The Kruger Millions - South Africa's lost fortune
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- Опубликовано: 10 окт 2022
- What happened to South Africa's lost fortune?
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As a South African, I had never truly appreciated just how bad Simon's pronunciations were until this video. Not that I'm complaining, it's hilarious!😂
Was thinking the same thing 🤣🤣
Welcome to the club!
I clicked on this video specifically to hear Simon's pronunciations and I am here for it. "vreestaad" has me in stitches xD
Finally, some proof of other South Africans ... which is a question I only mull over whenever he mentions his gran who lives here.
Its painful
Hi Simon, Luxembourg here. 👋 We do have our own national language, even had our own currency, the luxembourgish franc which was equivalent to the belgian franc, before the euro came to be. You also have at least 2 regular viewers across your different channels from this small place. 😉
Luxembourgisch is like German with some heavy French influence, right? I know some basic German from my time in high school, so how similar would you say it is to Standard High German?
Awww ❤ well done! Go you!
I bet it's at least double that!
Very interesting, do you happen to know if it is close to the language spoken in Lorraine, just over the German border and near Luxembourg? Like Moselle Franconian?
@@jessejoyce1295
Luxembourgish is a Moselle Franconian language. It's similar to what is spoken in the Saarland.
Simon: "...couldn't have possibly spent 3.2M in two years..."
My wife: "Hold my beer..."
I grew up on stories of the Kruger millions. Everybody killed a million Tommies and everyone had a theory of what happened to it. Nice to think that somewhere out there, there might be a stack of gold waiting to be found. Your pronunciation of "Boer" and "Machadodorp" are priceless. Love it. You should do a series on how a amateur army of 22 000 farmers took on the Professional army of 470 000 of the Superpower of the day. How that war lasted for almost 3 years and necessitated the British to put their woman and children in concentration camps to force them to negotiate a peace. ( Between 25 000 and 30 000 died in the camps of which 20 000 were children)
Well, I now can throw out what I learned about the Kruger Millions on the Discovery Channel! A very good script Emma!
PS - Keep including more South African names to mess with Fact Boi!
Discovery Channel also ran a program based on the premise that Hitler escaped to Argentina at the end of the war… so I’d say they’ve lost most of the credibility they had a couple decades ago 😂
Get him to try pronounce PE's new name ....
Jeez, it was painful, especially Machadodorp! I kept on cringing...
@@GraemeDewe 🤣🤣🤣
The writing here tends to be a lot more in depth than anything you'll see on the Discovery Channel. I love it!
I love when we learn things about Simon’s writers! Emma your job sounds fascinating!
I like her reaction. Like, ‘No no, hang on mister bullshit man.’
Me, listening to this IN pretoria... Love that this channel has a South African writer!!! Go SA!!!!
It’s nice to see Simon enjoying a nice, laid back story. I like to imagine he did this video right after one of the brutal ones on Casual Criminalist.
That last one was rough on Simon. My too really. I cried a bit at the end and I'm emotionally dead inskde.
To the writers for Simon.
Please include the phrase, "The cemetary was designed with symmetry in mind" randomly in a story.
I just wanna hear him say it.
I think on at least one of the channels, he's done Arlington National Cemetery Right?
You are some kind of creep huh?
💯🤣🤣🤣
Maybe the real kruger millions are the friends we made along the way
Enjoying this as a resident of Krugersdorp (town of Paul Krugers farm)
In Afrikaans, we pronounce it as Z-A-R
And Boer - basically Bur with a little rolling on the "R"..
As a Saffa myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the South African content today! And the pronunciation is Z.A.R. by the way - same as UK. As an ex-saffa, Emma should have helped & corrected you with 100% of the town & area names 🙄 🤦🏼😅
I have a friend who spent years trying to find the gold. He still believes it’s out there.
I think it was gone months before anyone noticed it was gone.
I don't know what really happened, but I think that if it was there, someone would have already found it and stayed quiet about it.
Honestly, I think he took it with him.
@@movingforward3030 i know can proof it
Contact me
To Simon and other language speakers. "Boer" (Farmer) pronounced "boo" with a hard rolled "r" at the end (Boar is close-ish)
The oe is like book yes boar is closer to boor and that would be drill
Funfact, South Africa is still minting the Krugerrand Gold Coin (one of the most popular investment gold coins with the Canadian maple leaf and US Double Eagle) wich is lightly rose gold because they mix copper instead of silver in the pot during the melting and minting process.
The Discovery Channel series Expedition Unknown did an episode on this. Shockingly, they did not find the gold.
Nobody's better at ALMOST finding stuff than Josh Gates!
I grew up on a small farm near Waterval Onder, the place where Paul Kruger spent his last nights in Africa while escaping from the British, I always heard the stories of the gold being hidden somewhere in those hills and imagined finding it one day while exploring the farm as a child, good memories!
Simon on Brain Blaze "Maybe I should do 4 hours driving for some ribs for lunch"
Simon on Decoding The Unknown "OMG I really feel like a burger"
Simon please get some food 😩😩😂
😂👍
Too bad Hello Fresh does not deliver to his house.
It appears that AG1 doesn't stop people from having cravings for food with flavor
He doesn’t have time for food. He drinks lunch. There’s sweet sweet RUclips $ to be made
@@MissMentats exactly! Simon can't leave to get food! He has the Athletic Greens Nutritional drink with sponsorship to think of!
Last time I was this early Simon was clean shaven without glasses!
Edit: And the neon sign still worked! Fix the sign! 🤣
I love the ones between about 1500 and 1970, that don't involve ghosts.
The one about the Scottish lighthouse, the Kalahari Desert one, the Michael Rockefeller one and the lost Roanoke colony. The more grounded historical ones; where an interesting story happened and people have to try and work out what real world scenario caused it.
I can't remember on which channel I saw it, so I'll drop it here. They added a NETFLIX series about the watcher. It's about that story you recently told about the people that buy a house and then receive weird messages from a watcher. It's called..."the watcher", I thought this might be interesting for you.
Simon, here in the States they started putting our water and soda in liter forms too. Our milk comes in gallons, water and soda in 20 ounces or liters. I'm sure there's some perfectly rational reason for this I don't feel like looking up right now, I'll leave that to you in one of your three hundred other channels. I've never personally encountered a kilogram of gold, but the video had those helpful helpful pictures. Quick Edit: Yes, there are also still gallons of waters, but my brain was in convenience stores, lol.
Partially from tradition. Coke went with liter plastic bottles, so Pepsi did the same. Everyone else followed.
Sometimes it's a matter of law. Here in Florida bottled beer could only be sold in 12, 16, and 32 oz bottles for decades. When rap made 40s (40 oz bottle of beer/malt liquor) popular none were to be found in the state. Other regions I assume have similar laws.
As a side note, I believe Simon mentioned it on another channel, there's a weird link between leisure suits from the 1970's and the rise of plastic bottles in America.
I think this is by far my favorite Simon ADHD word pronunciation tangent so far 🤣
Ha! Little does Simon know I am an American who understands metric. I understand every word of your secret code meant to confuse everyone measuring distance and weight in barley grains.
We say Bore/boor for Boer in my part of the US. Although here is rural WV we only typically run into the word when referring to Boer Goats.p
You should do one on The Lost Dutchman’s Mine in Arizona. The miner wasn’t Dutch and people get lost trying to find this possibly mythological mine every year.
That is a fascinating case.
As an American, we do use Liters for some things. It's a weird exception but people will know what the weight of 2 Liters feels like.
So, the Boer wars were resource grabs by the British Empire? Shocking! Except not at all.
I'm American and bottles of water here are regularly sold as 1L. Although I have never really thought about them weighing about 2 1/4 lbs.
I actually own a Boer war era British bayonet that I found while digging a hole for a fence post on a job. At first I thought it was a WW2 home guard bayonet until I realised the indent was on the wrong side of the bayonet, after some research I found out is was Boer war issued bayonet.
I don’t think I could ever be as happy as Simon is, when he talks about large sums of money
I love the sudden deep dive into coins and what that means to the story. I think a lot of mysteries exist because someone with just the right expertise hasn’t looked into it.
I never realised how difficult Afrikaans pronunciations can be to someone not familiar with the language. For instance, v is pronounced the same as f in Afrikaans.
True, the ei/ij sounds especially must be rather difficult if you don't have something similar in your own language.
I have a South African English friend with an afrikaans mother but she never taught him so my American friends end up pronouncing afrikaans better then him its remarkable what English people do with the language if you leave them to read afrikaans uninterrupted
Americans know what a liter is, our big bottles of soda (2l), small bottles of water (half-liter), and booze are metric. And Simon's favorite Columbian Marching Powder is wholesaled in kilogram bricks and sold by the gram.
Americans know what liters are in isolation. Ask them to compare or convert metric to US customary and I think you’ll find the results depressing.
@@StoneInMySandal most medicine is measured metric for dosage, anyone who has worked in that industry in the US usually has a basic grasp
If someone has any semblance of scientific knowledge then they’ll know the metric system, even in the US.
I love this channel.
But I'd also love a Spacographics channel.... 😉
*Give the people what they want Whistle Boy* !!!
I agree, that would be pretty neat! Idk if you’ve ever seen Scott Manley’s channel, but if you like space stuff I suggest checking him out!
As an American, I buy water in one liter bottles frequently (I currently have three in my recycling bin).
Most sodas are sold in 2 liter bottles as one of the standard sizes.
South African here. Z.A.R. (Republic of South Africa) if you were to pronouce it correctlty would be spelt almost like zeight (as in eight) ofree-khansir ripooblick, if that makes any sense.
It's Z. A. R as in U.S.A or U. K. Interestingly the first ever Concentration Camps in the world were also put in place there by the English against the Boers where woman and children were incarcerated being fed food with ground up bits of glass inside and other atrocities to force try and force the boers to surrender, farms burned and livestock killed which never seems to get mentioned and would make an excellent video to explore.
As well as the first known usage of the term guerilla warfare by the Boer's
I really enjoyed this. It was a history lesson as well! Nice script Emma
Simon: “I’m going to pronounce everything like an American would because that’s the majority of my audience.”
Also Simon: “I’m not going to use the weight measurements Americans are used to.”
Come for the informations, stay for the pronunciations
🤣🤣🤣
6:30 - Chapter 1 - What we know
12:55 - Chapter 2 - Theories
13:10 - Chapter 2.1 - The dorothea
18:30 - Chapter 2.2 - Buried for a rainy day
25:05 - Chapter 3 - The velpond and the kaalpond
27:30 - Chapter 4 - The real fortune
31:20 - Chapter 5 - The lost hoard
- Chapter 6 -
Family moved to Johannesburg when I was 2 and stayed their till I was 9. I remember being confused by the Orange Free State....was wondering why RSA wasn't the Black Free State. Then I learned it was b/c of the Dutch, not that they got rid of all the orange people
As an American I can think of one Orange person who we could get rid of!😤😤
@ruth oglesby He’s not even the President anymore, you should see a psychologist, maybe they can treat your Trump Derangement Syndrome. Our economy is going down the tubes, but at least there’s no more mean tweets!!!
Its named after the "prince of orange" which was an area in the Netherlands and pronounced differently.
I have it...!!
The gold is in the money pit hole on Oak Island
Love the pronunciation I had a good chuckle
Weird as it sounds we actually measure a lot of our liquids in Liters when they're bottled (1 liter, 2 liters ect) so with the pic + knowing how big a liter of soda is is pretty easy to compare.
Think you’ll find that’s “litres”
@@lowthg123 In the United States it is spelled "liters". It's like "theatre" vs "theater". What's that phrase about the British and Americans? Something about a people divided by a shared language... 😉
Everyone should speak English....Like Jesus did.
The coins are probably under Ramaphosa's bed!😂😂
A soldier has no idea how heavy a crate of gold would be because they have never lifted them. All they know is crates of ammunition are heavy. Given the situation of this war I doubt the soldiers had a lot of experience lifting crates of ammunition, so they did not have a lot of perspective.
The Boer Kommando's during the war where not professional soldiers, rather just milita (anyone with a horse and a gun - in some cases the state provided both) these guy's where young to old (16 - 70) the British remarked at one point seeing an old man chastising a young boy who was trying to look out for the old man's health by telling him to sit and rest, only to anger the old man who kept on telling the boy to watch the prisoners of war and to be ready to shoot the ones who might run away. Most of these guy's where farmers, some where just your ordinary civilians (towns people) but most where Boers (farmers) with old guns that the states (both Boer republic's) desperately tried to by Mauser made rifles to get the men to use something more in line with what was new guns back then instead of the gun you got from dad who got the same gun from his dad who got that gun from his dad. Most of these guys had never seen a ammo crate till the war started and even then they loved just stocking up their bandolier and going out into the veld
There is also the fact that gold is heavy, but so is lead. They are comparable, infact, with special processes required to separate the two in refining because gravity based sorting is ineffective. An ammo box of gold vs an ammo box of... well, ammo would be functionally indistinguishable.
@@AnonEyeMouse in a round of ammunition only the bullet is lead. The cartridge case is brass which is also heavy, but it is just a hollow case that holds powder. Most of the volume of a round of ammunition is made up of the powder and empty space inside that brass case. Powder is pretty light and empty space is even lighter. If you took all the ammunition out of the case and filled it back up with gold it would weigh a LOT more. I doubt that an ammo crate full of gold could be lifted by two strong men.
Josh Gates went in search of the Kruger treasure on Expedition Unknown years ago. Obviously he didn't find it, but it was one of my favorite episodes.
Hey, Simon's writers: If you haven't yet, do a script mentioning Natchitoches, Louisiana, just to see Simon struggle with THAT pronunciation.
not your toe cheese.
And don't forget to include Nacogdoches, Texas, which is pronounced similarly but not quite exactly the same.
Yes please
Or the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge ;)
@@maledictionwolf Yeah, but Nacogdoches you can at leat see how we got to the pronunciation. The one in LA makes no sense whatsoever, because Cajuns. And as a person who regularly works in both, I would argue that they're not pronounced at all similarly. "Nackadoochie -- wait, Nackadoches?", TX (a joke from a radio ad for the local head shop in an impersonation of Tommy Chong of "Cheech and"), vs Nackadish, LA. Local legend is that the two were founded by and named after brothers, sent by their father, the chief of their tribe, to walk three days in either direction, one west, one east, to found their own communities. But then the Spanish arrived and took over, so all records from Before are lost, it seems.
@Cynical as Spin As an American, that one is pretty straightforward, but only because I’ve heard it before. It’s pretty much pronounced exactly as it’s spelled, but it’s very unique compared to anything in British English.
Hi Emma. Kan ons asseblief nog Suid Afrikaanse stories kry? Just asking Emma if we please could have some more South African content please
Asseblief! Die misdaadkanaal kan vir 'n goeie jaar net Suid Afrikaanse stories dek: Michael van Eck, Daisy DeMelker, Gert van Rooyen, Guptagate, Steinheist ... ensovoorts.
Listening from Barberton, mpumalanga 😊
Hearing Simon murder the pronunciation was epic. Great video , loved it.
I like this one!
Killer script, really good research 👍👍
The only people who think there's a mystery here are the folk who want to find a mystery here. At school in SA, back in the 60s, it was stated that the gold was shipped out to Europe and scattered about the various banks and governments (particularly Germany, who was supplying arms and ammunition) in order to keep it out of Britain's hands ..., which isn't to say that the British army didn't sieze a fair amount of that gold when they occupied the Boer republics of course (so many old military and colonial families could well have bits and pieces stashed away in jolly old England)
Many towns have some sort of myth regarding these coins. Where I come from the story is that some coins where hidden in the area now known as "Kruger National Park " before they went to Mozambique.
Interesting lost treasure story, thank you for the video.
That was rather enjoyable to listen too.
Morning . Another good video. I'm watching it while relaxing before going to work. Thanks for another great entertainment and teaching me something at same time.
Suggestions. Can you please tell me,us, what the U.K. slag is on money? Example. Quid . Etc. Like in America we call dollars" bucks".
I have never been sure what your slang was for each denomination.
Thanks.
P.S. Do you Remember the comic strip Andy CAPP? That was my first introduction to the slang I'm talking about. I thought ths comic was hilarious. Was my favorite for years.
Yes it dates me lol. I'm in my 60s
Thank you for the great video. Very good script.
I am a bit surprised that the infamous Fritz Duquesne was left out though since there was a Biographics video earlier this year. There were rumours(which he likely started himself) that he had hidden/buried the missing kruger gold.
From white I've heard of old Fritz, he'd confess to stooping the Queen Mother if it got his face in the papers.
I have a friend in her late 70s early 80s whose father was about her current age when she was born. He fought alongside Winston Churchill in the boer war. It's not as long ago as we think is it?
Our side of the coin gets the less sexy endings because the real world tends to produce the more boring explanations, but that doesn't make these stories less worthwhile or your videos less entertaining. You take us on fun rides that only end in it must have been aliens with a lot of tongue in cheek and I appreciate that. Until the next one.
I was told by an Afrikaans colleague once that when the time comes for the Afrikaaners to take back South Africa from the ANC, funds will not be a problem because the Kruger gold was never lost, it was just in safe keeping, until it is needed.
I love you guys!!!!!
What a cool ending. Rather than some guy just screwing over a bunch of folks, it is probable that the 'lost millions' actually went to serve it intended purpose. Supporting those who contributed to it.
I asked The Librarian how to say "UK", he said "Ook"
GNU Sir Terry
Simon... you freaking broke me with oranje, "O-Ran-gee" soO gonna use that "O-Raan-Ya"
Love your Channels!!
Ah yes lol, my father used to troll me when I was smol and say they were hidden somewhere in the expansive bush on his farm, and would hype me up to get me to go look for them xD
Let me guess: Sunday afternoon at nap time? My dad did the same with dinosaur bones.
Awesome story. I grew up in a small town called Deneysville. It is situated next to the Vaal dam that was build on the farm that belonged to Deneys Reitz. Pity I did not find the Kruger millions when I tried to dig to China when I was about 5 years old :-(
Despite our obstinance over adopting the metric system (which I desperately wish we would do) many, maybe most, Americans would know what a litre of water is like. Bottled drinks in the US are commonly found in metric sizes.
Simon… South African here. I listen to your videos everyday and South African content comes up often. I am more than happy to send you the pronunciation of a whole bunch of South African words to help you. When you look up pronunciation on Google translate, it’s in an American accent and still wrong! 🤣
Boer: Like a ghost's "BOO" with the 'r' being rolled as in the sound a lion makes "rrrrrr"oar
One time I found a south African kugeran in the yard of a burnt out house we were renovating. I was like oh Shiney! Is that a gazelle?
Many of us Americans born in the late 80's and after have been taught the fundamentals of the metric system so we do understand that the kilo in based off the weight of one liter all all that jazz. Honestly the metric system makes the most sense, is straightforward, and is easier than the imperial system or what ever the other name is.
I'm early. more simon videos very epic.
8:20 While Simon you are correct that Gold is really dense and heavy, so too are bullets made of things that are dense and really heavy.
Has there been a biographics on Jam Smuts? He had a fascinating career after the Boer war.
I bet this was recorded the same day simon was saying he would drive 2 hours for wild boar ribs.
There is a story from the same war about the only payroll ever lost by the British Army. The story is recounted in the book Smiling Willy and the Tiger by John Harris. Its a really good story, a study in ineptitude.
If it was crates of small arms ammo of that time period, it was made in thick steel/brass casings and more than half of each round was thin jacketed lead, and possibly just the lead bullet. Either way the weight of lead and gold are nearly identical and the negligible balance difference between bullion and ammo cases isn't noticable, without experience moving both.
This video is funny as hell, Simon's narration of the this video is hilarious...Only 1:39 into the video mind you.
I'm an American and I've always pronounced it (in My Head) as Bow-er. This gold was stole more times than second base
Lourenço Marques is currently designated "Maputo". We changed the name after the Independence. I will be on the lookout for those coins!
In german 'Bürger'(citizen) sounds same as burger.We tend to say something sounding like 'hamboorger' to the meat and buns thing, but it can also refer to someone coming from the city of Hamburg, so beware of the context.
The kaal from kaalpond must relate to the Dutch word kaal which means bald. Literally "bald pound". Thought you might like to know that Simon 😉
Kaal means naked in Afrikaans. We use the world "bles" for bald. As in blesperkse (peach with no fuzz)
Your basement must be getting full Simon lol
Most Americans are roughly aware of liters and kilos. Just because we use Freedom Units doesn't mean we don't know what metric units are.
TL;DR - Bad Germans took it to Argentina
There is a story I heard dating back to the second world war, and like most it's a mixture of fact and fiction. Before WWII (when we were technically under the Crown) a large part of the Afrikaner population were inspired by a certain "Austrian Export" to start a branch of nationalist, anti-British politics. Like any good radical political movement they had a military wing - the Ossewa Brandwag. When war broke out the population was divided over whether to fight for Britain or not. Like they had a choice. The Brandwag used the chaos to launch a sabotage and terror campaign to disrupt British logistics in South Africa, especially activities surrounding the movement of troops. That's all history. Where the gold comes in is that they ALLEGEDLY dug up the gold wherever it was buried and had it shipped to neutral Spain (I don't get it either) via U-boat (I'm not making this up, somebody beat mo to it) in exchange for weapons to launch and all out coup in Pretoria. But the war ended before they could take delivery of their weapons of mass delusion. So where is the gold? If you believe this theory, it's in Argentina.
What the hell did I just write?😵💫
We have liters of water too
Regarding the Dorothea, the gold would have been intended for the purchase of armaments by the ZAR...
Boer: An ooooo sound Simon! Like the oooo in "who" BOER
booer
@@dukstedi lol... only one "o"
Hi Simon
I think I'm first 😳
It does look like Paul Kruger has one tiny hand...
Simon, Americans understand the metric system. Brits still use miles, yards, feet, and oddly stone. Speaking of stones I should not throw any from the porch of my glass house.
It turns out that all the gold is missing because people spent it. Damn...
Beardicious 👌
Isn't ZAR an acronym? Like USA or UK?
2021 it was found in a swiss bank vault as the Kruger ponds.
Some of us do understand the conversion of metric measurements too SAE
I would absolutely love it if you’d make a a video about trying to pronounce unknown words/abbreviations😂
Maybe in collaboration with Kevin, with correct pronunciations at the end!
There's a lot of gold thieves out there definitely!