GoKawiilEngineer uses AI search to mine 400 years of digitized archives for lost historical records
A software engineer, inspired by historian Benjamin Breen's AI-assisted discovery of a new dodo eyewitness account, built agentic AI workflows to search millions of digitized historical records in parallel. The project reportedly surfaced a previously unrecorded meteorite report, evidence of three 'lost' rhinos, and unrecorded volcanic eruptions. Breen's original find came from searching GLOBALISE's digitized Dutch East India Company archives, which cover 1602 to 1799.