Googler Daniel Russell knows how to find the answers to questions you can't get to with a simple Google query. In his weekly Search Research column, Russell issues a search challenge, then follows up later in the week with his solution—using whatever search technology and methodology fits the bill. This week's challenge: Who found the lost Roman eagles?
Three Roman legions were strung out in a long line at least 20 kilometers long. It's been raining and conditions are generally miserable. The trail through the forest is muddy, everything's wet, the food isn't great, and life generally sucks for a soldier walking deep in a foreign land on an improbable mission of conquest.
Suddenly, screams and battle cries come from nowhere. Out of the forest flies a vicious attack along the entire length of the march. With light swords, large lances, and narrow-bladed short spears, Germanic tribesmen pound the legionnaires, sweeping in from the forest, hacking and thrusting their way down the line.
Rome's finest fight back in a doomed attempt to save themselves. Although the battle takes 2 days, in the end the three Roman legions, around 20,000 men, were utterly destroyed.
Even now, 2000 years later, you can still find bits of Roman military equipment at the battleground, scattered along 20 kilometers from one end of the long line to the other.
In the battle, all of the three Legions' standards, their Eagles, were lost.
Now, with that background image firmly in place, today's search questions:
1. Who found the lost eagles?
2. Someone gave one of the eagles' finders a posthumous honor
in September. What was the honor and who bestowed it?
(And for extra credit, who was that eagle finder's wife?)
Daniel M. Russell studies the way people search and research—an anthropologist of search, if you will. You can read more from Russell on his SearchReSearch blog, and stay tuned for his weekly challenges (and answers) here on Lifehacker.