Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke'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 right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: There were probably several other places Sam would have preferred
Speaker 1: to be at that moment. In nineteen thirty nine, then
Speaker 1: on a Nazi ship. The Bismarck was launched just a
Speaker 1: few months before Germany invaded Poland, and by nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one was prawling the northern part of the Atlantic. Their
Speaker 1: job was to sabotage nabl envoys sailing between Canada and
Speaker 1: the UK. Sam was one of twenty two hundred crew
Speaker 1: members who wished that they weren't there on May twenty
Speaker 1: seventh of nineteen forty one, when the Bismarck engaged in
Speaker 1: a violent two day battle with the British Royal Navy
Speaker 1: alongside her sister ship. Given that they were outnumbered and outgunned,
Speaker 1: no one was surprised that the Bismarck sink. Really it
Speaker 1: was a couple of biplanes that dealt the crushing blow.
Speaker 1: But I digress now. According to the story, one of
Speaker 1: the British ships, the HMS cossack lingered in the area
Speaker 1: attempting to rescue survivors. Out of the over twenty two
Speaker 1: hundred crewman, there were just one hundred and fourteen souls
Speaker 1: left alive after the sinking, including Sam, who was floating
Speaker 1: on a plank in the sea of debris. They hauled
Speaker 1: him aboard and started calling him Oscar as a nod
Speaker 1: to his German origins. Oh, did I forget to mention
Speaker 1: that Sam was also a cat, A sweet little tuxedo
Speaker 1: cat with black fur and a white patch on his
Speaker 1: faced chest and pause. There's a long history of cats
Speaker 1: on board ships, hundreds of years of companionship and pest
Speaker 1: control in one adorable package. Cats were really the best
Speaker 1: animal to have on a ship, no matter how many
Speaker 1: stories you hear about parrots. They'll eat anything and were
Speaker 1: very good at their job protecting any provisions in cargo
Speaker 1: from rats and other pests. It's a tradition that carries
Speaker 1: through even today. Some private ships will keep their own cats,
Speaker 1: although most every navy in the world has banned them
Speaker 1: at this point. Back in the nineteen forties, though sailors
Speaker 1: could still have a furry little friend on board, which
Speaker 1: leads us back to Oscar. He served on the Cossack
Speaker 1: as it conducted escorts in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: They were protecting a convoy from Gibraltar to Britain on
Speaker 1: October twenty fourth of nineteen forty one when things started
Speaker 1: to get exciting, and honestly, no one wants things to
Speaker 1: be exciting in a war zone. Oscar wasn't on the
Speaker 1: Cossack for long. To be fair, no one was on
Speaker 1: the Cossack for much longer. Within a few months, they
Speaker 1: were torpedoed and sank, leaving these survivors bobbing among the
Speaker 1: remains of their ship. Luckily, the HMS arc Royal and
Speaker 1: Aircraft Carrier was in the area and managed to scoop
Speaker 1: up the remaining sailors and of course Sam or Oscar
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call him now. In another stroke
Speaker 1: of bad luck, Sam's new home wasn't long for this world. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a war on and the HMS arc Royal
Speaker 1: had their own tangle with a torpedo on November fourteenth
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty one. Luckily, the cat managed to survive
Speaker 1: once again, although at this point I bet that he
Speaker 1: was definitely down a few lives. When the HMS Legion arrived,
Speaker 1: they pulled Sam or Oscar and the other survivors out
Speaker 1: of the water. Apparently he was quite angry after his
Speaker 1: third ship sinking, but ultimately unharmed. As soon as they
Speaker 1: learned their new furry friend's history, they christened him Unsinkable Sam. Luckily,
Speaker 1: for Sam, his third sinking was his last. Maybe they
Speaker 1: were superstitious, or maybe the sailors just felt bad about it,
Speaker 1: but either way, Sam was sent off the Legion to
Speaker 1: live with the Governor of Gibraltar, where he hunted mice
Speaker 1: to his heart's content. His final destination was the UK
Speaker 1: at a Belfast home for sailors. So far as I know,
Speaker 1: he never left dry land again, passed seen away in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. We've certainly heard plenty of stories about
Speaker 1: people who survived shipwrecks time and time again. Violet Jessup
Speaker 1: comes to mind the star of one of our very
Speaker 1: own earlier Cabinet episodes. It's been done, But the thing is,
Speaker 1: we're not entirely sure if the story about Sam is true.
Speaker 1: Really Sam's whole adventure might just be a tall tale.
Speaker 1: There's no record of a cat being brought on board
Speaker 1: the Bismarck, and none of the survivors mentioned him later,
Speaker 1: although to be fair, at that moment they had other
Speaker 1: things on their mind. There are only a couple of
Speaker 1: images of Sam. One is a pastel drawing of him
Speaker 1: sitting on a floating piece of wood by an unknown artist.
Speaker 1: The other is a photograph of a tuxedo cats in
Speaker 1: a collar. The cat looks like every description of Sam,
Speaker 1: except there's one problem. The collar is inscribed HMS Amethyst,
Speaker 1: which Sam never served on. This is likely a photo
Speaker 1: of another famous ship cat named Simon. Maybe Sam was
Speaker 1: a stowaway, or it's some kind of good luck charm
Speaker 1: for one of the sailors on the Bismarck, which would
Speaker 1: explain why he was never officially registered as the ship's cat.
Speaker 1: In all likelihood, we will never know if Sam was
Speaker 1: real or not, but I'm not sure that that matters.
Speaker 1: Stories can be important, whether they're real or fake. They
Speaker 1: show us what was important to the people during those
Speaker 1: big moments. World War two was the war that was
Speaker 1: never supposed to happen, especially after the carnage and terror
Speaker 1: of the Great War, the idea that a little critter
Speaker 1: like Sam was rescued time and time again, that even
Speaker 1: during the worst moments of their lives, these sailors wanted
Speaker 1: to save what they could. While fact or fiction, I
Speaker 1: think that's a curious story worth remembering. Imagine you work
Speaker 1: at an art museum. You've had a certain painting, one
Speaker 1: from a legendary artist, on display for decades, and one
Speaker 1: day you and your team take it off the wall
Speaker 1: so you can examine it for an upcoming exhibition. As
Speaker 1: you're analyzing the work, you realize that there's something hidden
Speaker 1: beneath the portrait, as in, behind the actual paint. It's
Speaker 1: something no one has ever seen before. You'd be stunned. Right,
Speaker 1: here's this mysterious thing that could potentially change the entire
Speaker 1: art world, and you just found it. And if you've
Speaker 1: guessed that this hypothetical scenario isn't actually hypothetical at all,
Speaker 1: you'd be right. It really happened in July of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two at the National Galleries in Scotland. But before
Speaker 1: we get there, let me back up just a bit.
Speaker 1: You see, art is often mysterious, right. Painters from DA
Speaker 1: Vinci and Picasso to Pollock and Moore have been the
Speaker 1: subject of decades, even centuries, of scholarly debate. Staring at
Speaker 1: the mona Lisa's shy expression, or a canvas colored and
Speaker 1: seemingly random splashes of paint, we can't help but wonder
Speaker 1: what does it mean? But while critics mean use about
Speaker 1: symbols and metaphor, some experts look at canvas as much
Speaker 1: more literally. Art conservators analyze the actual matter of the painting.
Speaker 1: This could mean examining the chemical makeup of the paint
Speaker 1: itself to figure out exactly where it came from, or
Speaker 1: using X rays and infrared light to see through the painting,
Speaker 1: usually to get a better idea of how the art
Speaker 1: is sketched or layered paint to create the final product.
Speaker 1: This the X ray examination, is what those experts at
Speaker 1: the National Galleries of Scotland were doing when they made
Speaker 1: their big discovery. They had had a van Go painting
Speaker 1: called Head of a Peasant Woman since nineteen sixty. When
Speaker 1: a lawyer from Edinburgh donated it to the museum. They
Speaker 1: took it down so that they could move it for
Speaker 1: a July twenty twenty two exhibition on Impressionism, which is
Speaker 1: an artistic movement that van Go was a part of.
Speaker 1: Before they hung it back up, though, they decided to
Speaker 1: x ray the piece and see if they could glean
Speaker 1: any new information about it. Now, a few things to know.
Speaker 1: Van Go painted Head of a Peasant Woman in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, but between then and when it landed in
Speaker 1: the National Galleries of Scotland it changed hands quite a bit.
Speaker 1: At some point, maybe around nineteen oh five, someone decided
Speaker 1: to glue the canvas down on a piece of cardboard,
Speaker 1: which seems more like the way that you would treat
Speaker 1: a school project and a portrait from one of the
Speaker 1: world's most famous artists, but hey, I'm no expert. Regardless,
Speaker 1: when they did this x ray, they realized there was
Speaker 1: actually a second van Go painting hidden between Head of
Speaker 1: a Peasant Woman and the cardboard. It had been painted
Speaker 1: on the back of the canvas. Head of a Peasant
Speaker 1: Woman was on one side and this second painting was
Speaker 1: on the other. But nobody ever recorded the second painting's existence,
Speaker 1: and when it was glued to the cardboard it was
Speaker 1: basically lost, until, of course, the x ray revealed it
Speaker 1: was there. This painting was a never before seen self
Speaker 1: portrait of van Go. In it, he's wearing a straw
Speaker 1: hat and a neckerchief. He stares directly at the viewer,
Speaker 1: and his left ear that he eventually cut off is
Speaker 1: still clearly visible. It's remarkable not only because it's newly discovered,
Speaker 1: but also because Vang painted it around the time that
Speaker 1: he moved to Paris and was first exposed to Impressionist art.
Speaker 1: Chances are that he painted both sides of the canvas,
Speaker 1: not because he was trying to hide something, but because
Speaker 1: he didn't have a lot of money. Canvases were expensive,
Speaker 1: and van Go wouldn't be the first artist to paint
Speaker 1: both sides or even paint over older works. As it stands,
Speaker 1: experts at the National Gallery of Scotland are doing research
Speaker 1: looking for a way to remove the canvas from the
Speaker 1: cardboard without damaging either painting. Until then, Head of a
Speaker 1: Peasant Woman remains on display alongside the X ray image
Speaker 1: of the self portrait, and while this type of discovery
Speaker 1: is rare, it's not unheard of. Experts have also found
Speaker 1: hidden works by both Theicelli and Picasso using similar technology.
Speaker 1: So the next time you're at a museum staring up
Speaker 1: at a curious canvas and wondering what it all meant.
Speaker 1: Consider asking yourself what might be hiding beneath it. 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.