Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: We can usually expect certain natural phenomena to always occur,
Speaker 1: hopefully at least like the changing of the leaves in
Speaker 1: autumn or the ebb and flow of the ocean's tide.
Speaker 1: But a group of people in nineteen seventeen Portugal experienced
Speaker 1: something strange. The sun that used to sit in the
Speaker 1: sky every day suddenly began to dance. It all started
Speaker 1: with three shepherd children from the ten of Fatima. After
Speaker 1: a long day of tending sheep in the fields, they
Speaker 1: began their walk home. It wasn't long before a vision
Speaker 1: appeared before them. It was the spirits of the Virgin Mary,
Speaker 1: who told them that she would reveal herself on the
Speaker 1: thirteenth day of each month for the next six months.
Speaker 1: There was just one catch. Only the oldest child, Luccia,
Speaker 1: would be able to see her. The young girl would
Speaker 1: then have to tell the others what she had witnessed.
Speaker 1: On the thirteenth of October, it happened again. News spread.
Speaker 1: Newspapers published stories about the vision and the prophecy, piquing
Speaker 1: the interest of people from all over the country. Thousands
Speaker 1: flocked to Fatima to hopefully witness these miracles themselves. Of course,
Speaker 1: not everyone was sold on the children's story. Many, especially
Speaker 1: those in religious communities, looked down on them with raised
Speaker 1: eyebrows and a healthy dose of skepticism. But the church's
Speaker 1: dismissal of the prophecy did not stop seventy thousand people
Speaker 1: from showing up in the town on October thirteenth of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. They had come to see for themselves whether
Speaker 1: it was all true. Now, the stories about what happened
Speaker 1: that day vary depending on where you read them. There
Speaker 1: are witness statements that claim it rained for a while
Speaker 1: until the sun finally peeked out from behind a cluster
Speaker 1: of clouds. But the sun didn't look like the sun,
Speaker 1: at least not like the sun everyone had been used
Speaker 1: to seeing in the sky. It careened toward the ground,
Speaker 1: getting closer and closer until it bounced back to its
Speaker 1: starting point. Then it spun in place and flashed a
Speaker 1: series of lights in all different colors, like a disco
Speaker 1: ball in the sky. According to one local science professor,
Speaker 1: objects around me, he said, the sky and the atmosphere
Speaker 1: were of the same color, Everything both near and far
Speaker 1: had changed, taking on the color of old yellow damask.
Speaker 1: He went on to remark how everyone around him looked
Speaker 1: jaundiced on accounts of the yellowish light shining down on them.
Speaker 1: Some even claimed that their rain soaked clothes and the
Speaker 1: muddy ground beneath them had dried instantly. But the event
Speaker 1: was odd for more than just the obvious reasons of
Speaker 1: it having occurred in the first place. There was also
Speaker 1: the small issue of no one else on earth having
Speaker 1: seen the same thing. As far as anyone else knew,
Speaker 1: only those who were in Fatima at Portugal witnessed this
Speaker 1: miracle firsthand. It was such an important incident in the
Speaker 1: region's history it piqued the curiosity of one father, John Demarchi.
Speaker 1: Demarchi was a Catholic priest from Italy who lived in
Speaker 1: Fatima from nineteen forty three until nineteen fifty, and while
Speaker 1: he was there, he looked into this so called miracle
Speaker 1: of the sun and spoke with a number of the
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses who had been on the ground at the time.
Speaker 1: He talked with the devout as well as the skeptic
Speaker 1: and the non believers about what they had seen. And
Speaker 1: while some minor details about what exactly had transpired that
Speaker 1: day differ from one account to the next, not a
Speaker 1: single person in the tendance denied the sun changing colors
Speaker 1: and position in the sky. So what might have caused
Speaker 1: such a fina in the first place. Well. A Polish
Speaker 1: university professor by the name of Arthur Waerowski suggested the
Speaker 1: whole thing was just a trick of the light. According
Speaker 1: to his theory, the dancing colors were part of a
Speaker 1: phenomenon known as a sun dog. It was created by
Speaker 1: ice crystals floating high in the atmosphere and bouncing the
Speaker 1: light all around. Others believe that it was the work
Speaker 1: of mass hysteria combined with people staring directly at the sun.
Speaker 1: You know, the thing that we were told never to
Speaker 1: do because it could damage your eyesight. The Sun's movements
Speaker 1: could have been a simple side effect of witnesses having
Speaker 1: their retinas burned after looking up at the sun for
Speaker 1: too long. But the devout disagree to them. The Virgin
Speaker 1: Mary made a miracle happen right before everyone's eyes. I
Speaker 1: guess what they say is true. Seeing is believing, even
Speaker 1: if you might not see anything else ever again after
Speaker 1: it's over. It was a cool autumn morning when the
Speaker 1: armored truck pulled up outside a Belgian farm. The doors
Speaker 1: swung open, and four soldiers barreled out. Each of the
Speaker 1: men wore navy coveralls imprinted with military patches displaying the
Speaker 1: acronym dovo. A farmer was waiting for them at the
Speaker 1: edge of his field. Dabbing anxiously at his sweaty brow,
Speaker 1: he waved the soldiers over, then pointed to his tractor.
Speaker 1: It stood unmoving at the center of a field amidst
Speaker 1: hills of upturned dirt and broken vegetables. The harvest was
Speaker 1: mere days away. Earlier that morning, the farmer had been
Speaker 1: hard at work, rushing to collect the last of his crops,
Speaker 1: when something got stuck beneath the tractor. He stopped the
Speaker 1: engine and climbed down to investigate, expecting to find a
Speaker 1: large rock, But when he saw what was trapped beneath
Speaker 1: the tractor's blades, his blood ran cold. With his heart
Speaker 1: in his throat, he turned and race back to the
Speaker 1: farmhouse to contact the authorities, And of course Dovo had
Speaker 1: taken the call, dispatching the soldiers within the hour. So
Speaker 1: now the men approached the tractor with trained cautiousness, eyes
Speaker 1: sweeping over the surrounding area. The leader reached the machine
Speaker 1: and crouched down, gaze immediately fixing on the object trap beneath.
Speaker 1: It didn't look like much, just a large cylinder of
Speaker 1: corroded metal, but the soldier knew better. You see the object,
Speaker 1: a six pound tube of iron, was an unexploded artillery
Speaker 1: shell left over from the Great War. The farmer was
Speaker 1: lucky even now. The bomb could easily have gone off,
Speaker 1: reducing his tractor and much of the field to a
Speaker 1: blackened crater. Or worse, the shell might contain fostering or
Speaker 1: mustard gas, chemical weapons capable of causing horrific burns and
Speaker 1: excruciating death. Such gases were used extensively during World War One,
Speaker 1: when Belgium and its neighbors were subjected to constant bombardment
Speaker 1: from German artillery. Roughly of the explosives launched during the
Speaker 1: war never actually exploded either because their fuses failed or
Speaker 1: the safety was accidentally triggered, and even all these years later,
Speaker 1: many of those bombs were still active, buried in the
Speaker 1: dirt in fields or forests. A small disturbance, like being
Speaker 1: run over by a tractor or dug up by a
Speaker 1: curious child could set them off. The areas where the
Speaker 1: worst bombing had occurred were now designated as Red zones
Speaker 1: and were considered so dangerous that they were still off
Speaker 1: limits to civilians, but even the less dangerous yellow zones
Speaker 1: like this one were frequently turning up explosives. Whenever a
Speaker 1: device was discovered, the bomb disposal unit known as DOVO
Speaker 1: was called in to remove it. Each year since the war,
Speaker 1: they collected hundreds of tons of unexploded artillery shells, along
Speaker 1: with chemical weapons, grenades, bullets, shrapnel, and barbed wire. The
Speaker 1: bombs were taken to a Dulgian military base where they
Speaker 1: were examined and destroyed. Some devices were too dangerous for
Speaker 1: transportation and had to be detonated on site through a
Speaker 1: controlled explosion. Autumn was always the busiest time of the
Speaker 1: year for this unit, since farmers were out working in
Speaker 1: their fields, turning up plenty of soil and exposing whatever
Speaker 1: was hidden beneath It had led some Dovo members to
Speaker 1: affectionately call the season their iron harvest. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: all fun and games. The work was incredibly dangerous too.
Speaker 1: Accidents and deaths were not uncommon. The soldiers of the
Speaker 1: Dovo unit knew that when they put on their uniforms
Speaker 1: and laced up their boots, they were heading into battle,
Speaker 1: in a sense, fighting a war that had been over
Speaker 1: for one hundred years, yes, over a century, Because this
Speaker 1: particular collection it occurred in twenty twenty three in a
Speaker 1: farm near Flanders, Belgium. DOVO is active to this day
Speaker 1: and still collects hundreds of tons of unexploded weapons every year,
Speaker 1: and based on the rate the bombs are still turning up,
Speaker 1: it's safe to assume the unit will be conducting their
Speaker 1: iron harvest for decades, perhaps even centuries to come. I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the worldoflore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.