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 dead are never truly gone. We remember
Speaker 1: them in all sorts of ways. Today we have the
Speaker 1: convenience of cameras in our pockets that can store hours
Speaker 1: of video footage and thousands of photographs, so we never
Speaker 1: forget before we had such luxuries, though the dead were
Speaker 1: commemorated using other methods. A widow might have kept some
Speaker 1: of her late husband's hair in a locket around her neck.
Speaker 1: Death masks were also a popular way to preserve someone's
Speaker 1: visage by making a cast of their face using wax
Speaker 1: or plaster. In fact, wax was the preferred medium for
Speaker 1: Marie Grossoltz, who made death masks of some of the
Speaker 1: French Revolution's most famous casualties, and it was pretty easy
Speaker 1: for her too, since she only needed their heads. Marie
Speaker 1: was born in seventeen sixty one in Strasburg, France, she
Speaker 1: never knew her father. He was killed in battle during
Speaker 1: the Seven Years War two months before she was born.
Speaker 1: Six years later, her mother uprooted the family and whisked
Speaker 1: them all off to Switzerland. Marie's mother had found work
Speaker 1: as a housekeeper in the home of a noted doctor,
Speaker 1: Philippe Cursuisse, who immediately took a shine to the young girl.
Speaker 1: Under his tutelage, Marie learned how to work with wax,
Speaker 1: molding and shaping it to her will. She even accompanied
Speaker 1: Philippe to Paris, where she lived for much of her
Speaker 1: life thereafter. In seventeen seventy seven, Marie demonstrated all she
Speaker 1: had learned in her first solo venture, a wax sculpture
Speaker 1: of French philosopher Voltaire. One year later, the student had
Speaker 1: become the teacher. She traveled to Versailles to teach art
Speaker 1: to a single student, King Louis the sixteenth sister Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: After that, Marie was invited to live at the palace.
Speaker 1: For roughly a decade, she sat in on private conversations
Speaker 1: among the royals, building their trust and becoming a kind
Speaker 1: of confidant to them. She had begun her time as
Speaker 1: an educator, but wound up making some important friends along
Speaker 1: the way. Unfortunately, nothing good last forever. The political climates
Speaker 1: of the time was dangerous for someone in Marie's shoes.
Speaker 1: You might even say it was revolting. Thousands of French
Speaker 1: citizens were about to rise up, and they were not
Speaker 1: going to let the art teacher for the aristocracy get away.
Speaker 1: Marie left Verssilles the night before the start of the
Speaker 1: French Revolution and fled back to Paris to hide with
Speaker 1: her mother and Philippe. A handful of years later, however,
Speaker 1: the revolution caught up with them. All three were hauled
Speaker 1: away to the forced prison, accused of being royal sympathizers.
Speaker 1: Marie's hair was even shaved off in preparation for her beheading.
Speaker 1: Luckily for her, Philippe was able to get her released
Speaker 1: with the help of an influential friend. But instead of escaping,
Speaker 1: Marie decided to stick around, putting her talents to work
Speaker 1: by making death masks of famous royals, including her former boss,
Speaker 1: Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette. Billip died the following
Speaker 1: year in sevent and left his former student with the
Speaker 1: wax figures he'd created over the course of his life.
Speaker 1: As she got older, Marie settled down. She got married
Speaker 1: and had three children, but continued to pursue her passion.
Speaker 1: She was able to get her wax portraits exhibited in
Speaker 1: London in eighteen o two. They weren't exactly a hit,
Speaker 1: but that didn't stop her from trying in other parts
Speaker 1: of England. She toured the country for over thirty years,
Speaker 1: setting up temporary showcases where visitors could gawk at the
Speaker 1: lifelike figures of people who had died long ago. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the early eighteen thirties when Marie finally found
Speaker 1: a permanent home for her work on London's Baker Street.
Speaker 1: It was a whole floor of the Baker Street Bazaar,
Speaker 1: and one of its highlights was what one magazine called
Speaker 1: the Chamber of Horrors. That section of the exhibit featured
Speaker 1: the figures she had done of the French Revolutions victims. Today,
Speaker 1: the Chamber has come to hold wax representations of some
Speaker 1: of the most notorious people to ever walk the earth,
Speaker 1: including Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, and vlad the Impaler. Over
Speaker 1: the years, many of Marie's statues were lost, some melted
Speaker 1: in a fire, while others were destroyed during World War Two,
Speaker 1: but because she had the foresight to make molds of them,
Speaker 1: they were easily recreated and duplicated. Marie died in eighteen fifty,
Speaker 1: but her work lives on all around the world in
Speaker 1: places like London, Hong Kong, Washington, d C. New York City,
Speaker 1: and Las Vegas, to name a few. New figures are
Speaker 1: being added to her exhibits each year as well, including
Speaker 1: movie stars and politicians, and those who want to see
Speaker 1: the lasting wax legacy of Madame Marie Grossholtz need only
Speaker 1: to look for the sign outside bearing her married name
Speaker 1: Madam Too, So nobody wants to work on their day off.
Speaker 1: The last thing anyone wants is to get an email
Speaker 1: from their boss when they're supposed to be relaxing, or
Speaker 1: a call about an urgent crisis during their vacation. Judith
Speaker 1: had scheduled some time off in nineteen sixty nine. Luckily
Speaker 1: she didn't have to come back into the office since
Speaker 1: she'd finished her work ahead of time, and a good
Speaker 1: thing too, Otherwise the astronauts of the Apollo thirteen mission
Speaker 1: would have been in serious trouble. Judith was born in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York, in nineteen thirty three. Growing up, she became
Speaker 1: known for two things, her ballet dancing and her stellar
Speaker 1: math skills. She not only tutored her classmates in math,
Speaker 1: she also earned a little money on the side by
Speaker 1: doing their homework for them. She was so skilled, in fact,
Speaker 1: that Brooklyn College offered her a full scholarship to pursue mathematics.
Speaker 1: But once she got there, she realized her true passion
Speaker 1: was in engineer ring. She switched majors, splitting her time
Speaker 1: between school and dancing in New York's Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen fifty two, she left the East Coast
Speaker 1: and Brooklyn College for a new life and a new
Speaker 1: engineering career in California. Her skills had earned her a
Speaker 1: position at North American Aviation, the birthplace of the P
Speaker 1: fifty one Mustang fighter plane and the B twenty five
Speaker 1: Mitchell bomber. When she wasn't designing aircraft components, though Judith
Speaker 1: continued to pursue her bachelor's degree at USC, she also
Speaker 1: started building systems and parts for the United States budding
Speaker 1: space program. Judith Cohen graduated in nineteen fifty seven and
Speaker 1: moved on from North American Aviation to a new aerospace company,
Speaker 1: Space Technologies Laboratories, was working on several interesting projects, one
Speaker 1: of which she would play an integral part in. Some
Speaker 1: years later, they were developing a capsule that was going
Speaker 1: to be launched into space and landed safely on the Moon.
Speaker 1: It was part of a new initiative called the Apollo Program.
Speaker 1: Judith spent the next several years working on specific aspects
Speaker 1: of Apollo, including the lunar modules abort guidance system. The
Speaker 1: abort guidance system allowed the astronauts to abort a lunar
Speaker 1: landing if the modules primary guidance system malfunctioned, which is
Speaker 1: exactly what happened during the Apollo thirteen mission. On April
Speaker 1: eleventh of nineteen seventy, Jim Level and his crew were
Speaker 1: launched into orbit from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The
Speaker 1: original plan had been to land on the Moon, but
Speaker 1: one of the oxygen tanks exploded two days into the
Speaker 1: mission and contact with the lunar surface could not be made.
Speaker 1: Communications dropped out for almost two seconds a lifetime if
Speaker 1: you're stranded in a cramped box hurtling through space. As
Speaker 1: electrical malfunctions flickered, it was clear there was no way
Speaker 1: Level and his men were going to reach the Moon.
Speaker 1: The problem now was in getting home. With help from
Speaker 1: Mission control back in Houston, the crew devised a new
Speaker 1: way to return to Earth. By looping around the Moon.
Speaker 1: At the right time, they would fire up the module's
Speaker 1: engines and slingshot the vessel back to Earth. A critical
Speaker 1: part of the plan was in executing a direct abort
Speaker 1: of the landing procedure. Otherwise the module would have descended
Speaker 1: to the Moon's surface and the crew would have died there.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Judith Cohen and her work on the abort
Speaker 1: guidance system, Level and his team were able to avoid
Speaker 1: the lunar detour and make it home. Cohen took her
Speaker 1: job and her responsibilities very seriously, So seriously, in fact,
Speaker 1: that she even worked while she was giving birth. One
Speaker 1: year earlier, in August of nineteen sixty nine, Judith went
Speaker 1: into labor while working on a difficult problem at the office,
Speaker 1: presumably related to the abort guidance system. Rather than leave
Speaker 1: it unsolved, though, she printed it out and took it
Speaker 1: with her to the hospital. After several hours of labor,
Speaker 1: she called the office and let her boss know that
Speaker 1: she had solved the problem. Oh and she had also
Speaker 1: just given birth to a little boy who would eventually
Speaker 1: grow up to become a world famous actor and musician,
Speaker 1: none other than Jack Black. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yea