Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Conquistadors are dark figures
Speaker 2: from a modern perspective, warlords from the Spanish Empire who
Speaker 2: brought disease and violence to Central and South America. Hernan
Speaker 2: Cortes is one of the most infamous, known for his
Speaker 2: defeat of the Aztec Empire, but the reality of that
Speaker 2: history is more complicated than you might realize. He would
Speaker 2: never have been able to defeat the Aztecs without the
Speaker 2: help of a different native tribe, the lax Kalinz, and
Speaker 2: it was their incredible ingenuity that handed him the most
Speaker 2: important victory of the war. Cortes was a man whose
Speaker 2: ego could not be contained. When he was sent to
Speaker 2: the New World. He was supposed to submit to the
Speaker 2: authority of the governor of Cuba, who just wanted him
Speaker 2: to survey modern day Mexico and report back. Cortes ignored
Speaker 2: this order, and in fifteen nineteen took his men further
Speaker 2: inland to conquer the kingdom of tenoche Titlan. Some of
Speaker 2: Cortez's men were loyal to the governor of Cuba, and
Speaker 2: so Cortes ordered the men who were loyal to him
Speaker 2: to disassemble their ships so that the Cuban loyalists couldn't
Speaker 2: sail back to Cuba. But tinoche Titlan proved more difficult
Speaker 2: to conquer than Cortes had hoped. It was a massive,
Speaker 2: sprawling metropolis situated in the middle of an even larger lake,
Speaker 2: Lake Texcoco. If the Spanish tried to use their horses
Speaker 2: to ride into the city, they would be sitting ducks
Speaker 2: on the various bridges that connected the city to the mainland.
Speaker 2: Cortes suddenly wished that he had all those ships that
Speaker 2: he ordered his men to disassemble, But then again, it's
Speaker 2: not as if they could have carried them from the
Speaker 2: ocean to the lake. But it turns out that the
Speaker 2: Aztecs were pretty cruel leaders, and Cortes quickly made allies
Speaker 2: with their neighbors, who had grown tired of Aztec rule.
Speaker 2: But it was through these alliances that Cortes learned of
Speaker 2: the forests of lax Kala, a mountain province with timber
Speaker 2: that could be used to make new ships. Although this
Speaker 2: was sixty miles from the lake, Cortes saw no other options.
Speaker 2: Working with several native leaders, he ordered timber to be
Speaker 2: cut and carefully shaped for the construction of new ships.
Speaker 2: He also had his men returned to where they disassembled
Speaker 2: their original ships, recovering the anchors, the sails, and other
Speaker 2: pieces that could be used on the new vessels. But
Speaker 2: Cortes didn't stop there, ordering the damming of a local
Speaker 2: river so that his new ships could be tested before
Speaker 2: they got anywhere near Lake tex Coco. This required that
Speaker 2: the natives undertake an entirely separate engineering project before their
Speaker 2: work on the ships could even begin, but they were
Speaker 2: successful in damning the river and providing a deep enough
Speaker 2: body of water.
Speaker 1: For one of the new boats to be tested on.
Speaker 1: The Spanish and their indigenous allies constructed an entire brigantine
Speaker 1: there in the mountains, made sure that it could float
Speaker 1: on the river, and then deconstructed the whole thing again
Speaker 1: so that it could be transported down the mountain. Once
Speaker 1: all the pieces were ready, a massive convoy of thousands
Speaker 1: of indigenous men carried the timber from the mountains to
Speaker 1: Cortes's camp on the edge of Lake tex Coco. Once
Speaker 1: they arrived, they got to work assembling the ships again.
Speaker 1: This took months of time, and while they worked, Cortes's
Speaker 1: army had to fend off multiple attacks from Tenochtitlan, but
Speaker 1: at least on the lake shore, the Spanishes, horses, cannons,
Speaker 1: and iron weapons gave them an advantage. Even once the
Speaker 1: ships were finished, the indigenous work wasn't done. They next
Speaker 1: dug a nine thousand foot canal from their work site
Speaker 1: to the lake, allowing the ships to be released into
Speaker 1: the water, and then, finally, after months of hard work,
Speaker 1: the invasion could begin. The ships had been outfitted with cannons,
Speaker 1: and as they approached the city they easily blew upon
Speaker 1: part the Aztec navy, which consisted of small canoes that
Speaker 1: fired arrows and darts. They then decimated the city's walls
Speaker 1: and began a siege of the city. For years, tenote
Speaker 1: Teklan had been safe on the water, but now it
Speaker 1: was thoroughly outmatched by the combined ingenuity of the Spanish
Speaker 1: and the local attackers. After weeks of back and forth fighting,
Speaker 1: the Spanish finally overwhelmed the city. Their conquest was brutal.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of Aztecs were killed. It was the
Speaker 1: end of their empire and the beginning of Spanish rule
Speaker 1: in Mexico. Soon enough, smallpox from the Spanish conquistadors spread
Speaker 1: throughout the remaining Aztecs and the Spanish native allies, decimating
Speaker 1: their populations even further. Cortes wasn't punished for disobeying the
Speaker 1: orders of the governor of Cuba. He had delivered Mexico
Speaker 1: to the king, and so he was made governor. He
Speaker 1: spent the rest of his career conquering Mexico and rebuilding
Speaker 1: tanoche Tilan, which of course became Mexico City. If you're wondering,
Speaker 1: they drained the lake over time to where barely exists today. Curiously,
Speaker 1: when Cortes finally returned to Spain in fifteen forty one,
Speaker 1: he felt that the king never really gave him the
Speaker 1: credit he deserved for accomplishing so much. Maybe the king
Speaker 1: resented him for disobeying orders all those years before, or
Speaker 1: maybe he knew that without the help of his native allies,
Speaker 1: Cortes wouldn't have been able to accomplish what he did
Speaker 1: either way. It was a curious case of landlocked naval
Speaker 1: warfare that altered the course of history forever. In nineteen
Speaker 1: oh four, a Danish art critic was touring the National
Speaker 1: Museum of Norway when they made a startling discovery. One
Speaker 1: of the museum's most controversial works had been vandalized. Someone
Speaker 1: had used a pencil to scrawl a phrase in Old
Speaker 1: Norwegian across the top of the painting. Translated to English,
Speaker 1: it read could only have been painted by a madman.
Speaker 1: While the delivery of the message was new, this wasn't
Speaker 1: the first time that kind of criticism had been leveled
Speaker 1: at the piece. The vandalized artwork was Edvard Munk's The Scream.
Speaker 1: It's an unforgettable image and one that you'd probably recognize
Speaker 1: in an instant. A gaunt, alien looking figure stands on
Speaker 1: a long bridge beneath a blazing sky. The figure's hands
Speaker 1: gripped the side of their skull like face, eyes and
Speaker 1: mouth stretched wide in an expression of existential horror. That
Speaker 1: expression is a pretty close approximation for the way viewers
Speaker 1: reacted when The Scream was first displayed in eighteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: many art critics thought the painting was proof that Monk
Speaker 1: was clinically insane. One medical student said that he should
Speaker 1: be locked up in an asylum and kept from ever
Speaker 1: touching a paint brush again, and their reactions horrified Monk,
Speaker 1: partly because they seemed to confirm his own worst fears.
Speaker 1: Mental health problems ran in his face family, and he
Speaker 1: had personally suffered from panic attacks in the past. One
Speaker 1: of those experiences served as the original inspiration for the Scream.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety three, he was out walking with some
Speaker 1: friends at sunset when he looked up and saw the
Speaker 1: sky filled with blood and flaming tongues. He was overcome
Speaker 1: with pain and an inexplicable feeling of anxiety, and heard
Speaker 1: what he later described as an infinite scream passing through nature.
Speaker 1: The experience naturally left Monk badly shaken, and he feared
Speaker 1: that the panic attacks would get worse with time, so
Speaker 1: when people started calling him crazy based on his artwork,
Speaker 1: it got to him. Eventually, the controversies surrounding his work faded,
Speaker 1: and Monk continued to paint, and then, a decade after
Speaker 1: he first revealed the Scream to the public, the inscription
Speaker 1: was discovered. The writing was faint, almost blending in with
Speaker 1: the swirling sky, but once seen it couldn't be ignored.
Speaker 1: Closer inspection proved that it was added after the painting
Speaker 1: was completed, and the museum curators were confident it hadn't
Speaker 1: been there when they added the work to their collection,
Speaker 1: which means that someone, perhaps a prankster or an angry critic,
Speaker 1: snuck into the gallery while the guards were absent and
Speaker 1: defaced the painting. The museum even brought in forensic experts
Speaker 1: to analyze the writing, but they failed to come up
Speaker 1: with any suspects. Meanwhile, Monk became increasingly obsessed with his critics.
Speaker 1: His diaries and letters are full of complaints about the
Speaker 1: people who called him mad, and that fixation eventually became
Speaker 1: a self fulfilling prophecy. He was hospitalized in nineteen oh
Speaker 1: eight after a nervous breakdown, but the treatment seems to
Speaker 1: have helped. After his release, he painted more frequently and
Speaker 1: was reportedly much happier. After he died in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: the Scream only grew in prominence. Today it's one of
Speaker 1: the most iconic paintings in the world, having been endlessly
Speaker 1: reproduced in political cartoons and memes. It's even become an emoji,
Speaker 1: which is all the proof you can ask for that
Speaker 1: an image is still relevant today, and its stay in
Speaker 1: power suggests that Monk wasn't half as mad as his
Speaker 1: critics believed. Perhaps he was just ahead of his time,
Speaker 1: an artist who foresaw the alienation and anxiety that would
Speaker 1: come to define modern life. And it seems that he
Speaker 1: had a sense of humor about it all, because in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, a group of researchers finally solve the
Speaker 1: riddle of the Scream's mysterious inscription. Using infrared scans and
Speaker 1: handwriting analysis, they concluded that the culprit was none other
Speaker 1: than Edvardmunk himself. It seems that sometime after the painting
Speaker 1: was hung in the museum, he returned to vandalize his
Speaker 1: own masterpiece with those words could only have been written
Speaker 1: by a madman. Whether Monk meant that as a confession
Speaker 1: or a self deprecating joke isn't clear today, but I
Speaker 1: like to think that it was a message to his critics.
Speaker 1: If you think I'm mad right now, just wait, You'll
Speaker 1: all be joining me soon enough, I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities, subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manke 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 Worldoflore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.