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. Everyone has those times
Speaker 2: when procrastination gets the best of them. We keep meaning
Speaker 2: to clean that garage or donate those clothes, but we
Speaker 2: never seem to get the chance to do it. As
Speaker 2: it turns out, this is a universal experience. Even princes
Speaker 2: put things off that they don't want to do. In
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty, Hungarian Prince Nicolaus esther Hazy finally made up
Speaker 2: his mind to finish something sitting on his to do list.
Speaker 2: Say ten years earlier, when his court composer Joseph Haydn died,
Speaker 2: he swore that he would move the man from his
Speaker 2: modest grave in Vienna to a beautiful tomb at the
Speaker 2: Estra Hazy estate. But when the body was exhumed, the
Speaker 2: prince was in for a shock. It seemed that his
Speaker 2: friend had lost his head, quite literally. Joseph Heiden's body
Speaker 2: was in the coffin with a powdered wig atop it.
Speaker 2: The skull, however, was missing. Now, if you're a classical
Speaker 2: music fan, you've probably heard of Joseph Heyden. He was
Speaker 2: born in seventeen thirty two to a poor family in Austria.
Speaker 2: Although neither of his parents had been musically trained, music
Speaker 2: was a huge part of his home life. His father
Speaker 2: taught himself to play the harp, and his mother liked
Speaker 2: to sing with their neighbors. When Joseph showed interest in
Speaker 2: music at an early age, his parents knew that he'd
Speaker 2: have no chance to learn if he stayed with them
Speaker 2: in the village, so at a young age of just
Speaker 2: five years old, Joseph went to live with his cousin,
Speaker 2: the choir master of a larger town. As Joseph grew up,
Speaker 2: he dedicated his life to music, first as a singer
Speaker 2: in several choirs, then as a music teacher and accompanist,
Speaker 2: and finally as a composer. In seventeen sixty one, when
Speaker 2: Joseph was twenty nine years old, the prominent ester Haze
Speaker 2: family recruited Joseph to write music and direct their court musicians.
Speaker 2: Joseph Oversaw music for the ester Hazes for the rest
Speaker 2: of his life. During his long career, he had a
Speaker 2: huge influence on classical music. He didn't invent the concept
Speaker 2: of the symphony, which is a musical piece of an
Speaker 2: orchestra with several contrasting movements, but he did make them
Speaker 2: hugely popular. He also was the first to write music
Speaker 2: for a string quartet, which usually involves two violins of
Speaker 2: viola and a cello. He was a close friend of
Speaker 2: Mozart and even trained Beethoven. But Joseph's strangest claim to
Speaker 2: fame came after his death. When he died in eighteen
Speaker 2: oh nine, Vienna was under attack by Napoleon's French army.
Speaker 2: His patrons, the ester Hazes, wanted to bury him at
Speaker 2: their estate, but it was much too difficult to transport
Speaker 2: Joseph's body from the city, so he was buried in
Speaker 2: a local semin terry, with the idea that they would
Speaker 2: move him later after the war. When Prince Nicholas tried
Speaker 2: to do that eleven years later, that's when he first
Speaker 2: discovered that Joseph had lost his head. So why would
Speaker 2: someone take the dead composer's skull? Well, you can blame
Speaker 2: the idea of phrenology. Phrenology was a pseudoscience that assumed
Speaker 2: that the bumps on someone's skull predicted their intelligence. People
Speaker 2: believe that certain bumps on your head might mean that
Speaker 2: you were skilled in music, or art or other talents.
Speaker 2: The skulls of famous musicians like Joseph Heiden might have
Speaker 2: all kinds of musical bumps and lumps. So when he died,
Speaker 2: two amateur phrenologists bribed a grave digger to steal his
Speaker 2: head from the coffin. These men were Joseph Rosenbaum and
Speaker 2: Johann Peter. Rosenbaum had actually met Joseph Heiden many times.
Speaker 2: In fact, Joseph was friends with Rosenbaum and his opera
Speaker 2: singer wife. When Rosenbaum and Peter received Joseph's head, they
Speaker 2: quickly cleaned the skull and examined it, hoping to find
Speaker 2: some sign of Joseph's immense talent. They both claimed that
Speaker 2: he had a fully developed bump of music on his head,
Speaker 2: signaling that he was a great composer. Now, for years,
Speaker 2: Peter and Rosenbaum passed the skull back and forth between themselves,
Speaker 2: but in eighteen twenty, when Prince Nicholas realized that his
Speaker 2: friend's head had been stolen. He very quickly figured out
Speaker 2: who the thieves were. But Rosenbaum, who had the skull
Speaker 2: at the time, didn't want to give up his prize possession,
Speaker 2: so when the authority searched Rosenbaum's house, he hid the
Speaker 2: skull in a mattress. He even had his wife lay
Speaker 2: on top of it and claimed that she had her
Speaker 2: period in this less enlightened age. That was enough to
Speaker 2: keep the mail investigators away. Finally, Rosenbaum gave Prince Nicholas
Speaker 2: another skull from his collection. Prince Nicholas buried it with
Speaker 2: Joseph Haydn's grave, believing that his friend's body had finally
Speaker 2: become whole. Joseph's real skull, though, kicked.
Speaker 1: Around Vienna for the next few decades, passing from phrenologists
Speaker 1: to music fans. Eventually it ended up at the Vienna
Speaker 1: Society for Friends and Music, where it often observed meetings
Speaker 1: from its perch top a piano. By nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: the ester Hazes had discovered that Joseph Hayden was buried
Speaker 1: with the wrong head, so they built a brand new
Speaker 1: tomb for the composer in Einstadt in a church where
Speaker 1: many of his works were performed. But it wasn't until
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, one hundred and forty five years after
Speaker 1: Joseph Hayden's death, that his real skull was finally reunited
Speaker 1: with his body. Not knowing who the other skull belonged to,
Speaker 1: the ester Hazes left that one in the coffin as well,
Speaker 1: finally bringing an end of the world's longest game of
Speaker 1: hide and go seek. Throughout the annals of history, there
Speaker 1: have been individuals whose lives have defied the boundaries of
Speaker 1: time and whose stories stretch across the ages. That's usually
Speaker 1: because of their remarkable accomplishments, but in the case of
Speaker 1: this story, it's because it literally spans so much time.
Speaker 1: Our story begins with an anecdote that borders on the absurd.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty nine, a French woman named Jean Calmo
Speaker 1: entered into a unique arrangement known as an en viege,
Speaker 1: a French system in which a property is sold for
Speaker 1: a lump sum, with the buyer making monthly payments to
Speaker 1: the seller until the seller's death. In Jean's case, she
Speaker 1: sold her apartment located in the city of Arles to
Speaker 1: her lawyer, and he believed that he was making a
Speaker 1: long term investment and paid a total of nine hundred
Speaker 1: and eighteen thousand francs over time. But in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: when the lawyer was seventy seven years old, he passed away.
Speaker 1: And you might be wondering why he would have entered
Speaker 1: into the agreement in the first place if he thought
Speaker 1: that his client would outlive him. But that's the thing.
Speaker 1: He had every reason to believe that he would inherit
Speaker 1: that apartment. You see, in nineteen ninety five when he
Speaker 1: passed away, Jean was one hundred and twenty years old. Today,
Speaker 1: she's known to have the longest human life span on record.
Speaker 1: Oh and for the curios, yes, the lawyer's family continued
Speaker 1: making payments until Jean died two years later. In the end,
Speaker 1: the price paid was more than double the apartment's value.
Speaker 1: But this is only one part of the curious story.
Speaker 1: After all, one hundred and twenty years is a long time.
Speaker 1: That is, if Jean really lived that long. Before I
Speaker 1: explained the skepticism behind her supposed lifespan, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: a little bit more about Jean's life. Jean had a
Speaker 1: husband named Fernand and a daughter named Yvonne. Fernand's family
Speaker 1: owned a dry goods store, and they lived in an
Speaker 1: apartment above it. Later on in her life, Jean would
Speaker 1: tell the story of a customer who bought canvases there
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty eight, an artist named Vincent van Go.
Speaker 1: Jean's life was riddled with tragedy, though. In nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: her daughter Yvonne died of tuberculosis, so she and Fernand
Speaker 1: took in their grandson, Freddy. Then, in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: Fernand passed away, Jean and her son in law, Joseph,
Speaker 1: moved into an apartment together. About twenty years later, Joseph
Speaker 1: and Freddy both died from separate causes, and Jeane left
Speaker 1: all alone. Now in her late eighties, Jene distracted herself
Speaker 1: from her loneliness by staying busy and active. People in
Speaker 1: town often spotted her running errands, moving swiftly throughout the
Speaker 1: city streets. When she was close to one hundred, the
Speaker 1: mayor even commented that she looked twenty years younger. Some
Speaker 1: say that she even still rode a bike in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties, at the age of one hundred and sixteen,
Speaker 1: Jane earned the title of oldest person alive. Researchers validated
Speaker 1: Jeane's age by observing and interviewing her, and finally, on
Speaker 1: August fourth of nineteen ninety seven, Jane passed away. But
Speaker 1: her story doesn't even end there. In twenty eighteen, a
Speaker 1: geriatrician and a mathematician, two men from Moscow who met
Speaker 1: on Facebook, of all places, teamed up to disprove Gene's
Speaker 1: title as the oldest person to have ever lived. The
Speaker 1: geriatrician examined some photos of Gene and believed that when
Speaker 1: she was supposed to have been one hundred and ten,
Speaker 1: she looked more like ninety. We know that when she
Speaker 1: was alive. The mayor of her city also said that
Speaker 1: she looked twenty years younger than she she claimed to be.
Speaker 1: The mathematician first used statistics to rule out the probability
Speaker 1: that a person could reach the age of one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty. Then, as he scraped the Internet for information
Speaker 1: about Gene, he found discrepancies in many of her stories
Speaker 1: and the reports about her life. One example was that
Speaker 1: Jeane apparently told mixed versions of that story about van Go.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she said her father helped him. Other times she
Speaker 1: said her husband Fernand did. She also said that Fernand
Speaker 1: introduced her to van Go as his wife. However, in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, when this encounter supposedly occurred, Jean and
Speaker 1: Fernand weren't even married yet. This made the mathematician even
Speaker 1: more suspicious, and he started using photoshop to tinker with
Speaker 1: Jane's features. This was how he developed the theory that
Speaker 1: for sixty years, the woman who called herself Jeane Calmo
Speaker 1: was actually her daughter Yvonne. He believed that in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, when Yvonne supposedly died, it was really Jeane
Speaker 1: who had passed away, but the family claimed the body
Speaker 1: belonged to Yvonne. He thought that maybe they did this
Speaker 1: so that Yvonne could avoid taxes on her inheritance from
Speaker 1: her mother. In his eyes, this explained by Jean would
Speaker 1: have lived with her son in law, who in this theory,
Speaker 1: would have been her husband. It also would have meant
Speaker 1: that Yvonne entered into that agreement with her lawyer for
Speaker 1: the apartment knowing that he would never get it. Since
Speaker 1: these two men conducted their investigation, other scientists and researchers
Speaker 1: have also published work debunking Gene's record breaking age, but
Speaker 1: the topic has caused controversy between them and the researchers
Speaker 1: who originally validated her age. Online salutes and fanatics have
Speaker 1: entered the chat, and a twenty twenty New Yorker article
Speaker 1: dove deep into each side. But even if Gene can't
Speaker 1: claim the longest lifespan, she might qualify for other titles
Speaker 1: like best fraud or worst person to purchase an apartment from.
Speaker 1: Whatever the case, her story shows that even when we
Speaker 1: encounter amazing mysteries, there's always someone on Facebook willing to
Speaker 1: tell you how wrong you are. 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 Mankey 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.