Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full 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. The death of any creature is a tragedy,
Speaker 1: from a beloved family member to the smallest insect. Even
Speaker 1: when nature takes its course and a lion devours a gazelle,
Speaker 1: it's still hard to watch such a loss of life,
Speaker 1: no matter how common it may be for humans. That
Speaker 1: loss is commemorated in some kind of ritual burial. Some
Speaker 1: Tibetan Buddhists, for example, leave their dead outside for birds
Speaker 1: and other animals to eat. It's an act known as
Speaker 1: a sky burial, and it's meant to acknowledge the circle
Speaker 1: of life as the body is returned to nature. In
Speaker 1: South Korea, many people have their deceased loved ones cremated
Speaker 1: and turned into beautiful beads in colors like blue, green, pink,
Speaker 1: and black. The beads are then stored and displayed in
Speaker 1: glass containers or dishes. It's a way to honor those
Speaker 1: who were lost in a colorful and uplifting way. In
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six Scotland, however, a different kind of burial
Speaker 1: right was discovered. To this day, no one knows exactly
Speaker 1: what it meant or who started it. All we know
Speaker 1: is that it took nimble fingers. During the summer of
Speaker 1: that year of eighteen sixty three, several boys were climbing
Speaker 1: a hill known as Arthur's Seat. Now Arthur's Seat was
Speaker 1: actually an ancient volcano that was part of a hill
Speaker 1: cluster east of the city. Climbed to the top of
Speaker 1: Arthur's Seat today and you can look out over the
Speaker 1: bubolic green pastures leading towards the modern buildings and homes
Speaker 1: of Edinburgh. But in eighteen thirty six there was more
Speaker 1: countryside to explore, and the boys were out hunting rabbits.
Speaker 1: During their escapade, they came to a cave, the entrance
Speaker 1: to which was blocked by several sheets of slate. It
Speaker 1: took some effort, but they were able to remove the
Speaker 1: obstruction and peer inside. They found seventeen coffins arranged in
Speaker 1: three rows. The first two rows contained eight coffins each
Speaker 1: while the third row only had one. The coffins were
Speaker 1: removed and opened. Inside were bodies in varying states of decay,
Speaker 1: some wrapped in cloth, others dressed in handmade clothes. No
Speaker 1: one knew who placed them there, and even after news
Speaker 1: reports were published weeks after the discovery, nobody claimed responsibility.
Speaker 1: According to an article in The Scotsman on July six,
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six, it was believed that one person had
Speaker 1: been behind the coffin's presence in the cave, and that
Speaker 1: they had been placed there over a number of years.
Speaker 1: The wood of the coffins in the first row had
Speaker 1: rotted away considerably the last often, though the one by
Speaker 1: itself in the third row was much newer and couldn't
Speaker 1: have been older than a few days. But what really
Speaker 1: puzzled the locals was how small they were. These weren't
Speaker 1: children's coffins. They were described in the press as Lilliputian,
Speaker 1: measuring only three point seven inches long, and the bodies
Speaker 1: inside were actually wooden figurines, in other words, dolls. Once
Speaker 1: word got out, rumors began to spread about what the
Speaker 1: coffins had been used for. The Scotsman reported that they
Speaker 1: had been created by witches as part of their spells.
Speaker 1: It wasn't completely unfounded either, arthur Seed had been a
Speaker 1: hot bit of witchy activity during the sixteenth century, complete
Speaker 1: with hasty accusations and even hastier burnings. Another theory was
Speaker 1: that the figures had been effigies of people who had
Speaker 1: died far from Edinburgh, a common practice in Saxony, who
Speaker 1: had made and entombed them, however, remained a mystery. Despite
Speaker 1: the healthy amount of speculation as to the origins of
Speaker 1: the tiny coffins, the true was nowhere to be found
Speaker 1: until another theory cropped up one hundred and fifty years later.
Speaker 1: But during the eighteen hundreds, Edinburgh, like many parts of Europe,
Speaker 1: were plagued by a disgusting and disrespectful practice, grave robbing.
Speaker 1: Medical students in need of corpses often utilized less than
Speaker 1: legal ways of obtaining bodies for study, and in eighteen
Speaker 1: two men found a great way to put some money
Speaker 1: in their pockets by helping students and teachers alike. Their
Speaker 1: names were William Burke and William Hair. Hair ran a
Speaker 1: boarding house where one of his guests died unexpectedly. He
Speaker 1: sold the body to a doctor, Robert Knox for seven
Speaker 1: pounds ten shillings. Seeing a new business opportunity before them,
Speaker 1: Hair and Burke started selling the corpses of the people
Speaker 1: who died at the boarding house to Knox, who used
Speaker 1: them in his anatomy class. There was just one problem.
Speaker 1: Those guests weren't dying on their own. The two men
Speaker 1: had to help nature along. Over the course of ten months,
Speaker 1: bur can here were believed to have killed sixteen lodgers,
Speaker 1: people who had been traveling alone with little or no
Speaker 1: family to miss them. They were finally caught in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight and prosecuted for their crimes. In the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: Samuel Menaphee of the University of Virginia and Alan Simpson
Speaker 1: of Edinburgh University proposed that the seventeen coffins represented Burke
Speaker 1: and Hair's victims, the sixteen they murdered, plus the first
Speaker 1: victim who had died of natural causes. Unfortunately, every theory
Speaker 1: has proven to be nothing more than that a theory.
Speaker 1: There is no way to know for sure who made
Speaker 1: the dolls, their clothes, or the coffins in which they
Speaker 1: were placed. Today only eight coffins survive and are on
Speaker 1: display at the National Museum Scotland, but the story doesn't
Speaker 1: end there. In two thousand fourteen, the museum received a package.
Speaker 1: Inside was a tiny coffin with a wooden doll inside it,
Speaker 1: just like all the others. Included was a note with
Speaker 1: the number eight team written out in Roman numerals across
Speaker 1: the top. Below that the words to the National Museum
Speaker 1: of Scotland a gift for caring for our nation's treasures,
Speaker 1: followed by a passage from Robert Louis Stevenson's short story
Speaker 1: The Body Snatcher, which had been based on Burkenhair's exploits.
Speaker 1: The museum had no clue who had sent it, and
Speaker 1: there was no return address. From England's Buckingham Palace to Versailles.
Speaker 1: In France, royal palaces were more than just living quarters
Speaker 1: for the country's rich and powerful. They hosted leaders in
Speaker 1: other countries, and they turned into hubs of government activity. Versaiah,
Speaker 1: for example, became France's de facto capital after Louis the
Speaker 1: fourteenth began conducting official business there. But one palace stood
Speaker 1: out above the rest. It was the epitome of sophistication
Speaker 1: and decadence for almost seven hundred years, and it's also
Speaker 1: served as the seat of Brussels government for just as long,
Speaker 1: and yet most people today don't even know it existed.
Speaker 1: The Palace of caude Bear started life as a castle
Speaker 1: built around the year eleven hundred by the counts of
Speaker 1: Brussels and lou ven It was constructed out of the
Speaker 1: cow de Bear, meaning cold hill in Dutch. By putting
Speaker 1: the castle on the tallest hill in Brussels, there was
Speaker 1: less of a risk of flooding from nearby rivers, and
Speaker 1: it literally elevated the counts above the rest of the city.
Speaker 1: Over time, territories changed, as did those who ruled over them.
Speaker 1: In eleven eighty three, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa
Speaker 1: created the Duchy of Brabant and a great, big wall
Speaker 1: was erected around Brussels. The Duke of Brabant then moved
Speaker 1: the seat of the court from nearby Louven two Brussels,
Speaker 1: specifically to Caudebart Castle. Because it had been built as
Speaker 1: a castle instead of a palace. The structure it was
Speaker 1: fortified and served as a defensive military stronghold. In thirteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, Count Louis the second of Flanders breached the
Speaker 1: city's protective walls and occupied Brussels, but as forces were
Speaker 1: pushed outs and new walls were constructed after they left,
Speaker 1: the castle had served its purpose, but that wasn't the
Speaker 1: end of its usefulness. Since it was no longer needed
Speaker 1: for defense, it was slowly converted into a palatial home
Speaker 1: and entertainment venue for visiting dignitaries. The whole property was
Speaker 1: expanded over the next few hundred years, and new additions
Speaker 1: were constructed. The main building grew in size, a gallery
Speaker 1: was installed to display various artworks and statues, and a
Speaker 1: massive banquet hall was built. Charles the fifth, the Duke
Speaker 1: of Burgundy, had a Gothic chapel installed during the sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: There as well, powerful elites began to build their own
Speaker 1: homes nearby, just so they could be close to the action.
Speaker 1: Counter Bear Palace was suddenly the new hot destination for
Speaker 1: princes and diplomats from all over France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: In more ways than one, the palace was no stranger
Speaker 1: to disaster. For example, it's roof was damaged badly by
Speaker 1: a fire in sixteen seventy nine, but on February three
Speaker 1: of seventeen thirty one, things got out of control. Arch
Speaker 1: Duchess Maria Elizabeth of Austria, sister to Emperor Charles the sixth,
Speaker 1: was living at Calderbart and had gone to bed for
Speaker 1: the night for some reason, though she never put out
Speaker 1: the candles in her room, a fire started that quickly
Speaker 1: engulfed the rest of the palace. Emergency workers were unable
Speaker 1: to get to the affected rooms in time, though since
Speaker 1: they did not have the authority to enter the private
Speaker 1: apartments inside, and the high winter winds only helped spread
Speaker 1: the fire even more, it didn't take long for the
Speaker 1: palace to burn down. Much of the art was lost,
Speaker 1: as were important court documents. The arch Duchess was saved
Speaker 1: thanks to the quick actions of one firefighter who decided
Speaker 1: to break protocol and rush inside to get her. Of
Speaker 1: all the structures on the property, only the chapel and
Speaker 1: the banquet hall still stood once the flames had been
Speaker 1: put out, but when all was said and done, the
Speaker 1: fire was officially blamed on the kitchen staff instead of
Speaker 1: the Archduchess, due to the feared backlash of accusing her
Speaker 1: of such thoughtlessness. A public square was built atop the
Speaker 1: ruins in seventeen seventy five, and if you didn't know
Speaker 1: any better, you'd think that it had been there forever.
Speaker 1: There were no remnants of the old palace left behind.
Speaker 1: At street level, the chapel and the walls of the
Speaker 1: banquet hall were all torn down, but below the feet
Speaker 1: of those million around the square, the palace wasn't truly gone.
Speaker 1: The buildings that occupy the space today, such as the
Speaker 1: Center for Fine Arts and the Musical Instruments Museum, sit
Speaker 1: directly on top of the stone passageways and brick walls
Speaker 1: of the original palace, which were excavated over twenty five
Speaker 1: years starting in the nineteen eighties. Brick walls dating back
Speaker 1: to the fifteenth century are still intact. The vaulted archways
Speaker 1: that once sat below the chapel are illuminated to day
Speaker 1: by modern lightbulbs instead of wax candles. Statues are encased
Speaker 1: in protective glass, and the crumbling remains of a staircase
Speaker 1: to nowhere can be seen behind a chain rope. Underneath
Speaker 1: this part of the city there are great, big rooms
Speaker 1: with cobblestone floors that take visitors back in time hundreds
Speaker 1: of years. There may even be more of the original
Speaker 1: palace that hasn't yet been found. But for now, visitors
Speaker 1: can still get a unique glimpse into Brussels past. All
Speaker 1: they have to do is peel back the surface and
Speaker 1: look down. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah h