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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm to blame a truck reporting and I'm fair, and

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Speaker 1: it's time for our annual look at the year in history,

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Speaker 1: something that's become kind of a little tradition for us.

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Speaker 1: And we've mentioned before how the news, the news of

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Speaker 1: historical discoveries or new research on older discoveries often influences

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Speaker 1: what we cover. So it just seems natural to do

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Speaker 1: a little roundup of all those little bits of history

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Speaker 1: news that piqued our interests but haven't made their way

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Speaker 1: into a full episode or an episode update just yet.

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Speaker 1: But as always we should point out that even though

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Speaker 1: our title for for this episode, in the continuation of

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Speaker 1: this episode is called Unearthed in it's not going to

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Speaker 1: be all about stuff that came out of the ground

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Speaker 1: by way of archaeological work and and so forth. The

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Speaker 1: fines that we're discussing would be from almost anywhere, the

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Speaker 1: depth of the ocean, or the depths of someone's forgotten basement,

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Speaker 1: storage of things that have been sitting around for decades,

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Speaker 1: even in some cases h and are only finally being

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Speaker 1: analyzed and new discoveries are being made, and it's by

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Speaker 1: no means a comprehensive list this thing we're offering up here.

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Speaker 1: The only thing that really ties all these fines together

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Speaker 1: is the fact that there was news about them this

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Speaker 1: year that we found really interesting and we hope that

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Speaker 1: you will too. So the first item on our list

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Speaker 1: is an update to a mystery presented in a previous

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Speaker 1: podcast on sixteenth century Danish astronomer Tico Brahy. One of

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Speaker 1: my favorite podcasts that we've done. He is one of

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Speaker 1: your favorites, and we have a um. We even have

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Speaker 1: a Christmas ornament of him that listener sent us in

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Speaker 1: last year. We do and Brahy, of course, if you

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Speaker 1: didn't hear that podcast, was the first astronomer to describe

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Speaker 1: a supernova or the explosion of a dying star. He

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Speaker 1: also discovered a new star in the constellation Cassiopia, which

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Speaker 1: was a pretty big deal at the time because people

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Speaker 1: thought that everything in the universe, including the stars, was fixed,

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Speaker 1: that nothing changed. So there's this crazy story about Tico

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Speaker 1: bra his death in sixteen o one, which suggests that

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Speaker 1: he died because he refused to excuse himself to use

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Speaker 1: the bathroom while he was at a banquet at the

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Speaker 1: Emperorce Court in Prague. He thought it would be rude

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Speaker 1: to get up in the middle of a meal. So,

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Speaker 1: as the story goes, by the time he got home,

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Speaker 1: he wasn't able to urinate for eleven days until he

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Speaker 1: finally passed away on October one. So that's kind of

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Speaker 1: the old fashioned story about Tico, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: people believed this for many years until in the nineteen nineties.

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Speaker 1: Some tests were done by researchers in Denmark on some

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Speaker 1: hair samples from his mustache which had been obtained when

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Speaker 1: his body was exhumed in nineteen o one, and these

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Speaker 1: researchers found what they determined to be very high levels

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Speaker 1: of mercury in these hairs, and they said that the

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Speaker 1: the levels were one hundred times greater than normal mercury levels.

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Speaker 1: So suddenly mercury poisoning seemed to be entertained as a

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Speaker 1: very likely cause of Brah's death, and some people began

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Speaker 1: to suspect foul play. If you start going down that path,

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Speaker 1: you start wondering, well, if he was murdered, who did

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Speaker 1: it was it? A German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler,

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Speaker 1: whose work benefited a lot from Brahe's death. A lot

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Speaker 1: of people thought that could be the case. Or was

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Speaker 1: it Danish King Christian the Fourth who hated Brahy for

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Speaker 1: supposedly having an affair with the king's mother. So there

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Speaker 1: are several theories here, and we explored some of them

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Speaker 1: in the episode that we did. Some people also thought

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Speaker 1: that brought Him might have accidentally poisoned himself, since he

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Speaker 1: was a bit of an alchemist. Maybe he made a

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Speaker 1: medicine that contained mercury and just put too much in it.

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Speaker 1: But around the time that we did this episode on

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Speaker 1: Brahy in two thousand and ten, the astronomer's remains had

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Speaker 1: just been exhumed from his grave and prague once again,

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Speaker 1: so that Reesa just could explore some of these theories

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Speaker 1: a little more so. In November of this year, a

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Speaker 1: Danish check team of researchers revealed what they had found

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Speaker 1: when they analyzed bone and beard samples from this exhimation. Basically,

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Speaker 1: they determined that Brahe's mercury levels were not high enough

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Speaker 1: for this to have caused his death, so exactly the opposite. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and there they are still waiting for analysis of teeth

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Speaker 1: samples to come back, but from what they found so far,

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Speaker 1: he did not get an unusually large dose of mercury

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Speaker 1: in the last five to ten years of his life,

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Speaker 1: and in fact his levels weren't that much different from

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Speaker 1: just the average person alive today. According to a BBC article,

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Speaker 1: Dr Yen's Velav one of the researchers in this in

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Speaker 1: this project, said quote, it is impossible that Tico Brahe

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Speaker 1: could have been murdered. If there were other poisons in

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Speaker 1: the beard, we would have been able to see it

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Speaker 1: in the analysis, So pretty definitive statement there. They also

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Speaker 1: solved another mystery we speculated about a bit in the

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Speaker 1: Brahe podcast, the mystery of the composition of his metallic nose.

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Speaker 1: So just a little background here. He lost his nose

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Speaker 1: in a duel that he fought with another student while

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Speaker 1: he was studying astronomy. They had fought over some mathematical point.

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Speaker 1: Bray had lost a chunk of his nose, and the

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Speaker 1: story was that he replaced it with an artificial nose

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Speaker 1: made of either gold or silver. Unfortunately, that artificial nose

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Speaker 1: was missing when Brahe was exhumed in one but the

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Speaker 1: test done by this research team shows that the traces

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Speaker 1: of copper and zinc that were found on the remains

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Speaker 1: suggest that his pros thesis was actually made of brass.

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Speaker 1: And I've been thinking about this, probably more than I

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Speaker 1: should have. Really, I've been thinking, maybe Brath complimented his

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Speaker 1: skin tone better and silver or gold. It might be

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Speaker 1: kind of difficult if that was like the middle of

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Speaker 1: your face, it wouldn't really blend. Yeah, I guess Brath.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, Little Rosier. Maybe it's a theory, Sarah.

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Speaker 1: It's not going along with that. But the next item

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Speaker 1: on our list involves someone else who is really well known,

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Speaker 1: another favorite of ours. I guess to talk about Leonardo

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Speaker 1: da Vinci. And admittedly da Vinci is a lot like

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Speaker 1: Amelia Earhardt, and so much as you can't really seem

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Speaker 1: to go one year without hearing some kind of news

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Speaker 1: or new theory about him or one of his works,

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Speaker 1: it's easy to get them confused. Almost you know that

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Speaker 1: there's some new da Vinci find out there, and you

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Speaker 1: don't realize that it's actually a different one from the

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Speaker 1: one announced a month before. But usually the news items

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Speaker 1: involve what's often called the world's most famous painting, the

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Speaker 1: Mona Lisa, of course, and over the past couple of

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Speaker 1: years there's been a lot of news that has had

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Speaker 1: to do with determining the identity of the portrait subject,

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Speaker 1: the lady with the mysterious smile, and the generally agreed

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Speaker 1: upon theory is that it's a painting of Lisa Garardini,

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Speaker 1: a Florentine merchant's wife, and this year there was more

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Speaker 1: news about that as Italian researcher Silvano Vincenti has been

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Speaker 1: digging up human remains in an old bandoned convent in

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Speaker 1: Florence that's believed to be Garardini's final resting place, and

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Speaker 1: he's hoping to find her remains and confirm that their hers,

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Speaker 1: and do a facial reconstruction and then compare that facial

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Speaker 1: reconstruction to the painting. And he's received a bit of

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Speaker 1: criticism about this from other researchers for his methods. They

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Speaker 1: don't really First of all, they think it's tough too,

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Speaker 1: it's going to be tough to identify her remains positively,

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Speaker 1: just because of the speed in which this is being done.

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Speaker 1: And also, I mean we've discussed this before, I think

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Speaker 1: on previous podcasts, how facial reconstructions aren't necessarily accurate by

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Speaker 1: any means, so I think that's come up before with

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Speaker 1: uts it has, uh so, just a little news in

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Speaker 1: that in that area. But perhaps the more interesting Da

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Speaker 1: Vinci related news from this year, at least to me,

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Speaker 1: involves a very different work of his, a mural called

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Speaker 1: the Battle of on Yari, And this work has sort

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Speaker 1: of a strange mystery surroundings history too. There really is

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Speaker 1: a mystery, and it all started back in fifteen o three,

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Speaker 1: when Da Vinci and his rival artist Michelangelo got commissions

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Speaker 1: at the same time to paint murals on opposite walls

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Speaker 1: of the Palazzo Vecchio, which is now Florence's City Hall,

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Speaker 1: and the murals were supposed to represent Florentine victories, but

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Speaker 1: according to a Discovery News article by Rosella Lorenzi, Michelangelo's

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Speaker 1: Battle of Kashina never made it past the sketching stage.

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Speaker 1: Da Vinci, however, did start on his Battle of Ai,

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Speaker 1: which featured the Florentines fourteen forty victory over Milanese troops

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Speaker 1: on June six, fift oh five. UM. There's some debate

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Speaker 1: about whether Da Vinci actually finish this depiction, though According

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Speaker 1: to the sixteenth century painter, architect and writer Georgio Vasari,

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Speaker 1: who wrote The Lives of Artists in fifteen fifty, da

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Speaker 1: Vinci only painted art of his work before abandoning it

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Speaker 1: due to technical problems, and that's kind of where the

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Speaker 1: mystery kicks off. Yeah. Lorenzi writes that some historians think

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Speaker 1: of Assari made up the story and that Da Vinci

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Speaker 1: actually completed his work. It's hard to say for sure, though,

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Speaker 1: because at some point the Battle of a Giari disappeared,

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Speaker 1: and this happened when around fifteen sixty, Vizari was hired

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Speaker 1: to work on a citywide renovation to celebrate the Medici family,

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Speaker 1: and in the course of this renovation he was tapped

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Speaker 1: to redo the Hall of five hundred, and after that,

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Speaker 1: Da Vinci's mural wasn't seen again, and it only survives

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Speaker 1: now in preparatory drawings and in sketches and a Reuben's

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Speaker 1: drawing that was inspired by an anonymous copy of the mural.

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Speaker 1: A lot of da Vinci's contemporaries, though, considered this his

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Speaker 1: finest work, so naturally, a lot of people, including art

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Speaker 1: diagnostic expert Maurizio Seracini, have been really interested in finding it.

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Speaker 1: Saracini is the director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science

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Speaker 1: for Art, Architecture and Archaeology at the University of California,

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Speaker 1: San Diego, and he's been searching for the Battle of

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Speaker 1: ai Ai since the nineteen seventies. So this year was

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Speaker 1: clearly a major break for him because finally Sarasini and

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Speaker 1: his team of researchers announced that they think that they

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Speaker 1: might have found some solid clues as to the masterpieces whereabouts.

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Speaker 1: And they found the clues by drilling into a wall

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Speaker 1: in the Plazzo Vecchio Uh. Incidentally, it's a wall covered

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Speaker 1: by another fresco called the Battle of Marciano, this one

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Speaker 1: painted by none other than Azari himself, following the renovation

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Speaker 1: that he was involved in. So they drilled these six

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Speaker 1: tiny little poles into Zaris fresco and inserted a point

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Speaker 1: fifteen inch wide probe and micro cameras in order to

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Speaker 1: bring back samples of red, white, orange, and black pigment

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Speaker 1: material the in they analyzed it, and this is where

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Speaker 1: this gets so cool. They analyzed this this pigment and

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Speaker 1: the chemical makeup of it, and it turned out that

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Speaker 1: the chemical makeup of the black pigment is the same

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Speaker 1: as the black pigment in the brown glazes used on

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Speaker 1: da Vinci's other works, including The Mona Lisa and St.

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Speaker 1: John the Baptist. The other material appeared to have been

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Speaker 1: applied by a paintbrush, the one that they that they retrieved.

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Speaker 1: So really cool here, and especially I guess it's worth

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Speaker 1: mentioning too that artists did have highly personalized pigment, so

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Speaker 1: that's a big deal. That's true. So essentially, this team's

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Speaker 1: theory is that the Battle of a Giari is located

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Speaker 1: on a wall that's obscured by the wall that features

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Speaker 1: fazaries work, And you're probably wondering what makes them think

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Speaker 1: that this could even be possible, And they have reason

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Speaker 1: to believe this because apparently Fazzari had done this and

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Speaker 1: at least one other location during his renovations. In the

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Speaker 1: Church of sam To Maria Novella, he had to get

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Speaker 1: rid of Massacho's trinity, but instead of just destroying it,

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Speaker 1: he bricked over it and added his own mural over

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Speaker 1: the new wall. So Missacho's fresco was found in eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty one when Passaris wall was removed, and Saracena even

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Speaker 1: thinks He's found kind of a da Vinci code like

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Speaker 1: clue that this happened on the wall featuring the Battle

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Speaker 1: of Marciano, which proves that da Vinci's work might be

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Speaker 1: behind it. Apparently, Vasari wrote to the words cherka trova

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Speaker 1: seek and you shall find on a little green flag

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Speaker 1: that exists on that wall. It's pretty awesome, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: It is pretty cool. There was also a radar survey,

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Speaker 1: though you know this is not all little green flags

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Speaker 1: written by uh sorry. There was a radar survey that

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Speaker 1: was carried out in even that showed a hollow space

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Speaker 1: the only gap of its kind that existed in the room.

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Speaker 1: So naturally, Saraceni wanted to do some more drilling, do

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Speaker 1: Laurenzi's article, Saraceni felt that it could be quote one

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Speaker 1: of the biggest discoveries in the history of art. But

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Speaker 1: by Elizabetta Povleto. The project was ultimately suspended when art

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Speaker 1: authorities in Florence turned down the request to drill more

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Speaker 1: holes into Sari's work. I mean, you've got it. It's

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Speaker 1: not like they're just drilling through some planned stuff. Well

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Speaker 1: does have a sorry mural on it. From an art

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Speaker 1: finding something amazing beneath it. Uh Saraceni that was very

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Speaker 1: disappointed it, he told the New York Times quote, now

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Speaker 1: we have lost an opportunity. So we'll find out. I mean,

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Speaker 1: maybe this is the case where technology can give us

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Speaker 1: top of it. And maybe there will be a way

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Speaker 1: to to do it someday. Would be interesting to find

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Speaker 1: out if it's actually back there. It's kind of a

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Speaker 1: cool story. Nonetheless, so that Da Vinci story, though we

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Speaker 1: have to admit it is cheating a little bit. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of like an almost unearthed item rather than a

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Speaker 1: true unearthed item. But there are a couple of findings

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Speaker 1: more concrete that we want to share truly unearthed. One

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Speaker 1: has to do with the world's largest human made structure,

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Speaker 1: a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is, of course, the

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Speaker 1: Great Wall of China, and major construction on the Great

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Speaker 1: Wall began around two under the orders of Emperor chiann

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Speaker 1: Xi Huang, who used the wall to protect to the

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Speaker 1: wasn't just one big project all done in the same style.

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Speaker 1: It's been renovated many times by several different dynasties, even

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Speaker 1: though the majority of the existing structure reflects construction and

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Speaker 1: renovations that were done during the Ming dynasty. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: what you've probably toured if you visited the Great Wall

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Speaker 1: the Ming portions. Previously, the length of the Wall was

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Speaker 1: estimated to be around five thousand, five hundred miles or

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Speaker 1: eight thousand, eight hundred fifty kilometers. But the Great Wall,

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Speaker 1: turns out isn't just one continuous wall. It's a series

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Speaker 1: of sometimes overlapping fortifications made of stone, bricks, or in

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Speaker 1: some spots packed earth, and the construction of which began

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Speaker 1: as early as the seventh century BC. According to an

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Speaker 1: article by Malcolm Moore and the Telegraph, and attempt to

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Speaker 1: survey all of these fortifications began in two thousand seven.

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Speaker 1: The survey encompassed fifteen Chinese provinces with the goal of

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Speaker 1: measuring every little piece of wall that they could find.

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Speaker 1: So the findings from that survey, which were revealed this summer,

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Speaker 1: long as previously thought. It's thirteen thousand, one hundred and

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Speaker 1: seventy miles or twenty one thousand, one kilometers. But there

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Speaker 1: were a few other results of the survey, to a

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Speaker 1: total of forty three thousand, seven d twenty one heritage

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Speaker 1: sites were identified nationwide, and there's a new initiative to

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Speaker 1: map out all of the wall to as part of

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Speaker 1: an effort to to preserve it. You can't really protect

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Speaker 1: something necessarily if you don't know that it's there. There

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Speaker 1: was also another Chinese fine announced over the summer. Chinese

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Speaker 1: archaeologists discovered one hundred and ten more terracotta warriors. And

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Speaker 1: if you don't know about this, the terracotta warriors are

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Speaker 1: of course part of the ancient terra Cotta Army, a

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Speaker 1: collection of life size terracotta sculptures that were built to

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Speaker 1: guard the tomb of China's first emperor, Chian Chi Huong.

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Speaker 1: I think there might be a an old episode on

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Speaker 1: them too, may be done by Candice in Jane. We'll

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Speaker 1: have to check that out. The terra cotta army was

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Speaker 1: first discovered in nineteen seventy four by someone who's digging

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Speaker 1: a well, and it's a World Heritage site also according

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Speaker 1: to an AFP article, though the most significant aspect of

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Speaker 1: this new discovery is that the new figures were found

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Speaker 1: really well preserved, so much so that they're still colorfully painted.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, did you visit the High

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Speaker 1: Museum exhibit when there were then? You know it was

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Speaker 1: it was very cool, But one of the most impressive

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Speaker 1: aspects of it to me were the pictures of the

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Speaker 1: before and it's just totally smashed little pieces of terra cotta,

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Speaker 1: and and those are what they ultimately pieced together into

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Speaker 1: these complete statues. So this is so cool to me

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Speaker 1: to hear that they're they're finding figures that are better

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Speaker 1: preserved and and still even have pigment on them. Um

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Speaker 1: to this is meat to The paint doesn't seem to

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Speaker 1: have faded as much as the researchers would have expected,

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Speaker 1: so it is still bright and almost trude out to

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Speaker 1: what it would have been originally. In addition to the warriors,

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Speaker 1: some pottery horses, parts of chariots, weapons and tools were

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Speaker 1: also found. I have a hunch to that that this

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Speaker 1: is the story the terra cotta warriors and more fines.

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Speaker 1: There could be something that would be in an Unearthed

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Speaker 1: episode year after year, because yeah, it's a huge complex

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Speaker 1: and one of the things I remember from visiting that

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Speaker 1: exhibit at the museum, I think maybe last year or

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Speaker 1: two years ago, we're pictures of the complex as a whole,

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Speaker 1: and how little of it had really been excavated pretty

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Speaker 1: neat is well, that is our episode Unearthed in two

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Speaker 1: thousand twelve Part one. We have more fines to come

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Speaker 1: in part two. Just for a little teaser too. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about the vampires. We're gonna talk about

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Speaker 1: crazy Roman stuff and some Maya history. I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: why we had to divide into two episodes. There's just

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Speaker 1: too much good stuff and I didn't even get we

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Speaker 1: didn't even get to include everything we wanted to in

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Speaker 1: two episodes. Debilina worked up an enormous list of possible topics.

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Speaker 1: Some of them I don't know. Maybe they'll inspire full

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Speaker 1: length episodes their own. I think there are a couple

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Speaker 1: of ideas on there that could make good full length episodes,

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Speaker 1: So we may see them later on down the line.

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Speaker 1: But for now, just get ready for Part two. Before

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Speaker 1: we move on to that, though, we want to share

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Speaker 1: a little bit of listener mail. We wanted to share

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Speaker 1: a postcard that we received from Shannon. It's of Saudi Arabia,

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Speaker 1: and and she was saying that she figured, of all

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Speaker 1: the postcards that we received, we've never received one from

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Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure. I tried to think of it.

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Speaker 1: I can't remember. One might be a first. I hope.

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Speaker 1: I don't offend anybody if you have sent me one

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Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia. But it's a really cool postcard. It's it

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Speaker 1: was just sitting on my desk when I came in

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Speaker 1: one day. But it the two men greeting each other

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Speaker 1: in front of a huge array of knives. So it's

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Speaker 1: kind of an intimidating postcard, but you know they're at

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Speaker 1: a market. It's not a it's not a threatening messages

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Speaker 1: friendly yeah, but She wrote to to send a few

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Speaker 1: suggestions to and one of them was an episode on

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Speaker 1: Robert Louis Stevenson and suggested that he might make a

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Speaker 1: cool podcast, and I thought that kind of fits into

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Speaker 1: our historical authors sort of series we do. So thank

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Speaker 1: you very much for that suggestion, Shannon, and for the postcard.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like to share some stories with us of

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Speaker 1: your travels or just some ideas for future podcast, maybe

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Speaker 1: some bits of history news that you've noticed that we

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Speaker 1: haven't talked about, please right to us. We're at History

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Speaker 1: Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook and

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Speaker 1: we're on Twitter at this in History. And I think

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Speaker 1: we actually have an article on the terra Cotta warriors,

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Speaker 1: don't we. I think we do, so that would be

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Speaker 1: a fun one for people to check out, although we

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Speaker 1: might need to go update it now. Oh, if there's

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Speaker 1: been this new discovery, maybe it's already been taken care

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Speaker 1: of fingers crossed, So if you're interested in doing that,

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Speaker 1: go check out the article on the Terracotta Army on

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Speaker 1: our homepage. It's at www dot how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com h for more on this and thousands of other topics.

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Speaker 1: Is it how Stuff Works? Dot com