RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — In North Carolina's colonial history, the best known tales concern the legendary Lost Colony of English settlers who had vanished mysteriously by 1590. Less widely known, but perhaps more significant, is a story from a few years earlier about the first science center in the New World, headed by the first known Jewish person to arrive on that land.

Archaeologists plan to return this fall to the site of the science center once headed by Joachim Gans, an expert metallurgist who came to America in 1585 at the request of Sir Walter Raleigh. They're trying to uncover more eviden...