May 13, 2021 • 9 mins
Famous people can be highly curious, and hopefully, these stories will illustrate why.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. The dead are never truly gone. We remember
them in all sorts of ways. Today we have the
convenience of cameras in our pockets that can store hours
of video footage and thousands of photographs, so we never
(00:48):
forget before we had such luxuries, though the dead were
commemorated using other methods. A widow might have kept some
of her late husband's hair in a locket around her neck.
Death masks were also a popular way to preserve someone's
visage by making a cast of their face using wax
or plaster. In fact, wax was the preferred medium for
(01:08):
Marie Grossoltz, who made death masks of some of the
French Revolution's most famous casualties, and it was pretty easy
for her too, since she only needed their heads. Marie
was born in seventeen sixty one in Strasburg, France, she
never knew her father. He was killed in battle during
the Seven Years War two months before she was born.
Six years later, her mother uprooted the family and whisked
(01:30):
them all off to Switzerland. Marie's mother had found work
as a housekeeper in the home of a noted doctor,
Philippe Cursuisse, who immediately took a shine to the young girl.
Under his tutelage, Marie learned how to work with wax,
molding and shaping it to her will. She even accompanied
Philippe to Paris, where she lived for much of her
life thereafter. In seventeen seventy seven, Marie demonstrated all she
(01:53):
had learned in her first solo venture, a wax sculpture
of French philosopher Voltaire. One year later, the student had
become the teacher. She traveled to Versailles to teach art
to a single student, King Louis the sixteenth sister Elizabeth.
After that, Marie was invited to live at the palace.
For roughly a decade, she sat in on private conversations
(02:14):
among the royals, building their trust and becoming a kind
of confidant to them. She had begun her time as
an educator, but wound up making some important friends along
the way. Unfortunately, nothing good last forever. The political climates
of the time was dangerous for someone in Marie's shoes.
You might even say it was revolting. Thousands of French
citizens were about to rise up, and they were not
(02:35):
going to let the art teacher for the aristocracy get away.
Marie left Verssilles the night before the start of the
French Revolution and fled back to Paris to hide with
her mother and Philippe. A handful of years later, however,
the revolution caught up with them. All three were hauled
away to the forced prison, accused of being royal sympathizers.
Marie's hair was even shaved off in preparation for her beheading.
(02:58):
Luckily for her, Philippe was able to get her released
with the help of an influential friend. But instead of escaping,
Marie decided to stick around, putting her talents to work
by making death masks of famous royals, including her former boss,
Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette. Billip died the following
year in sevent and left his former student with the
(03:19):
wax figures he'd created over the course of his life.
As she got older, Marie settled down. She got married
and had three children, but continued to pursue her passion.
She was able to get her wax portraits exhibited in
London in eighteen o two. They weren't exactly a hit,
but that didn't stop her from trying in other parts
of England. She toured the country for over thirty years,
(03:40):
setting up temporary showcases where visitors could gawk at the
lifelike figures of people who had died long ago. It
wasn't until the early eighteen thirties when Marie finally found
a permanent home for her work on London's Baker Street.
It was a whole floor of the Baker Street Bazaar,
and one of its highlights was what one magazine called
the Chamber of Horrors. That section of the exhibit featured
(04:03):
the figures she had done of the French Revolutions victims. Today,
the Chamber has come to hold wax representations of some
of the most notorious people to ever walk the earth,
including Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, and vlad the Impaler. Over
the years, many of Marie's statues were lost, some melted
in a fire, while others were destroyed during World War Two,
(04:24):
but because she had the foresight to make molds of them,
they were easily recreated and duplicated. Marie died in eighteen fifty,
but her work lives on all around the world in
places like London, Hong Kong, Washington, d C. New York City,
and Las Vegas, to name a few. New figures are
being added to her exhibits each year as well, including
(04:46):
movie stars and politicians, and those who want to see
the lasting wax legacy of Madame Marie Grossholtz need only
to look for the sign outside bearing her married name
Madam Too, So nobody wants to work on their day off.
(05:13):
The last thing anyone wants is to get an email
from their boss when they're supposed to be relaxing, or
a call about an urgent crisis during their vacation. Judith
had scheduled some time off in nineteen sixty nine. Luckily
she didn't have to come back into the office since
she'd finished her work ahead of time, and a good
thing too, Otherwise the astronauts of the Apollo thirteen mission
would have been in serious trouble. Judith was born in Brooklyn,
(05:37):
New York, in nineteen thirty three. Growing up, she became
known for two things, her ballet dancing and her stellar
math skills. She not only tutored her classmates in math,
she also earned a little money on the side by
doing their homework for them. She was so skilled, in fact,
that Brooklyn College offered her a full scholarship to pursue mathematics.
But once she got there, she realized her true passion
(05:59):
was in engineer ring. She switched majors, splitting her time
between school and dancing in New York's Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company.
But in nineteen fifty two, she left the East Coast
and Brooklyn College for a new life and a new
engineering career in California. Her skills had earned her a
position at North American Aviation, the birthplace of the P
fifty one Mustang fighter plane and the B twenty five
(06:22):
Mitchell bomber. When she wasn't designing aircraft components, though Judith
continued to pursue her bachelor's degree at USC, she also
started building systems and parts for the United States budding
space program. Judith Cohen graduated in nineteen fifty seven and
moved on from North American Aviation to a new aerospace company,
Space Technologies Laboratories, was working on several interesting projects, one
(06:45):
of which she would play an integral part in. Some
years later, they were developing a capsule that was going
to be launched into space and landed safely on the Moon.
It was part of a new initiative called the Apollo Program.
Judith spent the next several years working on specific aspects
of Apollo, including the lunar modules abort guidance system. The
(07:05):
abort guidance system allowed the astronauts to abort a lunar
landing if the modules primary guidance system malfunctioned, which is
exactly what happened during the Apollo thirteen mission. On April
eleventh of nineteen seventy, Jim Level and his crew were
launched into orbit from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The
original plan had been to land on the Moon, but
(07:26):
one of the oxygen tanks exploded two days into the
mission and contact with the lunar surface could not be made.
Communications dropped out for almost two seconds a lifetime if
you're stranded in a cramped box hurtling through space. As
electrical malfunctions flickered, it was clear there was no way
Level and his men were going to reach the Moon.
(07:46):
The problem now was in getting home. With help from
Mission control back in Houston, the crew devised a new
way to return to Earth. By looping around the Moon.
At the right time, they would fire up the module's
engines and slingshot the vessel back to Earth. A critical
part of the plan was in executing a direct abort
of the landing procedure. Otherwise the module would have descended
(08:08):
to the Moon's surface and the crew would have died there.
Thanks to Judith Cohen and her work on the abort
guidance system, Level and his team were able to avoid
the lunar detour and make it home. Cohen took her
job and her responsibilities very seriously, So seriously, in fact,
that she even worked while she was giving birth. One
year earlier, in August of nineteen sixty nine, Judith went
(08:29):
into labor while working on a difficult problem at the office,
presumably related to the abort guidance system. Rather than leave
it unsolved, though, she printed it out and took it
with her to the hospital. After several hours of labor,
she called the office and let her boss know that
she had solved the problem. Oh and she had also
just given birth to a little boy who would eventually
(08:50):
grow up to become a world famous actor and musician,
none other than Jack Black. I hope you've enjoyed today's
guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
(09:12):
me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all
about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious. Yea
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. The dead are never truly gone. We remember
them in all sorts of ways. Today we have the
convenience of cameras in our pockets that can store hours
of video footage and thousands of photographs, so we never
(00:48):
forget before we had such luxuries, though the dead were
commemorated using other methods. A widow might have kept some
of her late husband's hair in a locket around her neck.
Death masks were also a popular way to preserve someone's
visage by making a cast of their face using wax
or plaster. In fact, wax was the preferred medium for
(01:08):
Marie Grossoltz, who made death masks of some of the
French Revolution's most famous casualties, and it was pretty easy
for her too, since she only needed their heads. Marie
was born in seventeen sixty one in Strasburg, France, she
never knew her father. He was killed in battle during
the Seven Years War two months before she was born.
Six years later, her mother uprooted the family and whisked
(01:30):
them all off to Switzerland. Marie's mother had found work
as a housekeeper in the home of a noted doctor,
Philippe Cursuisse, who immediately took a shine to the young girl.
Under his tutelage, Marie learned how to work with wax,
molding and shaping it to her will. She even accompanied
Philippe to Paris, where she lived for much of her
life thereafter. In seventeen seventy seven, Marie demonstrated all she
(01:53):
had learned in her first solo venture, a wax sculpture
of French philosopher Voltaire. One year later, the student had
become the teacher. She traveled to Versailles to teach art
to a single student, King Louis the sixteenth sister Elizabeth.
After that, Marie was invited to live at the palace.
For roughly a decade, she sat in on private conversations
(02:14):
among the royals, building their trust and becoming a kind
of confidant to them. She had begun her time as
an educator, but wound up making some important friends along
the way. Unfortunately, nothing good last forever. The political climates
of the time was dangerous for someone in Marie's shoes.
You might even say it was revolting. Thousands of French
citizens were about to rise up, and they were not
(02:35):
going to let the art teacher for the aristocracy get away.
Marie left Verssilles the night before the start of the
French Revolution and fled back to Paris to hide with
her mother and Philippe. A handful of years later, however,
the revolution caught up with them. All three were hauled
away to the forced prison, accused of being royal sympathizers.
Marie's hair was even shaved off in preparation for her beheading.
(02:58):
Luckily for her, Philippe was able to get her released
with the help of an influential friend. But instead of escaping,
Marie decided to stick around, putting her talents to work
by making death masks of famous royals, including her former boss,
Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette. Billip died the following
year in sevent and left his former student with the
(03:19):
wax figures he'd created over the course of his life.
As she got older, Marie settled down. She got married
and had three children, but continued to pursue her passion.
She was able to get her wax portraits exhibited in
London in eighteen o two. They weren't exactly a hit,
but that didn't stop her from trying in other parts
of England. She toured the country for over thirty years,
(03:40):
setting up temporary showcases where visitors could gawk at the
lifelike figures of people who had died long ago. It
wasn't until the early eighteen thirties when Marie finally found
a permanent home for her work on London's Baker Street.
It was a whole floor of the Baker Street Bazaar,
and one of its highlights was what one magazine called
the Chamber of Horrors. That section of the exhibit featured
(04:03):
the figures she had done of the French Revolutions victims. Today,
the Chamber has come to hold wax representations of some
of the most notorious people to ever walk the earth,
including Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, and vlad the Impaler. Over
the years, many of Marie's statues were lost, some melted
in a fire, while others were destroyed during World War Two,
(04:24):
but because she had the foresight to make molds of them,
they were easily recreated and duplicated. Marie died in eighteen fifty,
but her work lives on all around the world in
places like London, Hong Kong, Washington, d C. New York City,
and Las Vegas, to name a few. New figures are
being added to her exhibits each year as well, including
(04:46):
movie stars and politicians, and those who want to see
the lasting wax legacy of Madame Marie Grossholtz need only
to look for the sign outside bearing her married name
Madam Too, So nobody wants to work on their day off.
(05:13):
The last thing anyone wants is to get an email
from their boss when they're supposed to be relaxing, or
a call about an urgent crisis during their vacation. Judith
had scheduled some time off in nineteen sixty nine. Luckily
she didn't have to come back into the office since
she'd finished her work ahead of time, and a good
thing too, Otherwise the astronauts of the Apollo thirteen mission
would have been in serious trouble. Judith was born in Brooklyn,
(05:37):
New York, in nineteen thirty three. Growing up, she became
known for two things, her ballet dancing and her stellar
math skills. She not only tutored her classmates in math,
she also earned a little money on the side by
doing their homework for them. She was so skilled, in fact,
that Brooklyn College offered her a full scholarship to pursue mathematics.
But once she got there, she realized her true passion
(05:59):
was in engineer ring. She switched majors, splitting her time
between school and dancing in New York's Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company.
But in nineteen fifty two, she left the East Coast
and Brooklyn College for a new life and a new
engineering career in California. Her skills had earned her a
position at North American Aviation, the birthplace of the P
fifty one Mustang fighter plane and the B twenty five
(06:22):
Mitchell bomber. When she wasn't designing aircraft components, though Judith
continued to pursue her bachelor's degree at USC, she also
started building systems and parts for the United States budding
space program. Judith Cohen graduated in nineteen fifty seven and
moved on from North American Aviation to a new aerospace company,
Space Technologies Laboratories, was working on several interesting projects, one
(06:45):
of which she would play an integral part in. Some
years later, they were developing a capsule that was going
to be launched into space and landed safely on the Moon.
It was part of a new initiative called the Apollo Program.
Judith spent the next several years working on specific aspects
of Apollo, including the lunar modules abort guidance system. The
(07:05):
abort guidance system allowed the astronauts to abort a lunar
landing if the modules primary guidance system malfunctioned, which is
exactly what happened during the Apollo thirteen mission. On April
eleventh of nineteen seventy, Jim Level and his crew were
launched into orbit from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The
original plan had been to land on the Moon, but
(07:26):
one of the oxygen tanks exploded two days into the
mission and contact with the lunar surface could not be made.
Communications dropped out for almost two seconds a lifetime if
you're stranded in a cramped box hurtling through space. As
electrical malfunctions flickered, it was clear there was no way
Level and his men were going to reach the Moon.
(07:46):
The problem now was in getting home. With help from
Mission control back in Houston, the crew devised a new
way to return to Earth. By looping around the Moon.
At the right time, they would fire up the module's
engines and slingshot the vessel back to Earth. A critical
part of the plan was in executing a direct abort
of the landing procedure. Otherwise the module would have descended
(08:08):
to the Moon's surface and the crew would have died there.
Thanks to Judith Cohen and her work on the abort
guidance system, Level and his team were able to avoid
the lunar detour and make it home. Cohen took her
job and her responsibilities very seriously, So seriously, in fact,
that she even worked while she was giving birth. One
year earlier, in August of nineteen sixty nine, Judith went
(08:29):
into labor while working on a difficult problem at the office,
presumably related to the abort guidance system. Rather than leave
it unsolved, though, she printed it out and took it
with her to the hospital. After several hours of labor,
she called the office and let her boss know that
she had solved the problem. Oh and she had also
just given birth to a little boy who would eventually
(08:50):
grow up to become a world famous actor and musician,
none other than Jack Black. I hope you've enjoyed today's
guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
(09:12):
me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all
about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious. Yea
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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