US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the successful return to Italy of a rare edition of a letter from Christopher Columbus. For many years this copy was kept in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice until it was stolen between 1985 and 1988. During the investigation, it turned out that the letter is in the possession of a private collector from Texas, who bought it in 2003 from a bookseller.
Christopher Columbus wrote this letter in March 1493, talking about the discoveries made during the first trip to the shores of America. The message was addressed to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, they also sent it to Rome, where Stephan Plannck published a letter in the form of a booklet and distributed it throughout Europe. After printing the first edition, Planck discovered that he had not included the names of Ferdinand and Isabella in the introduction to the main text. Soon the printer published a revised edition of the letter, but did not destroy the previous edition.
A letter from the first printing, known as Plannck I Columbus, was returned to Venice. In total, about 30 such letters have been preserved, the rest belong to the second edition. The investigation involved members of the Department of Homeland Security (HSI), who over the past 10 years have helped return three of these Columbus letters from the second edition to European libraries.
