The Unopened Tomb of Qin Shi Huang, Its Terracotta Army, and Its Rivers of Mercury
China's First Emperor was buried in 210 BC beneath a man-made mountain near Xi'an, guarded — the historian Sima Qian wrote — by crossbow traps, with rivers of mercury flowing across a model of his empire. In 1974 farmers digging a well found his terracotta army. The burial chamber itself has never been opened — and the soil above it really is laced with mercury.
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