Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke'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: Whispers swirled through the streets of New Delhi for decades.
Speaker 1: A crumbling mansion in a dark forest, a birthright that
Speaker 1: had been stolen, a queen with no kingdom. It might
Speaker 1: sound like something out of a Victorian novel, but for
Speaker 1: fifty years, the last rulers of Avid lived out their
Speaker 1: own Gothic tragedy right in the center of the Indian capital.
Speaker 1: The whole affair began in the early nineteen seventies when
Speaker 1: a regally dressed woman and her two adult children arrived
Speaker 1: at the New Delhi train station. The three quickly took
Speaker 1: over the lobby. Fine woven carpets, potted palms, Nepalese servants
Speaker 1: in twin outfits, even a pack of massive great danes
Speaker 1: marked their corner of the station. After the woman had
Speaker 1: finally settled in, she called over the shock station master
Speaker 1: she had a message for him. He was now standing
Speaker 1: in the presence of Willyat, the Bagum of the stolen
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Avid. These were her children, Prince Cyrus and
Speaker 1: Princess Sakina, and they would not move until their kingdom
Speaker 1: was returned to them. To understand the Bagum's demands, you'd
Speaker 1: have to look back over one hundred years. Before British colonization,
Speaker 1: much of modern day India was made up of either
Speaker 1: the Mughal Empire or independent states. Avid was a kingdom
Speaker 1: in the north ruled by a noble Muslim family until
Speaker 1: the British took it in the eighteen fifties. Wilayat claimed
Speaker 1: that this was her family and she was the ruler
Speaker 1: of Avid, and she would live in the station in
Speaker 1: protest until she was given back her rightful throne. And
Speaker 1: her demands soon reached the Indian government, and while they
Speaker 1: wanted to wave her away, they worried that doing so
Speaker 1: would stoke conflict. This was thirty years after the partition
Speaker 1: of India, when the departing British divided their colony into
Speaker 1: India and Pakistan. Partition led to mass violence as Muslims
Speaker 1: in India fled to the new country of Pakistan, and
Speaker 1: Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan moved to India. There was
Speaker 1: still religious tension in the country in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: so the Indian government wanted to avoid forcibly evicting Waliat.
Speaker 1: The government offered her a house, which she dismissed out
Speaker 1: of hand. She would settle for nothing less than a palace,
Speaker 1: and surprisingly, after ten years, she finally got one, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five, she and her family moved to
Speaker 1: Malcha Mahal, a grand medieval hunting lodge on the outskirts
Speaker 1: of Delhi. It had no water, no power or even telephone,
Speaker 1: and was open to the element, but it would do
Speaker 1: for Now settled into the lodge, Williot and her children
Speaker 1: continued to demand their lands, inviting foreign journalists to interview
Speaker 1: them and broadcast their complaints, and then, sadly, in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, Williat died by suicide. According to Sakina and Cyrus,
Speaker 1: she drank poison mixed with crushed pearls and diamonds as
Speaker 1: one final act of protest against the government. Cyrus and
Speaker 1: Sakina continued to dwell in the lodge, seen only occasionally
Speaker 1: by their neighbors. The Prince and Princess, whose comments to
Speaker 1: foreign journalists hinted at well educated and wealthy upbringings, were
Speaker 1: spotted with ragged clothes, matted hair, and sharp cheap bones
Speaker 1: of near starvation. When the princess died sometime in the
Speaker 1: twenty tens, followed by the Prince in twenty seventeen, that
Speaker 1: seemed to be the end of the whole bizarre story,
Speaker 1: or it would have been, had one journalist not grown curious.
Speaker 1: Ellen Barry, a New York Times reporter, had struck up
Speaker 1: a friendship with Prince Cyrus after interview him in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: After his death, she returned to the lodge and was
Speaker 1: surprised to find evidence of another sibling who seemingly lived
Speaker 1: in England. Traveling from Delhi to the former Kingdom of
Speaker 1: Avid to a small row house in Yorkshire, England, she
Speaker 1: finally uncovered the true story. Wellat Beagum of Avid was
Speaker 1: actually Wilyat Butt, wife of a university administrator, Princess Saquina
Speaker 1: was actually Farad, and Prince Cyrus was really Mickey. Their
Speaker 1: real story started with the Partition, when the Butt family
Speaker 1: fled to Pakistan. Walat was always opinionated and had no
Speaker 1: issue pressing Pakistan's government over political matters. After one instance
Speaker 1: where she reportedly slapped the Prime Minister of Pakistan in
Speaker 1: the face, she ended up in a mental hospital. Soon after,
Speaker 1: she disappeared back to Lucknow with Mickey and Farhad in
Speaker 1: tow and that's when she began to refer to herself
Speaker 1: as the Bagum of Avid. Soon after, she showed up
Speaker 1: in that new Delhi train station demanding a kingdom that
Speaker 1: was not hers. She continued the lie for decades, and
Speaker 1: her children continued it after her death. Whether Wi Li
Speaker 1: It was delusional or simply that dedicated to a very
Speaker 1: long con we don't know. But she did prove that
Speaker 1: sometimes the best way to get what you want is
Speaker 1: to be a royal pain. In nineteen thirty three, a
Speaker 1: magnitude eight point four earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty miles from Japan's northeast coast. It
Speaker 1: struck far enough from any city that there wasn't much damage,
Speaker 1: at least from the quake itself. The shifting technotic plates
Speaker 1: triggered a massive tsunami, though for several hours, thirty foot
Speaker 1: waves battered the coast, obliterating countless seaside towns and fishing villages.
Speaker 1: When the waves finally subsided, thousands of people were dead
Speaker 1: or missing. In the aftermath of the disaster, twenty four
Speaker 1: year old Kotoko Wamura watered through his devastated hometown of Fudai,
Speaker 1: watching in numb horror as bodies were dragged from the rubble,
Speaker 1: and he kept walking, taking a trail up into the
Speaker 1: nearby mountains. Just as he was preparing to turn back,
Speaker 1: he discovered a large stone tablet etched with Japanese characters.
Speaker 1: It was a tsunami stone, placed after a previous disaster
Speaker 1: to mark how high the water line rose. Japan is
Speaker 1: full of them. Actually, this one memorialized a tsunami that
Speaker 1: struck the area in eighteen ninety four, causing similar destruction.
Speaker 1: Wamura read the inscription on the stone and was stunned
Speaker 1: by the implication the stone had been left there as
Speaker 1: a warning that this type of thing could happen, yet
Speaker 1: no one had done anything to prevent a repeat disaster.
Speaker 1: It made him realize that even this recent tsunami could
Speaker 1: soon be forgotten, but not by him. After that day,
Speaker 1: Wamura was driven by a singular goal. He would prevent
Speaker 1: Fudai from falling prey to a third tsunami, even if
Speaker 1: it took the rest of his life. And fourteen years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty seven, he ran for city mayor and
Speaker 1: managed to get elected, and he immediately threw himself into
Speaker 1: a pet project, the construction of a massive fifty one
Speaker 1: foot seawall including a floodgate. The city council bulked at
Speaker 1: the proposal. This seawall would be a massive iceore, blocking
Speaker 1: the ocean view that residents had enjoyed for generations. Yes,
Speaker 1: they could see the wisdom of building a seawall of
Speaker 1: some kind, but did it really have to be so tall?
Speaker 1: Needless to say, Walmura refused to budge, and through the
Speaker 1: years he eventually managed to get the project approved. Construction
Speaker 1: of the wall and the gate cost an astronomical three
Speaker 1: point four million Japanese yen roughly forty million US dollars today,
Speaker 1: almost twice NASA's annual budget. The residents of Fudai weren't
Speaker 1: exactly thrilled, and as the years passed with no more tsunamis,
Speaker 1: their feelings on the project only deepened. The wall became
Speaker 1: a laughing stock a black mark on Walmura's reputation, but
Speaker 1: the mayor remained defiant, confident that he would eventually be
Speaker 1: proven right. At his resignation speech in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: he told attendees and I quote, even if you encounter opposition,
Speaker 1: have conviction and finish what you start. In the end
Speaker 1: people will understand. But for the most part, the people
Speaker 1: of Fudai did not understand. They continued to mock Wamura
Speaker 1: and his wall for years. When he died in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven at the age of eighty eight, the sea
Speaker 1: wall was still viewed as an embarrassing and expensive waste
Speaker 1: of taxpayers money. It would remain that way until March
Speaker 1: eleventh of twenty eleven. That day, a magnitude nine point
Speaker 1: one earthquake struck near eastern Japan. It was the strongest
Speaker 1: quake in recorded history and generated a tsunami of one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty foot ways. For a nation that was
Speaker 1: used to natural disasters, this one was different. Those waves
Speaker 1: ravaged the Japanese coastline, leaving twenty thousand dead, six thousand injured,
Speaker 1: and twenty five hundred missing. It also triggered the meltdown
Speaker 1: of a nuclear power plant, causing environmental damage and forcing
Speaker 1: the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents. It was
Speaker 1: the costliest natural disaster in history, and Japan's northeastern coast
Speaker 1: got the brunt of the disaster. Entire towns were washed away.
Speaker 1: Even a village with thirty foot walls was devastated. But
Speaker 1: for all the damage, one town was virtually untouched. Fudai's
Speaker 1: long maligned seawall and floodgate had held, and despite bearing
Speaker 1: the brunt of the storm, the town was still standing.
Speaker 1: In fact, it barely got wet. 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 Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Life, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And
Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious.