SAVANNAH, Ga. () — A museum in Georgia’s oldest city on Wednesday welcomed a truckload of treasures from the earliest period of U.S. history — 17 cannons that experts believe sank to the bottom of the Savannah River during the American Revolution and remained undiscovered for nearly 240 years.

Workers carefully hoisted the big guns one-by-one from the back of a truck and wheeled them inside their new home at the Savannah History Museum, which will put them on display just in time for the Fourth of July celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

“They look brand new,” said Andrea Farmer, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers archaeologist who was part of the team that researched and preserved the cannons. “They could pretty much be fired if someone wanted to.”

The artifacts were discovered in 2021 when a dredge scooping sediment from the riverbed as part of an Army Corps project to deepen Savannah’s shipping channel pulled up a cannon in its metal jaws. The crew soon dug up two more.

In the course of just over a year, a total of 19 cannons were hoisted from the location just downstream from Savannah, which is where Georgia was founded in 1733 as the last of Britain’s 13 American colonies.

After being pulled from the river, most of the cannons left Georgia for several years to undergo cleaning and preservation work at a Texas lab.

One of the Revolution’s bloodiest battles was fought in Savannah

Archaeologists initially assumed the cannons likely dated to the Civil War. But further research indicated they’re likely almost a century older and sank during the buildup to the American Revolution’s bloody siege of Savannah.

Savannah was under British occupation in the fall of 1779, when colonists planned an attack to retake the city with help from French allies.

When French ships carrying troops were spotted off the Georgia coast, British forces scuttled at least six ships in the Savannah River downstream from the city to block the French vessels.

The land battle that followed was one of the bloodiest of the war. British forces killed nearly 300 colonial fighters and their allies, and wounded hundreds more.

The Savannah History Museum sits right next to the battlefield. Its staff on Wednesday hoisted the cannons, weighing up to 1500 pounds (680 kilograms) iece, onto custom display mounts that staffers likened to giant wine racks.

The cannons will be part of a new exhibit on Savannah’s role in the American Revolution, which is scheduled to open Fourth of July weekend, said Samantha Moss, the museum’s curator.

“Our great team has been prepping for months — building mounts and planning how we can safely display these very large, very special artifacts,” she said.

Cleaning the crusty cannons took years

Each of the iron cannons emerged from the river covered by a thick crust of mud and minerals.

Two were left in that raw state and put on display at the museum. The other 17 were sent to Texas A&M University, which has a lab that specializes in preserving underwater artifacts. Its staff spent years painstakingly cleaning the big guns and coating them in paint and wax to prevent rusting and corrosion.

“A lot of them have scour marks on the side from anchors or dredging, so there’s some scarring on the cannons,” said Chris Dostal, a professor of nautical archaeology who leads Texas A&M’s Conservation Research Lab. “But most of them look pretty exceptional.”

Most of the cannons arrived with wooden plugs still sealing their bores, which remained packed with cannonballs and gunpowder charges.

Dostal said radiocarbon dating of the wooden stoppers placed them roughly in the late 1700s. His team shared the cannons’ measurements and other details with experts in London, who concluded three of them were very likely forged by the British military.

The rest peared to be of French design but bore no telltale markings. Dostal said he suspects those guns may have been cast in America around the time of the war.

Other artifacts found with the cannons included pieces of anchors and a portion of a ship’s bronze bell. Like the cannons, none of them bore engravings indicating which ship they came from.

That means many details of the cannons’ origins remain a mystery.

“You don’t have all of the information,” Farmer said. “You’re trying to piece it together as best as you can.”

RALEIGH, N.C. () — The Carolina Hurricanes got off to a fast start in their first Stanley Cup Final game in 20 years, though the Vegas Golden Knights regrouped to level the score.

Nikolaj Ehlers got loose on a rush on the left side and blasted a puck past Carter Hart on the game’s first shot, just 25 seconds in. He followed by getting loose on a breakaway off a feed from Jalen Chatfield and beating Hart again at the 12:08 mark to make it 2-0. But Vegas’ Shea Theodore got one back by firing the puck through traffic to beat Frederik Andersen at 13:28 of the first, then Ivan Barbashev beat Andersen from the slot 30 seconds into the second period to tie it at 2-all.

Ehlers’ first score marked the fastest Game 1 goal in a Cup final since Philadelphia’s Reggie Leach scored 21 seconds into the 1976 opener against Montreal.

“The building was already buzzing, but that for sure was pretty cool,” Ehlers said during an intermission interview on the ABC broadcast. “That was special. That definitely gave the arena a little more juice.”

Ehlers’ goal was the third-fastest in any Game 1 of a Stanley Cup Final, while the Hurricanes nearly added a second with defenseman Jaccob Slavin banging the crossbar roughly a minute after Ehlers’ score sent a charged home crowd into an eruption.

Tuesday’s game brought together a Vegas team chasing a second championship in four seasons and a Carolina team playing for the Cup for the first time since coach Rod Brind’Amour ctained the Hurricanes to the 2006 title.

The Hurricanes went 12-1 through three rounds to get here, sweeping through Ottawa and Philadelphia before taking the last four games of a five-game win against Montreal in the Eastern Conference Final. That made the Hurricanes the first team since 1983 to reach the Stanley Cup Final with one loss, and the first since the NHL went to best-of-seven series in all four rounds in 1987.

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NEW YORK () — And now, Take Two: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner has been rescheduled — with President Donald Trump parently in attendance.

Jiang did not say where the dinner would be held. But Trump, on his Truth Social platform, revealed it would be at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue — former site of the Trump International Hotel.

The president said he’d been invited to return and speak, and had accepted the invitation. He called the rescheduling “a sign of Strength and Fortitude.”

“This announcement is a very good thing in that we cannot allow Lunatics to change our way of life, or even its scheduling,” Trump wrote.

He added he hadn’t decided on whether to give his originally intended speech, in which he was widely expected to attack the press. “I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out,” he wrote. “In any event, it will be a ‘HOT’ ticket!”

Rescheduling decision took time

Jiang, in her announcement, noted that “rescheduling was not automatic,” and had involved much consideration and input from board members.

She emphasized the dinner’s stated purpose: “a celebration of a free press and the vital role of journalism in our democracy for over a century.”

“We will not allow an act of violence to have the last word, especially during a year when we are reflecting on the 250th anniversary of America and everything we stand for,” Jiang said.

It was not clear how large the rescheduled dinner would be, or whether it would be a full-scale dinner at all. Jiang made reference to a “more intimate gathering” than the original event, attended by close to 3,000 people at the Washington Hilton, but did not give details, saying they’d be shared directly with attendees.

Her remarks were in line with recent speculation that a rescheduled event would have to be pared down, a nod to financial as well as security concerns.

Concern expressed for wounded officer

Some critics said they felt it would be a good idea to scuttle the whole event permanently — not only for security reasons, but for what they saw as an unseemly enterprise of journalists hobnobbing in formal wear with the subjects of their reporting.

“It undermines the public faith in how the press does its work, and it makes it look like we are pals with the people we cover,” Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, said in May.

MUSCATINE, Iowa () — Authorities in Iowa are investigating the fatal shootings of six people who they believe were killed by a relative who took his own life when confronted by police Monday.

Four people were found fatally shot when police were called Monday to a home in Muscatine, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Cedar Rids, Muscatine Police Chief Anthony Kies said during a news conference.

Officers later found the suspect, 52-year-old Ryan Willis McFarland, of Muscatine, on a trail in the city, Kies said.

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“While talking to Ryan Willis McFarland, he took his own life,” the police chief said.

Two other men who also are believed to be relatives of McFarland were later found fatally shot elsewhere in the city, according to Kies. One man was found in his home and the other was discovered dead inside a business, he said.

Authorities have yet to release the names of the victims and any details about them.

“Today I simply do not have the words, this act of evil and what it has done to our community,” Kies said.

The city’s police department is continuing to investigate the shootings, working to process the crime scenes and conduct interviews. Police have asked anyone with information to contact its major crimes unit.

Kies confirmed that McFarland had a criminal record, but wouldn’t share any details.