October 15, 2024 • 11 mins
Old and new, fresh and vintage. Curious stories come in all flavors, as today's tour will show you.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
If there's one thing sitcoms can teach us, it's that
get rich quick schemes never work. Whether it was Ralph Cramden,
Homer Simpson, or Al Bundy, the idea of spending a
little money to make a lot of money never really
panned out. Luckily, those characters just had to wait for
next week's episode and all would be forgotten and forgiven.
There were no real stakes or consequences, not like in
(00:58):
real life, where people like Burnie in Charles Ponzi, for
whom the Ponzi Scheme was named, found themselves in jail
or worse. But during the mid nineteenth century, two men
decided to try their hands at their own get rich
quick scheme, and it worked out a lot better than
anyone had expected. Their names were William Smith and Charles Eton,
better known as Billy and Charlie. We don't know much
(01:20):
about their early lives, but we do know what they
did for a living, and I'm using big air quotes there.
They were mudlarks, meaning that they would scour the mudflats
along the Thames for discarded objects that might be worth something,
and then they sold those objects to a man named
William Edwards. He was a dealer of sorts who would
sell what Billy and Charlie had brought to him to
another dealer, one George Eastwood. Eastwood happened to specialize in antiques.
(01:45):
So what did Billy and Charlie uncover in the mudflats?
A lot? Actually, Pilgrim's badges were common, as were coins
and small statues. They made a good living for themselves
selling found antiques for about a year, raking in roughly
two hundred pounds. Edwards was thrilled with their discoveries, although
there were some questions about how the two men were
(02:06):
finding all of those relics. According to them, it was
their own good fortune brought on by the construction of
the Shadwell Dock in London. The constant churning and digging
of the land meant previously lost artifacts were finally coming
to the surface. Eastwood in particular, was so taken with
the boy's work that he eventually started buying from them,
directly selling the objects off to wealthy collectors as well
(02:28):
as the British Museum, but not to everyone was as
taken with Billy and Charlie as Edwards and Eastwood. In fact,
their near endless stream of artifacts piqued the curiosity of
several parties, including those who had purchased from them in
the past. There was a suspicion that Williams and Eaton
were not being entirely truthful about where they'd found these
badges and coins. In fact, some people believed the two
(02:50):
men hadn't found the items at all. They were suspected
of being forgers. Eastwood, of course refuted the claims, arguing
that everything he sold was the real deal, and others
also stepped forward claiming that the items discovered by Billy
and Charlie were authentic. Archaeologist Charles roach Smith, for example,
claimed that many pieces dated back to the sixteenth century,
(03:12):
simply because there were no originals or molds to prove
that they'd been copied. Eventually, the allegations became too severe
to ignore. It was George Eastwood who levied a libel
suit against the British magazine Athenaeum after it published an
article claiming the artifacts were fake, although to be fair,
the article did not mention Eastwood outright. A trial was
held in August of eighteen fifty eight, where William Smith
(03:35):
took the stand. He stood by his defense that everything
he and Charlie had sold up to that point, about
two thousand items had been found at the Shadwell Dock site.
Roach also testified as to their provenance. Over the course
of the trial, a number of experts and collectors came
forward with similar testimonies that the objects they purchased or
examined were authentic to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. By
(03:59):
the end of the trial, Well, the lawyer for the defense,
had argued that there was no proof George Eastwood had
been libeled, and so the jury was forced to find
the magazine not guilty. But the trial did have one
beneficial effect. It was the perfect pr for Eastwood's new shop,
which he opened the following year in eighteen fifty nine. Sadly,
his success did not last long, because two years later
(04:21):
someone found out the truth about Charlie and Billy. The
guy's name was Charles Reed, and Reid had come from
an organization known as the Society of Antiquaries. He started
asking around the Shadwell Dot construction site for more information
about the objects the men had found, and as it
turned out, nobody had ever seen anything in the mudflats
while digging. It was as though the items had appeared
(04:42):
out of thin air, and this brought Reed to an
individual known as a tasher, someone who scavenged the sewers
for treasure, and as luck would have it, this tasher
had worked with Smith and Eaton before and knew how
they'd really come into all those antiques. They had a
workshop where they made them. Everything Billy and char had
sold had been created from materials like lead alloy and
(05:03):
plaster of Paris. It was a complicated process, but the
results spoke for themselves. After their big reveal, the two
men kept making forgeries, which carried on until they were
arrested in eighteen sixty seven. They were quickly released, and
one year later, Charlie passed away from tuberculosis. He was
just thirty five years old. Billy continued on for a
(05:24):
while after that, but he didn't last long. Nothing else
is known from him after roughly eighteen sixty nine. But
funny enough, if you find one of their pieces for
sale today, you might notice a hefty price tag. That's
because they've increased in value over the years. Are they antiques, well,
technically now, yes, but each one is also a brilliant
(05:46):
forgery that some might call a work of art. When
a knock came at the door of the besieged Russian
(06:07):
Parliament building in nineteen ninety one, panic spread throughout the building.
Was this a hardline communist delivering a message for Russian
President Boris Yeltsen was at the military coming to end
the coup it had just started a few days earlier.
The answer was even more surprising. Standing on the other
side of the door was a man in uniform, not military,
but manager. He knocked on the door again and called
(06:30):
out the last two words the lawmakers inside had ever
expected to hear. Pizza delivery. What does cheesy, crispy tomatoy
pizza have to do with the last days of the
Soviet Union? It turns out a lot more than you'd expect.
In the late nineteen eighties, the USSR was facing an
economic crisis. Moscow had dire food shortages. The ruble was
(06:54):
practically worthless, and Soviet family struggled to feed their children.
So Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the USSR, decided they
needed to try something different. This new policy would be
called Perestroika, meaning reconstruction. Peristroika included a lot of changes,
but one of the most dramatic would be to allow
some capitalist policies to take roots in the USSR. For example,
(07:16):
the state could now create partnerships with foreign businesses seeing
a hot new market. American chain restaurants were the first
in line in Moscow. At the time, family dining was
a radical concept. Most sit down restaurants were expensive, so
eating out was a rich person's pastime. One American business
wanted to change that, so under the policy of Perestroika,
(07:39):
the Soviet Union's first pizza hut opened in September of
nineteen ninety, right near Red Square, and it was an
immediate hit. The first day Pizza Hut opened, a line
wrapped around the building. The staff had to lock the
doors in between seatings, as otherwise the customers would just
flood the dining room. Even after the initial buzz calmed down,
(07:59):
the mass the Scout pizza hut would continue to serve
fifty thousand customers a week. Even as Soviet citizens were
chowing down on pepperoni and cheese, there was trouble brewing
in the halls of government. The Berlin Wall had just
fallen two years before in nineteen eighty nine, Inflation was
running rampant, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had already voted for
(08:21):
their independence, and under Gorbachev's new policies, capitalism was becoming
part of the Soviet system. Two Communist Party hardliners, the USSR,
was falling apart. They believed they needed to act, and
act fast, and they got their chance on August nineteenth
of nineteen ninety one. That day, Mikhail Gorbachev headed to
(08:41):
his summer home in Ukraine, the KGB swooped in and
held him hostage, telling the world that he was ill.
With him out of the way, plotters from the KGB,
the military, and the Communist Old Guard sprung into action.
Tanks rolled down the streets of Moscow, passing right by
the pizza huts, shattered doors. Boris Yeltsen, the President of
Russia and Gorbachev's ally, had been in Kazakhstan when the
(09:05):
coup broke out, but immediately flew back to Moscow. He
gathered together a group of lawmakers who supported Gorbachev's reforms
and barricaded himself in the Russian Parliament building. Over the
next few days, hardliners rallied outside of Parliament while citizens
protested in the streets inside. Yeltsin and the lawmakers issued
statements to the press and the people of the Soviet
(09:27):
Union condemning the coup and calling for Gorbachev's release. Western
businesses in Moscow wanted to help, and did so the
only way they knew how. After spending a day shuddered,
Pizza Hunt fired up its ovens and prepared dozens of pizzas.
The manager, in a pizza hut uniform marched a team
carrying two hundred and sixty pizzas, twenty cases of pepsi,
(09:50):
and gallons and gallons of fresh coffee, passed the tanks
and barriers and right up to the door of Parliament.
If Yeltsin and his allies were going to end this coup,
they needed cheesy sustenance, and plenty of it. The coup
attempt eventually fell apart, and after two tense days, Gorbachev
was freed and the usurpers admitted defeat. However, this was
(10:11):
one of the final straws in the downfall of the
Soviet Union. Over the next few months, country after country
would secede from the USSR until it was formally dissolved
in December of nineteen ninety one. Although Pizza Hunt had
a short tenure in Moscow, it had a large impact.
Perhaps this is why in nineteen ninety seven, Gorbachev agreed
(10:31):
to appear in an ad for the restaurant chain. In
the commercial, as several Russians argue over whether Gorbachev helped
or hurt the country, they all agree that he did
one thing right, bringing them Pizza Hunt most curious of all,
though this ad was never broadcast in Russia. I hope
(10:53):
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more more
about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. This
show was created by 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
(11:16):
you can learn all about it over at the worldoflore
dot com, and until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
If there's one thing sitcoms can teach us, it's that
get rich quick schemes never work. Whether it was Ralph Cramden,
Homer Simpson, or Al Bundy, the idea of spending a
little money to make a lot of money never really
panned out. Luckily, those characters just had to wait for
next week's episode and all would be forgotten and forgiven.
There were no real stakes or consequences, not like in
(00:58):
real life, where people like Burnie in Charles Ponzi, for
whom the Ponzi Scheme was named, found themselves in jail
or worse. But during the mid nineteenth century, two men
decided to try their hands at their own get rich
quick scheme, and it worked out a lot better than
anyone had expected. Their names were William Smith and Charles Eton,
better known as Billy and Charlie. We don't know much
(01:20):
about their early lives, but we do know what they
did for a living, and I'm using big air quotes there.
They were mudlarks, meaning that they would scour the mudflats
along the Thames for discarded objects that might be worth something,
and then they sold those objects to a man named
William Edwards. He was a dealer of sorts who would
sell what Billy and Charlie had brought to him to
another dealer, one George Eastwood. Eastwood happened to specialize in antiques.
(01:45):
So what did Billy and Charlie uncover in the mudflats?
A lot? Actually, Pilgrim's badges were common, as were coins
and small statues. They made a good living for themselves
selling found antiques for about a year, raking in roughly
two hundred pounds. Edwards was thrilled with their discoveries, although
there were some questions about how the two men were
(02:06):
finding all of those relics. According to them, it was
their own good fortune brought on by the construction of
the Shadwell Dock in London. The constant churning and digging
of the land meant previously lost artifacts were finally coming
to the surface. Eastwood in particular, was so taken with
the boy's work that he eventually started buying from them,
directly selling the objects off to wealthy collectors as well
(02:28):
as the British Museum, but not to everyone was as
taken with Billy and Charlie as Edwards and Eastwood. In fact,
their near endless stream of artifacts piqued the curiosity of
several parties, including those who had purchased from them in
the past. There was a suspicion that Williams and Eaton
were not being entirely truthful about where they'd found these
badges and coins. In fact, some people believed the two
(02:50):
men hadn't found the items at all. They were suspected
of being forgers. Eastwood, of course refuted the claims, arguing
that everything he sold was the real deal, and others
also stepped forward claiming that the items discovered by Billy
and Charlie were authentic. Archaeologist Charles roach Smith, for example,
claimed that many pieces dated back to the sixteenth century,
(03:12):
simply because there were no originals or molds to prove
that they'd been copied. Eventually, the allegations became too severe
to ignore. It was George Eastwood who levied a libel
suit against the British magazine Athenaeum after it published an
article claiming the artifacts were fake, although to be fair,
the article did not mention Eastwood outright. A trial was
held in August of eighteen fifty eight, where William Smith
(03:35):
took the stand. He stood by his defense that everything
he and Charlie had sold up to that point, about
two thousand items had been found at the Shadwell Dock site.
Roach also testified as to their provenance. Over the course
of the trial, a number of experts and collectors came
forward with similar testimonies that the objects they purchased or
examined were authentic to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. By
(03:59):
the end of the trial, Well, the lawyer for the defense,
had argued that there was no proof George Eastwood had
been libeled, and so the jury was forced to find
the magazine not guilty. But the trial did have one
beneficial effect. It was the perfect pr for Eastwood's new shop,
which he opened the following year in eighteen fifty nine. Sadly,
his success did not last long, because two years later
(04:21):
someone found out the truth about Charlie and Billy. The
guy's name was Charles Reed, and Reid had come from
an organization known as the Society of Antiquaries. He started
asking around the Shadwell Dot construction site for more information
about the objects the men had found, and as it
turned out, nobody had ever seen anything in the mudflats
while digging. It was as though the items had appeared
(04:42):
out of thin air, and this brought Reed to an
individual known as a tasher, someone who scavenged the sewers
for treasure, and as luck would have it, this tasher
had worked with Smith and Eaton before and knew how
they'd really come into all those antiques. They had a
workshop where they made them. Everything Billy and char had
sold had been created from materials like lead alloy and
(05:03):
plaster of Paris. It was a complicated process, but the
results spoke for themselves. After their big reveal, the two
men kept making forgeries, which carried on until they were
arrested in eighteen sixty seven. They were quickly released, and
one year later, Charlie passed away from tuberculosis. He was
just thirty five years old. Billy continued on for a
(05:24):
while after that, but he didn't last long. Nothing else
is known from him after roughly eighteen sixty nine. But
funny enough, if you find one of their pieces for
sale today, you might notice a hefty price tag. That's
because they've increased in value over the years. Are they antiques, well,
technically now, yes, but each one is also a brilliant
(05:46):
forgery that some might call a work of art. When
a knock came at the door of the besieged Russian
(06:07):
Parliament building in nineteen ninety one, panic spread throughout the building.
Was this a hardline communist delivering a message for Russian
President Boris Yeltsen was at the military coming to end
the coup it had just started a few days earlier.
The answer was even more surprising. Standing on the other
side of the door was a man in uniform, not military,
but manager. He knocked on the door again and called
(06:30):
out the last two words the lawmakers inside had ever
expected to hear. Pizza delivery. What does cheesy, crispy tomatoy
pizza have to do with the last days of the
Soviet Union? It turns out a lot more than you'd expect.
In the late nineteen eighties, the USSR was facing an
economic crisis. Moscow had dire food shortages. The ruble was
(06:54):
practically worthless, and Soviet family struggled to feed their children.
So Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the USSR, decided they
needed to try something different. This new policy would be
called Perestroika, meaning reconstruction. Peristroika included a lot of changes,
but one of the most dramatic would be to allow
some capitalist policies to take roots in the USSR. For example,
(07:16):
the state could now create partnerships with foreign businesses seeing
a hot new market. American chain restaurants were the first
in line in Moscow. At the time, family dining was
a radical concept. Most sit down restaurants were expensive, so
eating out was a rich person's pastime. One American business
wanted to change that, so under the policy of Perestroika,
(07:39):
the Soviet Union's first pizza hut opened in September of
nineteen ninety, right near Red Square, and it was an
immediate hit. The first day Pizza Hut opened, a line
wrapped around the building. The staff had to lock the
doors in between seatings, as otherwise the customers would just
flood the dining room. Even after the initial buzz calmed down,
(07:59):
the mass the Scout pizza hut would continue to serve
fifty thousand customers a week. Even as Soviet citizens were
chowing down on pepperoni and cheese, there was trouble brewing
in the halls of government. The Berlin Wall had just
fallen two years before in nineteen eighty nine, Inflation was
running rampant, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had already voted for
(08:21):
their independence, and under Gorbachev's new policies, capitalism was becoming
part of the Soviet system. Two Communist Party hardliners, the USSR,
was falling apart. They believed they needed to act, and
act fast, and they got their chance on August nineteenth
of nineteen ninety one. That day, Mikhail Gorbachev headed to
(08:41):
his summer home in Ukraine, the KGB swooped in and
held him hostage, telling the world that he was ill.
With him out of the way, plotters from the KGB,
the military, and the Communist Old Guard sprung into action.
Tanks rolled down the streets of Moscow, passing right by
the pizza huts, shattered doors. Boris Yeltsen, the President of
Russia and Gorbachev's ally, had been in Kazakhstan when the
(09:05):
coup broke out, but immediately flew back to Moscow. He
gathered together a group of lawmakers who supported Gorbachev's reforms
and barricaded himself in the Russian Parliament building. Over the
next few days, hardliners rallied outside of Parliament while citizens
protested in the streets inside. Yeltsin and the lawmakers issued
statements to the press and the people of the Soviet
(09:27):
Union condemning the coup and calling for Gorbachev's release. Western
businesses in Moscow wanted to help, and did so the
only way they knew how. After spending a day shuddered,
Pizza Hunt fired up its ovens and prepared dozens of pizzas.
The manager, in a pizza hut uniform marched a team
carrying two hundred and sixty pizzas, twenty cases of pepsi,
(09:50):
and gallons and gallons of fresh coffee, passed the tanks
and barriers and right up to the door of Parliament.
If Yeltsin and his allies were going to end this coup,
they needed cheesy sustenance, and plenty of it. The coup
attempt eventually fell apart, and after two tense days, Gorbachev
was freed and the usurpers admitted defeat. However, this was
(10:11):
one of the final straws in the downfall of the
Soviet Union. Over the next few months, country after country
would secede from the USSR until it was formally dissolved
in December of nineteen ninety one. Although Pizza Hunt had
a short tenure in Moscow, it had a large impact.
Perhaps this is why in nineteen ninety seven, Gorbachev agreed
(10:31):
to appear in an ad for the restaurant chain. In
the commercial, as several Russians argue over whether Gorbachev helped
or hurt the country, they all agree that he did
one thing right, bringing them Pizza Hunt most curious of all,
though this ad was never broadcast in Russia. I hope
(10:53):
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more more
about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. This
show was created by 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
(11:16):
you can learn all about it over at the worldoflore
dot com, and until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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