Vitus Bering power point

Forensic Science Meets History
The Real Vitus Bering
Information
• What is Forensic Science?
• What was Russia exploring?
• What did Peter I want to
accomplish by the
exploration?
Information Who
• Who was Peter the Great?
• Who was Vitas Bering?
Information When
1681
1725
1727-28
1741-42
2010
Bering is
Baptized
Bering selected
by Peter I to
head up
expedition
First expedition
Bering sights
Alaska on 2nd
expedition
Shipwrecked
dies, later
crew makes it
back
State of
Alaska
presented
with bust of
the real vitas
Bering
Information – Where
• Where do we get much of this
story?
• “On December 8, Captain –
Commander Bering died, from whom
this island later got its name.
Page 138
• Where do we see the Name
Bering today?
Knowledge How and Why
• How come there is a
discrepancy in
Bering's identity?
• How do we know the
real identity of
Bering?
• Why is this story
important?
Men were continually dying. Our plight
was so wretched that the dead had to lie
for a considerable time among the living,
for there was none able to drag the corpses
away, nor were those who still lived
capable of moving away from the
dead…Captain-Commander Bering died
on 8th December. His corpse was tied fast
to a plank and thrust down into the
ground. None of the other dead were
buried with a plank.
Wisdom - Outcome
• Dr. Viktor Zviagin, an expert
in facial reconstruction at the
Russian Center of Forensic
Expertise, in his Moscow lab,
at the end of 1991.
• Dr. Viktor Zviagin presents
the state of Alaska with a
bust of Danish explorer Vitus
Bering on August 22, 2010.
The bust will be placed on
display at the Alaska State
Museum in Juneau.
Wisdom - Results
• According to O.W. Frost, emeritus professor of
humanities at Alaska Pacific University, “That man is
actually another Bering, Vitus Pedersen (1617-75), a
great-uncle of Vitus Jonassen for whom the latter was
named, a person of some repute as royal historiographer
of Denmark and as a poet sometimes called the Danish
Virgil.”
Wisdom – You Decide
• Which one is the sea captain? Which one is a poet?