A small piece of history, in the form of a metal cargo tag from the Jamestown colony, flew aboard the space shuttle Atlantis on its STS-117 mission in June 2007. The historic tag was unearthed at Jamestown, the location of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas in 1607.
Essentially a colonial version of a modern-day luggage tag, the plaque, which is etched with the name of its destination, "Yames Towne," was likely used to mark merchandise that had been stored in London before being shipped, according to the Historic Jamestowne website.
The marker effectively logged more than four million miles over the course of four centuries, traveling first from England to the early American settlement, and then, 400 years later, to the International Space Station and back.
NASA flew the cargo tag with four commemorative coins on Atlantis to honor early American explorers. The historic metal piece was returned to Historic Jamestowne at the end of the flight for display in a museum.
"The same flight that launched the Jamestown tag also carried notable metal tokens of another type — Monopoly board game pieces," said Pearlman. "The game pieces came from the “Here & Now” edition of the popular real estate game, which featured a property square for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas."
