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 are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: In late nineteenth century, Paris rescue workers pulled a young
Speaker 1: woman's body out of the River Sene. By the time
Speaker 1: she was lifted out of the water, she was already
Speaker 1: dead from an apparent drowning, but strangely, there was no
Speaker 1: panic or fear in her eyes. Instead, a rescue worker
Speaker 1: brushed the damp hair away from her face and found
Speaker 1: a beautiful, peaceful half smile on her lips. The work
Speaker 1: didn't find anything in the woman's pockets that identified her
Speaker 1: by name, so, as was customary at the time, they
Speaker 1: took her body to the Paris mortuary. There she was
Speaker 1: put on display in the window that hopes that someone
Speaker 1: passing by would recognize and put a name to her
Speaker 1: serene face. The woman's family never did come by and
Speaker 1: identify her, but her enigmatic expression turned the heads of
Speaker 1: everyone who walked past morbid, Crowds gathered in the street
Speaker 1: to get a look at her eerily calm smile, and
Speaker 1: the Unknown Woman of the Sin, as she became known,
Speaker 1: was a local celebrity. The pathologist who worked at the
Speaker 1: mortuary was so taken by her mysterious beauty that he
Speaker 1: made a cast of her face, and before long it
Speaker 1: was being used to create plaster replicas that were sold
Speaker 1: in souvenir shops all across Europe. Over the next few decades,
Speaker 1: the Unknown Woman became the subject of poems, paintings and novels,
Speaker 1: all of which tried to fill in the blanks of
Speaker 1: who she was and what had led to her drowning.
Speaker 1: The most popular legend was that she had thrown herself
Speaker 1: into the river due to a broken heart. One novelist
Speaker 1: imagined her as an innocent country girl who was seduced
Speaker 1: by a rich Parisian man. Meanwhile, another portrayed her as
Speaker 1: an evil force whose death mask draws the narrator into
Speaker 1: an all consuming obsession. But even as the Unknown Woman
Speaker 1: of the Sin became the most famous face in Europe,
Speaker 1: the actual woman at the heart of the myth remained unidentified.
Speaker 1: As the decades passed, and her fame gradually faded. The
Speaker 1: unknown woman might have been lost to history if a
Speaker 1: Norwegian toy manufacturer hadn't given her a second life. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, a toy maker named Asmund Laerdahl got
Speaker 1: an unusual request for a custom project. A physician wanted
Speaker 1: him to develop a doll to help doctors practice a
Speaker 1: new life saving technique called cardiopulmonary resuscitation, better known as CPR.
Speaker 1: The doll had to be life sized and functional, with
Speaker 1: open lips that could be used to practice mouth to
Speaker 1: mouth resuscitation, and a realistic face to make the training
Speaker 1: exercise more emotionally impactful and thus more memorable. And Lerdau
Speaker 1: was the perfect man for the job. He sculpted the
Speaker 1: Mannikin's body out of soft plastic and metal springs, and
Speaker 1: when it was time to design the face, an old
Speaker 1: image stirred in his memory, a plaster bust that hung
Speaker 1: on the wall of his wife's parents' house. It was
Speaker 1: a peaceful visage of the unknown woman of the sin.
Speaker 1: The CPR doll, known as Resussi Anni, debuted in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty and over the coming decades, hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people across the globe learned cpr on versions of her,
Speaker 1: earning the Woman of the Sin a reputation as the
Speaker 1: most kissed face in the world. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart remains
Speaker 1: one of history's most celebrated composers, a prodigy whose melodies
Speaker 1: have echoed through concert halls for more than two centuries.
Speaker 1: At the astonishing age of just five years old, he
Speaker 1: was able to compose short pieces and perform for European royalty.
Speaker 1: By his teenage years, he had produced works that would
Speaker 1: make seasoned masters jealous. Yet behind this musical brilliance lay
Speaker 1: a man of idiosyncratic habits, whose strange appetites and offbeat
Speaker 1: humor revealed a personality as colorful as his scores. One
Speaker 1: of the most charming anecdotes concerns Mozart's pet, Starling, a
Speaker 1: bird presented to him in seventeen eighty four. Enamored with
Speaker 1: the feathered visitor, Mozart transcribed the lilting tune that the
Speaker 1: bird sang into his notebook, a motif that mirrors a
Speaker 1: passage from his own piano concerto number seventeen in G major.
Speaker 1: When the song died three years later, Mozart staged a
Speaker 1: miniature funeral, complete with a tiny coffin and mournful procession
Speaker 1: to honor his small companion. His sense of humor was
Speaker 1: equally distinctive, although far less refined than one might expect
Speaker 1: from a classical maestro. Scatological jokes pepper his private correspondence
Speaker 1: The Verses, brimming with body wordplay that would shock modern readers.
Speaker 1: Historians debate whether these jokes merely reflect the culture of
Speaker 1: eighteenth century Vienna or served as a deliberate, playful rebellion
Speaker 1: against social conventions. Occasionally, the levity seeped into his music, too,
Speaker 1: where he set riskaye German lyrics to familiar tunes as
Speaker 1: inside jokes for close friends knots. All of Mozart's experiences
Speaker 1: were so lighthearted, though at eleven he contracted smallpox, a
Speaker 1: disease that claimed countless lives in the eighteenth century. The
Speaker 1: illness temporarily blinded him and forced his family to flee
Speaker 1: Vienna to escape the epidemic. Such a severe setback could
Speaker 1: have ended his career before it truly began, and yet
Speaker 1: Mozart recovered and continued to compose works of astonishing depth
Speaker 1: and variety. But the most haunting chapter of Mozart's biography
Speaker 1: revolves around his Requiem in D Minor, the work that
Speaker 1: he never lived to finish. In the autumn of seventeen
Speaker 1: ninety one, a mysterious patron approached a trusted intermediary, France
Speaker 1: van Walseg, with a commission for a solemn mass for
Speaker 1: the dead Valsig, a wealthy amateur composer, desired the piece
Speaker 1: to appear as his own tribute to his late wife,
Speaker 1: a secret that he guarded jealously. Mozart accepted the commission
Speaker 1: unaware of his client's true identity. He was already ailing
Speaker 1: persistent fever. Exhaustion and a lingering respiratory infection weighed heavily
Speaker 1: on him, and yet the promise of a substantial fee
Speaker 1: and the artistic challenge of a liturgical masterpiece spurred him onward.
Speaker 1: He began sketching the Introitis in early November, his pen
Speaker 1: moving swiftly, as if racing against an invisible clock, and
Speaker 1: in a sense he was. As the days passed by,
Speaker 1: Mozart's health deteriorated, he worked feverishly, often through the night,
Speaker 1: dictating sections to his devoted copyist, Joseph Elesser, and confiding
Speaker 1: in his wife Constanza, who assisted with copying and proofreading.
Speaker 1: Although the days were prolific, his body could no longer
Speaker 1: sustain the effort. Legend holds that on the evening of
Speaker 1: December fourth of seventeen ninety one, Mozart, barely able to
Speaker 1: lift his head, whispered the opening bars of the Lachrymosa,
Speaker 1: the final movement, which would remain forever finished. He died
Speaker 1: two days later on December fifth, leaving the Requiem a
Speaker 1: half rendered tapestry of soaring vocal lines and trembling orchestration.
Speaker 1: This manuscript, scattered across several pages, bears his unmistakable handwriting,
Speaker 1: interspersed with frantic corrections and marginal notes. After his death,
Speaker 1: his student, Franz Javert Sussmyer, was tasked with completing the work.
Speaker 1: Using Mozart's sketches and verbal instructions. Sousmir finished the Lachrymosa,
Speaker 1: added the remaining movements, and orchestrated the entire piece, striving
Speaker 1: to honor his master's voice while filling in the inevitable gaps.
Speaker 1: And thus the Requiem stands as a dual monument, on
Speaker 1: one hand, a testament to Mozart's unrivaled capacity to convey grief,
Speaker 1: awe and transcendence, and on the other, a poignant reminder
Speaker 1: of a life cut short. His final masterpiece forever tinged
Speaker 1: with mystery listeners still hear in its somber chords, the
Speaker 1: echo of a composer confronting his own mortality, a fitting
Speaker 1: if tragic coda to a career that reshaped Western music.
Speaker 1: In the end, Mozart's life, marked by laughter and sickness,
Speaker 1: creative brilliance, and bizarre episodes, serves as a testament to
Speaker 1: the multifaceted nature of human genius. These strange vignettes do
Speaker 1: not diminish his achievements. Rather, they add depth to the
Speaker 1: story of a man whose music continues to captivate the world.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey
Speaker 1: in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the
Speaker 1: Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn
Speaker 1: more about the show and the people who make it
Speaker 1: over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find
Speaker 1: a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book
Speaker 1: available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook.
Speaker 1: And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
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Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious. H