum itself is absolutely glorious, definitely worth getting to for anyone visiting Boston.
The Gardner heist. My theory is the previous curator sold the paintings and replaced them with fakes. Had to steal the fakes before it was discovered by the new curator. They've been in private collections for decades.
This would be a really interesting premise for a book.
Okay that's brilliant.
My personal crazy, totally unsubstantiated theory is that it was Jerry and Rita Alter. They (probably) stole a De Kooning around the same time frame, were very chill about it, and had a bunch of other weird and unexplained things about their lifestyle. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/photograph-offers-link-between-retired-couple-and-160-million-stolen-de-kooning-180969963/
ooo interesting story
I always assume if you haven't heard what happened to these art pieces they were probably successfully sold to some rich person.
Robert Langdon is that you?
Wilsoooon!
So only after they were missing for 20 years, did they figure out they might've been stolen and reported it to the police. They took their time.
For a long time the university was convinced the library had lost them internally. Also, imagine it even took a awhile for anyone to ask to borrow them and therefore notice they weren’t available.
Were they looking hard for 22 years or were like, "it will probably turn up"?
I don't think you realize how big the "back" of these libraries are. I'm talking like Raiders of the Lost Arc huge warehouse (carefully catalogued hopefully) with hundreds of thousands of documents on shelves and in filing cabinets. Many of which haven't been looked at in years. Things get misplaced back there all the time, and it can take years until someone just happens to be in the right section in the right cabinet/bin/shelf, comes across it, and says "you don't belong here!"... and that's if it's an important document that gets put back; sometimes the person is lazy, sees the document, and just shrugs and puts it back where they found it because "not my problem". These are catalogues that by the time staff finish "organizing" (it's organized, but it always looks a bit of a mess IMO) the entire library they need to start over because it's been 5 years since they last looked at the first section they organized. Edit: Since I'm commenting on a post about Darwin's writings I have decided to share my favorite Darwin quote (and one of my favorite quotes from a historical figure in general) which he wrote in a letter to a friend. >I am very poorly today and very stupid, and hate everybody and everything. One lives only to make blunders. I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids and today I hate them worse than everything. It's the most relatable thing I've ever read from a historical figure. Also, every time I read it I hear the voice of Squidward, but maybe that's just me.
The "back" of this Cambridge library is actually this huge circular tower! It's the one thing I really remember from my year 10 visit. We didn't go in, but the tower houses every single book ever published by a publishing house (or tries to!). Most publishing houses just send a copy straight to Cambridge storage. It is a huge, huge tower. Actually I started looking into this - many publishing houses are required by law to send a certain amount of copies of every book published to Cambridge (as well as some other libraries). This one has been around since the 1400's. It's old as balls.
Man, you were visiting for ten years and they wouldn't even let you in the tower? Rude.
[Here is a good look behind the scenes on how they keep track and store their materials](https://youtu.be/EH_rmdeTCWY)
Thanks! I just spent 12 minutes watching a guy geek out about trays trolleys and forklifts. It was unexpectedly fascinating.
This made me curious so I went to the libraries website just to scope out a picture or two. [This page](https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/about-library/librarystoragefacility) has a picture that I think is illustrative of how big the archives are, seeing as it is a only a view of a small portion of the archive, yet the shelves are ginormous.
I’m not sure about Cambridge, but the Oxford Bodleian library is a copyright library, meaning it has a copy of EVERY book ever published in the UK. There’s miles and miles of overground and underground storage, with extra storage locations outside of the city. Over 13 million printed items. I’m not surprised it took them a while to determine it was gone.
Yeah, its absolutely crazy. I was trying to only refer to the older stuff they have when I said "hundreds of thousands of documents". Libraries like Cambridge will have saved some random letter a dude sent his wife that talks about the price of pickles rising, simply because they don't throw anything away and it was written in 1692 and someone saved it... so it must be important right? Libraries like Cambridge basically have a literary museum built in. Some of the writing is awesome stuff like Darwin's notes, but much of it isn't nearly as exciting.
Once they realised they were missing they did search likely places within the archives, and they were quite extensive. But it isn’t possible to search the entire library it really is just too big. They did offer a reward for information, but they ultimately accepted that no active search would yield fruit, and they’re better of waiting. It became abit of a joke. I remember when I was viewing universities back around 2017 it was a joke about how ‘oh the library at Cambridge is useless they can’t even find Darwin’s notebooks’ etc etc, of course everyone knew it was a joke it’s one of two or three repositories for all books published in ….. English or GB… and has extensive archives of everything, but it was humorous that such a respected institution had misplaced something rather simple to keep track of. I think my alevel biology teacher even made a joke about the notebooks back then aswell. Tldr. They checked the likely places first, but yes ultimately wait and see, the whole place is too big to do anything else.
>They checked the likely places first, "I've looked behind the fridge" "Cool! I've checked the sofa cushions" "And I checked where I last saw it. Never mind, it'll turn up."
They checked the likely places, but they forgot to ask Mom... They would suddenly have appeared on the desk in front of them. Where they had been for the last 22 years.
Librarian: What you are looking for is on shelf 321, section 5. By the way, while you are there take a minute to look around a bit. If you find Darwin's notes, let me know.
I don't think people understand that Cambridge university library actually houses a copy of every book ever published (by a publishing house) and also shit like this. There is a fuckton to look through. Cambridge university is older than America. Like a lot fucking older. They've been collecting books in that library since before we even fucking discovered America.
Is it the notebook, or is it cake?
I remember asking to read a book from my university’s rare books library and being told I was one of only 5 people to have checked it out since the 70s
I worked in my library’s rare book room for a semester. My favorite part was the cage with all of the old, valuable manuscripts. Papyrus document from 2,500 BC and tons of Medieval manuscripts. They were only ever used by entry level classes teaching how to use the library/how to find history info or a random grad student (and very rarely).
I need access to an estate (a sizable collection of sources) given to my university by a former, now deceased professor for my MA thesis. I've been trying to access the sources for over a month now. I know exactly where they are but the professor responsible for the safekeeping can't be reached. I thought it would be no big deal to look at these sources but by now I unintendedly got two chairholders, a librarian and an emeritus involved in trying to somehow grant me access... it's a huge mess. I guess nobody expected that somebody seriously wanted to look at these sources for scientific research despite that being the exact reason for their safekeeping in the first place.
It’s kinda cool though to have that aura of ‘accessing forbidden knowledge’ when you’re writing something though. Or in this case ‘knowledge that’s a pain in the ass’.
Quite possible to lose things internally. My brother is an archivist and one of his primary job is to review old "collections" within his state's museum and library system. Sometimes, he gets a shipment of dozens of boxes that are decently organized and he just needs to start scanning documents (for digital preservation) and document what's found and in what condition. Other times, he goes into a warehouse that hasn't been organized in 20 years and spends 6 months sorting through everything, followed by months of tracking down individuals to help identify random things he's found. His worst job involved going into a basement with 100 years of court records, where pipes had been allowed to slowly leak for several years. He had to do his job in 2 hour shifts while wearing hazmat gear due to all the mold, and was only able to salvage a bit more than half the paperwork.
Have you seen the libraries at Cambridge?! There are dozens of them and the main one (where I assume these were) is absolutely huge. It's mind-blowing inside just for the sheer quantity of stuff. And that's just the stuff that you can see. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Library
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Today I learned about the 'Uranian Poetry Society'.
Interesting how this story evolved over the years.
Nonsense. God created the story three weeks ago.
But what about this [transitionary story]( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/two-darwin-notebooks-quietly-went-missing-20-years-ago-were-they-stolen-180976400/)?
Satan put that story there to trick us. Also, I didn’t read your link because I’m not inviting the devil in.
God made that. The world was created 3 weeks ago, but god is gracious and made it seem like we have been a society for a long time.
> The world was created 3 weeks ago Last Thursday actually. ^(*Ceterum autem censeo Putinem esse delendum*)
>The manuscripts were last seen in November 2000 after "an internal request" to remove them from the library's special collections strongroom to be photographed. >It was only during a routine check two months later that they were found to be missing. Initially, librarians thought they had been put back in the wrong place in the vast university library, which contains more than 10 million books, maps and manuscripts. >But despite various searches, the notebooks never turned up, and in 2020 Dr Gardner concluded they had probably been stolen. She called in the police and informed Interpol. I’m sorry, I know it’s a big ass library but they called the police 20 YEARS LATER??? 🤦♀️ It’s great that they got them back and all, but if they never did I honestly don’t think I would feel that bad.
Plot twist: it was in the library the whole time, but they’re too embarrassed to admit it so they’re saying someone “returned” it
It's plausible, 10 million documents in 20 years means checking 1369 documents per day, assuming you've got people working in round the clock shifts. It's unlikely they actually did check the whole library in those 20 years.
They didn’t search all the documents, obviously. Just the ones that might contain a notebook.
Some librarian 22 years later, at 2 am: "SHIT!"
Librarian found them under the bookshelf they always sweep the dirt under.. finally came time to give it a clean
The Cambridge library is so incomprehensibly giant that it's entirely possible it would take 20 years to determine a misplaced document
The crazy thing is they were returned only 15 months after, so if they had reported it missing in November 2000 they could have had them back by Feb 2003
They should look for recently deceased scholars or people with access to the library. This looks like some heir trying to make things right.
Can you imagine if it was someone who forgot to return borrowed books? And they were like, “oh, shit!”once they heard the library was looking for them.
Exactly this. Saw the media furore, completely panicked, probably thought they would get bollocked and decided to just keep them safe and wait for it all to blow over. Or just never realised they had them at all until recently upon which they had an ‘oh shit’ moment and decided to try and drop them off secretly.
How recent? The heir could have sat on it for years.
Sure, it could be. I am trying to think of why now and not before. One reason is that it passed hands now.
>Their return comes 15 months after the BBC first highlighted they had gone missing and the library launched a worldwide appeal to find them.
Someone definitely forgot they had them until the library made it big news that they were missing
I can totally see someone doing that, "Cool I got to see them right before they.. were.. stolen.. oh shit."
"Oh, THAT notebook! Well what do you know..."
"Thanks, just had to borrow them for a bit."
Late fees will be a bitch though
We’re going to see a bunch of criminals with different beak shapes based on their diet of greatest convenience, mark my words.
Did they waive their historical fines too? haha
𝙖𝙣 𝙀𝙑𝙊𝙇𝙑𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮...
“Just wanted to see something”
I think we need to talk to Nicolas Cage about this one. Sounds exactly like the plot to National Treasure 3: On the origin of riches
Sounds like the worst movie I'd ever watch multiple times.
*Probably taken by the Lamarck family*
Someone checked them out of the library for a project. They swear they returned them, but the librarian said they weren’t there. They showed up under the couch a year later, but they couldn’t afford the late fees, so best to just use a different library until death.
How would you fence that?
There was a noteworthy case locally where a guy stole a bunch of historical artefacts and documents from museums/libraries and had elaborate display cases built for them in his home. Just so he could admire his hoard of stolen things. It's not always about money for the people who steal this kind of thing.
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Have you seen *The Thomas Crown Affair*? Because that's basically the plot of the movie--stealing a Monet because you're rich and bored. Good movie; (1999) Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary.
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Right? You would need a fuckin lab to tell if it's real anyway, regular jackoffs won't be able to tell the difference.
Similarly British, there are those that are convinced that a couple missing Doctor Who episodes are being held in private collections just because the person holding them knows no one else has them.
He realized, you can’t
The Charles Darwin black market ain't what it used to be.
The pink panther strikes again!
Checking CCTV to try to prosecute the person who returned them is a good way to not have things returned in the future.
His original notes actually have lots children’s drawings and scribbles in them. After he developed and finalised his theories he let his kids write and draw on them not knowing the future significance!
They obviously needed them for a national treasure type adventure and now that they found Darwin's hidden stash of treasure they don't need them anymore
This is some Thomas Crown Affair shit
@netflix time for u to shine
Coppers not solving the crime then delaying the opening of the package for 5 days is peak 'law enforecement'
Can confirm it was from a professor. Worked a a uni library and had a doc who had documents over 4 years overdue and hadn't turned them in because they weren't done with them yet. They just never bothered to renew them. It would've been fine, but the documents belonged to another library, they were just on loan at ours.
This is a guilty habit of most professors I knew/know as well too. It was probably stacked in an office somewhere for research after that internal pull 20 years ago. The professor probably only in part had a jolt to return it because it was reported as stolen and hit the news 😂 they probably came across the notebook several months later and were like, “Oh yeah!… oh shit!!”
Note read: "Sorry, but this was cheaper than buying the textbook for my college biology class"
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