Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Ah Paris, the City of Light, the City
Speaker 1: of Love, and the city of unnecessary challenges of violence
Speaker 1: in the name of romance. That's what it was like
Speaker 1: in France in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. In those days,
Speaker 1: if someone offended you, or you were competing for the
Speaker 1: love of a particular woman, you could challenge the other
Speaker 1: person to a duel. Before the late eighteenth century, words
Speaker 1: were the weapon of choice. In eighteen forty one The
Speaker 1: History of Dueling, the author outlined dozens of rules to
Speaker 1: be followed for a successful duel. For example, rule forty
Speaker 1: three dictated what moves a fighter could make with the sword,
Speaker 1: stating combatants are allowed to raise themselves, to stoop, to
Speaker 1: vault to the right or to the left, and to
Speaker 1: turn around each other. Rule forty four allowed combat to
Speaker 1: stop if one party declared themselves wounded, or if one
Speaker 1: of the witnesses noticed that someone had been hurt. And
Speaker 1: just how common was it? Well, King Louis the Thirteen
Speaker 1: pardoned more than eight thousand people for committing murder during
Speaker 1: a duel, So yeah, a lot pistols only made the
Speaker 1: practice more deadly too. A puncture or a cut from
Speaker 1: a blade was not necessarily a death sentence back then,
Speaker 1: but a bullet in a crucial part of the body
Speaker 1: could be the end of someone immediately or worse days later.
Speaker 1: Alexander Hamilton's famously died thirty one hours after are being
Speaker 1: shot by Aaron Burr in eighteen o four. Dueling was
Speaker 1: an act that was both barbaric and pointless, yet some
Speaker 1: people saw no other way to settle their differences, especially
Speaker 1: two Frenchmen in the early nineteenth century who really escalated
Speaker 1: the situation. Their duel took place only four years after
Speaker 1: Hamilton's fateful trip to we Hawk in New Jersey, a
Speaker 1: young dancer with the Paris Opera known as Mademoiselle tira
Speaker 1: Vette had been in a relationship with one Monsieur du
Speaker 1: Grand Prey. It seemed like things were going pretty well
Speaker 1: for them, but it seems that she was also seen
Speaker 1: Monsieur Lapique on the side. So when Grand Prix found
Speaker 1: out that he was not the only person in his
Speaker 1: beloved life, he did what all men in his situation
Speaker 1: did in eighteen o eight France, he challenged the other
Speaker 1: man to a duel. Of course, these were macho, testosterone
Speaker 1: fueled gents who refused to settle for a standoff with
Speaker 1: pistols in the middle of a field. No, in order
Speaker 1: to win the hearts and hand of Mademoiselle Tiravet, they
Speaker 1: needed to face off in a spectacular way, high above
Speaker 1: the ground in hot air balloons. They met on May three,
Speaker 1: still in the middle of a field, mind you, but
Speaker 1: on this occasion they stood by as two large balloons
Speaker 1: were heated up and inflated. Each man had also brought
Speaker 1: a second, a witness, to be responsible for making sure
Speaker 1: that the duel was carried out as expected. Now, in
Speaker 1: a normal duel, the second would walk away afterward and
Speaker 1: go home to their families. In this instance, however, each
Speaker 1: second had resigned himself to dine in the event the
Speaker 1: other balloons occupants succeeded. Because the goal here was not
Speaker 1: for the doelers to shoot one another. Grand Prix and
Speaker 1: the peak. Each man armed with the blunderbuss would fly
Speaker 1: high into the air with their seconds and fire at
Speaker 1: their opponent's balloon. Whoever managed to pop the other man's
Speaker 1: balloon would receive Mademoiselle tear of its hand. The other well,
Speaker 1: he and his second would plummet to their deaths below.
Speaker 1: A large crowd eathered on the morning of the event,
Speaker 1: excited to watch four grown men get into a couple
Speaker 1: of hot air balloons and shoot each other down. Rather
Speaker 1: than talk through their feelings like adults, they climbed inside
Speaker 1: and each balloon began to rise up, up, up. They
Speaker 1: went to a half mile over the crowd. When they
Speaker 1: reached the appropriate height, both men got into position. Lapique
Speaker 1: shot first. He fired wide and missed Grand prix balloon entirely.
Speaker 1: Grand Prix returned fire, and it was his success. He
Speaker 1: managed to shoot a hole in Lapique's balloon, sending careening
Speaker 1: into a terrace below. Lapique and his second were killed
Speaker 1: instantly in the crash, while Grand Prix climbed even higher
Speaker 1: in triumph before floating down gently to the woman below
Speaker 1: that he loved. The whole ordeal was over quickly, but
Speaker 1: it left a lasting impression on dueling history, and it
Speaker 1: reminds us today of that age old cliche what goes
Speaker 1: up must come down. Historians and scholars have spent decades
Speaker 1: working with the world's most mysterious documents and artifacts. For example,
Speaker 1: there's the Voyanage manuscript and illustrated codex, written during the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century in an unknown language. It first showed up
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve and was believed to have been decoded
Speaker 1: as recently as two thousand seventeen. However, those translations were
Speaker 1: quickly debunked, and so the manuscript is still considered uncracked.
Speaker 1: Then there's also the shug Burrow Inscription, a ten letter
Speaker 1: sequence carved into a monument in England, and although the
Speaker 1: inscription has existed since the mid seventeen hundreds, we are
Speaker 1: no closer to understanding its meaning than we were two
Speaker 1: and a half centuries ago. But one particular historical object
Speaker 1: didn't require extensive study to understand. In fact, researchers seemed
Speaker 1: to have figured out exactly what it was pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: or so they thought. It was called the Shapira Scroll,
Speaker 1: named for the man who revealed it to the world,
Speaker 1: Moses Wilhelm Shapira. He was born in eighteen thirty in
Speaker 1: what is now Ukraine and worked as an antiques dealer
Speaker 1: in Jerusalem. Shapira first brought the scroll to Paul Schroeder,
Speaker 1: a German scholar and interpreter who specialized in Semitic languages.
Speaker 1: Schroeder asked about its origins, to which Shapira replied that
Speaker 1: it had been discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea. However,
Speaker 1: when University of Berlin professor Hermann Strach asked Shapira about
Speaker 1: the scrolls provenance, he was told the fantastical story about
Speaker 1: how a group of people had accidentally found them rolled
Speaker 1: up in a bundle of rugs in a mountain cave.
Speaker 1: In fact, depending on who he was talking to, Shapira
Speaker 1: told a different story. So what was the scroll he found? Well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really a scroll at all, and that it
Speaker 1: wasn't a long roll of paper. Instead, the Shapira scroll
Speaker 1: was comprised of fifteen separate strips of leather, each with
Speaker 1: a modified Bible verse from the Book of duter Ronomy
Speaker 1: written across them. What's more, the language written on each
Speaker 1: of the strips was Paleo Hebrew, an older version of
Speaker 1: the Hebrew language found on stone walls and tablets beginning
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century b c. According to Shapira, his
Speaker 1: fragments had been created before the fall of Solomon's temple
Speaker 1: in Jerusalem. In other words, they were the oldest known
Speaker 1: Biblical documentation in existence. He sent facsimiles of the strips
Speaker 1: all over Germany to have them authenticated. Historians, scholars, and
Speaker 1: librarians studied them closely. The Royal Library of Berlin wanted
Speaker 1: to purchase the originals so that they could be examined
Speaker 1: by German students, but Shapira had no interest in having
Speaker 1: his scroll put under the microscope for handfuls of students
Speaker 1: to study. Instead, he suggested that the British Museum by
Speaker 1: the whole collection for one million pounds. The public was
Speaker 1: enthralled and flocked to the museum to see two of
Speaker 1: the scrolls in person. A Bible scholar named Christian David
Speaker 1: Ginsburg took possession of the remaining fragments to analyze them.
Speaker 1: It took him a month, but when he was done,
Speaker 1: Ginsburg came to a very important conclusion they were forgeries.
Speaker 1: Now Shapira wasn't a stranger to fake documents. And antiquities.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy, he had tried fooling buyers with fabricated
Speaker 1: artifacts from the ancient Moabite culture. Why anyone entertained his
Speaker 1: latest attempt was a mystery, but many did, especially the public,
Speaker 1: who were captivated by the existence of the strips. According
Speaker 1: to Ginsburg, it appeared that Shapira had cut up a
Speaker 1: Yemenite Torah scroll. These scrolls were very old, possibly hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, and quite valuable. Shapira had sold Yemenite scrolls
Speaker 1: to the British Museum before, and it was believed that
Speaker 1: he had cut strips from the empty bottom margin to
Speaker 1: create his own biblical relics. Of course, Shapira wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to Ginsburg in which he declared his innocence and
Speaker 1: the whole ordeal. He believed the scroll was authentic, but
Speaker 1: claimed that if it was fake, someone else had been
Speaker 1: responsible for its creation and had duped him. Shapira then
Speaker 1: traveled to Amsterdam, where he sent another letter, this time
Speaker 1: to Edward Augustus Bond. Bond was the primary librarian for
Speaker 1: the British Museum, and Shapira begged him to check the
Speaker 1: scrolls again. Sadly, he never got his answer. Six months later,
Speaker 1: he took his own life. The Shapira scrolls went up
Speaker 1: for auction a few years afterwards, selling for a measly
Speaker 1: ten pounds. After eighteen eighty nine, no one saw them again.
Speaker 1: Interest in the artifacts all but disappeared until the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. Between nineteen forty seven and nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves
Speaker 1: alongside the Dead Sea discoveries that seemed eerily similar to
Speaker 1: what Moses Shapira used to say about his leather fragments.
Speaker 1: Scholars to this day are divided on the true providence
Speaker 1: of the Shapira Scroll, with some claiming that it could
Speaker 1: have been legitimate, while others maintained the original conclusion that
Speaker 1: the scroll was a forgery. Moses Shapira might have been
Speaker 1: responsible for one of the greatest historical discoveries ever recorded,
Speaker 1: but his previous deceptions that ruined his chances for success. Heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: for sure, but also oh so curious. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me, Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.