July 26, 2022 • 10 mins
Today's tour will teach you about some things that might seem difficult to believe. Whether you are right or not...well, you can be the judge.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Mankey'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. Ah Paris, the City of Light, the City
of Love, and the city of unnecessary challenges of violence
in the name of romance. That's what it was like
in France in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. In those days,
(00:50):
if someone offended you, or you were competing for the
love of a particular woman, you could challenge the other
person to a duel. Before the late eighteenth century, words
were the weapon of choice. In eighteen forty one The
History of Dueling, the author outlined dozens of rules to
be followed for a successful duel. For example, rule forty
(01:10):
three dictated what moves a fighter could make with the sword,
stating combatants are allowed to raise themselves, to stoop, to
vault to the right or to the left, and to
turn around each other. Rule forty four allowed combat to
stop if one party declared themselves wounded, or if one
of the witnesses noticed that someone had been hurt. And
(01:30):
just how common was it? Well, King Louis the Thirteen
pardoned more than eight thousand people for committing murder during
a duel, So yeah, a lot pistols only made the
practice more deadly too. A puncture or a cut from
a blade was not necessarily a death sentence back then,
but a bullet in a crucial part of the body
(01:51):
could be the end of someone immediately or worse days later.
Alexander Hamilton's famously died thirty one hours after are being
shot by Aaron Burr in eighteen o four. Dueling was
an act that was both barbaric and pointless, yet some
people saw no other way to settle their differences, especially
two Frenchmen in the early nineteenth century who really escalated
(02:15):
the situation. Their duel took place only four years after
Hamilton's fateful trip to we Hawk in New Jersey, a
young dancer with the Paris Opera known as Mademoiselle tira
Vette had been in a relationship with one Monsieur du
Grand Prey. It seemed like things were going pretty well
for them, but it seems that she was also seen
Monsieur Lapique on the side. So when Grand Prix found
(02:37):
out that he was not the only person in his
beloved life, he did what all men in his situation
did in eighteen o eight France, he challenged the other
man to a duel. Of course, these were macho, testosterone
fueled gents who refused to settle for a standoff with
pistols in the middle of a field. No, in order
to win the hearts and hand of Mademoiselle Tiravet, they
(03:00):
needed to face off in a spectacular way, high above
the ground in hot air balloons. They met on May three,
still in the middle of a field, mind you, but
on this occasion they stood by as two large balloons
were heated up and inflated. Each man had also brought
a second, a witness, to be responsible for making sure
(03:20):
that the duel was carried out as expected. Now, in
a normal duel, the second would walk away afterward and
go home to their families. In this instance, however, each
second had resigned himself to dine in the event the
other balloons occupants succeeded. Because the goal here was not
for the doelers to shoot one another. Grand Prix and
the peak. Each man armed with the blunderbuss would fly
(03:43):
high into the air with their seconds and fire at
their opponent's balloon. Whoever managed to pop the other man's
balloon would receive Mademoiselle tear of its hand. The other well,
he and his second would plummet to their deaths below.
A large crowd eathered on the morning of the event,
excited to watch four grown men get into a couple
(04:04):
of hot air balloons and shoot each other down. Rather
than talk through their feelings like adults, they climbed inside
and each balloon began to rise up, up, up. They
went to a half mile over the crowd. When they
reached the appropriate height, both men got into position. Lapique
shot first. He fired wide and missed Grand prix balloon entirely.
(04:26):
Grand Prix returned fire, and it was his success. He
managed to shoot a hole in Lapique's balloon, sending careening
into a terrace below. Lapique and his second were killed
instantly in the crash, while Grand Prix climbed even higher
in triumph before floating down gently to the woman below
that he loved. The whole ordeal was over quickly, but
(04:48):
it left a lasting impression on dueling history, and it
reminds us today of that age old cliche what goes
up must come down. Historians and scholars have spent decades
(05:14):
working with the world's most mysterious documents and artifacts. For example,
there's the Voyanage manuscript and illustrated codex, written during the
fifteenth century in an unknown language. It first showed up
in nineteen twelve and was believed to have been decoded
as recently as two thousand seventeen. However, those translations were
quickly debunked, and so the manuscript is still considered uncracked.
(05:36):
Then there's also the shug Burrow Inscription, a ten letter
sequence carved into a monument in England, and although the
inscription has existed since the mid seventeen hundreds, we are
no closer to understanding its meaning than we were two
and a half centuries ago. But one particular historical object
didn't require extensive study to understand. In fact, researchers seemed
(05:57):
to have figured out exactly what it was pretty quickly,
or so they thought. It was called the Shapira Scroll,
named for the man who revealed it to the world,
Moses Wilhelm Shapira. He was born in eighteen thirty in
what is now Ukraine and worked as an antiques dealer
in Jerusalem. Shapira first brought the scroll to Paul Schroeder,
a German scholar and interpreter who specialized in Semitic languages.
(06:21):
Schroeder asked about its origins, to which Shapira replied that
it had been discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea. However,
when University of Berlin professor Hermann Strach asked Shapira about
the scrolls provenance, he was told the fantastical story about
how a group of people had accidentally found them rolled
up in a bundle of rugs in a mountain cave.
In fact, depending on who he was talking to, Shapira
(06:43):
told a different story. So what was the scroll he found? Well,
it wasn't really a scroll at all, and that it
wasn't a long roll of paper. Instead, the Shapira scroll
was comprised of fifteen separate strips of leather, each with
a modified Bible verse from the Book of duter Ronomy
written across them. What's more, the language written on each
(07:04):
of the strips was Paleo Hebrew, an older version of
the Hebrew language found on stone walls and tablets beginning
in the thirteenth century b c. According to Shapira, his
fragments had been created before the fall of Solomon's temple
in Jerusalem. In other words, they were the oldest known
Biblical documentation in existence. He sent facsimiles of the strips
(07:27):
all over Germany to have them authenticated. Historians, scholars, and
librarians studied them closely. The Royal Library of Berlin wanted
to purchase the originals so that they could be examined
by German students, but Shapira had no interest in having
his scroll put under the microscope for handfuls of students
to study. Instead, he suggested that the British Museum by
(07:50):
the whole collection for one million pounds. The public was
enthralled and flocked to the museum to see two of
the scrolls in person. A Bible scholar named Christian David
Ginsburg took possession of the remaining fragments to analyze them.
It took him a month, but when he was done,
Ginsburg came to a very important conclusion they were forgeries.
(08:12):
Now Shapira wasn't a stranger to fake documents. And antiquities.
In eighteen seventy, he had tried fooling buyers with fabricated
artifacts from the ancient Moabite culture. Why anyone entertained his
latest attempt was a mystery, but many did, especially the public,
who were captivated by the existence of the strips. According
to Ginsburg, it appeared that Shapira had cut up a
(08:35):
Yemenite Torah scroll. These scrolls were very old, possibly hundreds
of years, and quite valuable. Shapira had sold Yemenite scrolls
to the British Museum before, and it was believed that
he had cut strips from the empty bottom margin to
create his own biblical relics. Of course, Shapira wrote a
letter to Ginsburg in which he declared his innocence and
the whole ordeal. He believed the scroll was authentic, but
(08:58):
claimed that if it was fake, someone else had been
responsible for its creation and had duped him. Shapira then
traveled to Amsterdam, where he sent another letter, this time
to Edward Augustus Bond. Bond was the primary librarian for
the British Museum, and Shapira begged him to check the
scrolls again. Sadly, he never got his answer. Six months later,
(09:20):
he took his own life. The Shapira scrolls went up
for auction a few years afterwards, selling for a measly
ten pounds. After eighteen eighty nine, no one saw them again.
Interest in the artifacts all but disappeared until the mid
nineteen hundreds. Between nineteen forty seven and nineteen fifty six,
the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves
(09:42):
alongside the Dead Sea discoveries that seemed eerily similar to
what Moses Shapira used to say about his leather fragments.
Scholars to this day are divided on the true providence
of the Shapira Scroll, with some claiming that it could
have been legitimate, while others maintained the original conclusion that
the scroll was a forgery. Moses Shapira might have been
(10:04):
responsible for one of the greatest historical discoveries ever recorded,
but his previous deceptions that ruined his chances for success. Heartbreaking,
for sure, but also oh so curious. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
(10:26):
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me, Aaron Manky 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
(10:47):
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Welcomed Aaron Mankey'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. Ah Paris, the City of Light, the City
of Love, and the city of unnecessary challenges of violence
in the name of romance. That's what it was like
in France in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. In those days,
(00:50):
if someone offended you, or you were competing for the
love of a particular woman, you could challenge the other
person to a duel. Before the late eighteenth century, words
were the weapon of choice. In eighteen forty one The
History of Dueling, the author outlined dozens of rules to
be followed for a successful duel. For example, rule forty
(01:10):
three dictated what moves a fighter could make with the sword,
stating combatants are allowed to raise themselves, to stoop, to
vault to the right or to the left, and to
turn around each other. Rule forty four allowed combat to
stop if one party declared themselves wounded, or if one
of the witnesses noticed that someone had been hurt. And
(01:30):
just how common was it? Well, King Louis the Thirteen
pardoned more than eight thousand people for committing murder during
a duel, So yeah, a lot pistols only made the
practice more deadly too. A puncture or a cut from
a blade was not necessarily a death sentence back then,
but a bullet in a crucial part of the body
(01:51):
could be the end of someone immediately or worse days later.
Alexander Hamilton's famously died thirty one hours after are being
shot by Aaron Burr in eighteen o four. Dueling was
an act that was both barbaric and pointless, yet some
people saw no other way to settle their differences, especially
two Frenchmen in the early nineteenth century who really escalated
(02:15):
the situation. Their duel took place only four years after
Hamilton's fateful trip to we Hawk in New Jersey, a
young dancer with the Paris Opera known as Mademoiselle tira
Vette had been in a relationship with one Monsieur du
Grand Prey. It seemed like things were going pretty well
for them, but it seems that she was also seen
Monsieur Lapique on the side. So when Grand Prix found
(02:37):
out that he was not the only person in his
beloved life, he did what all men in his situation
did in eighteen o eight France, he challenged the other
man to a duel. Of course, these were macho, testosterone
fueled gents who refused to settle for a standoff with
pistols in the middle of a field. No, in order
to win the hearts and hand of Mademoiselle Tiravet, they
(03:00):
needed to face off in a spectacular way, high above
the ground in hot air balloons. They met on May three,
still in the middle of a field, mind you, but
on this occasion they stood by as two large balloons
were heated up and inflated. Each man had also brought
a second, a witness, to be responsible for making sure
(03:20):
that the duel was carried out as expected. Now, in
a normal duel, the second would walk away afterward and
go home to their families. In this instance, however, each
second had resigned himself to dine in the event the
other balloons occupants succeeded. Because the goal here was not
for the doelers to shoot one another. Grand Prix and
the peak. Each man armed with the blunderbuss would fly
(03:43):
high into the air with their seconds and fire at
their opponent's balloon. Whoever managed to pop the other man's
balloon would receive Mademoiselle tear of its hand. The other well,
he and his second would plummet to their deaths below.
A large crowd eathered on the morning of the event,
excited to watch four grown men get into a couple
(04:04):
of hot air balloons and shoot each other down. Rather
than talk through their feelings like adults, they climbed inside
and each balloon began to rise up, up, up. They
went to a half mile over the crowd. When they
reached the appropriate height, both men got into position. Lapique
shot first. He fired wide and missed Grand prix balloon entirely.
(04:26):
Grand Prix returned fire, and it was his success. He
managed to shoot a hole in Lapique's balloon, sending careening
into a terrace below. Lapique and his second were killed
instantly in the crash, while Grand Prix climbed even higher
in triumph before floating down gently to the woman below
that he loved. The whole ordeal was over quickly, but
(04:48):
it left a lasting impression on dueling history, and it
reminds us today of that age old cliche what goes
up must come down. Historians and scholars have spent decades
(05:14):
working with the world's most mysterious documents and artifacts. For example,
there's the Voyanage manuscript and illustrated codex, written during the
fifteenth century in an unknown language. It first showed up
in nineteen twelve and was believed to have been decoded
as recently as two thousand seventeen. However, those translations were
quickly debunked, and so the manuscript is still considered uncracked.
(05:36):
Then there's also the shug Burrow Inscription, a ten letter
sequence carved into a monument in England, and although the
inscription has existed since the mid seventeen hundreds, we are
no closer to understanding its meaning than we were two
and a half centuries ago. But one particular historical object
didn't require extensive study to understand. In fact, researchers seemed
(05:57):
to have figured out exactly what it was pretty quickly,
or so they thought. It was called the Shapira Scroll,
named for the man who revealed it to the world,
Moses Wilhelm Shapira. He was born in eighteen thirty in
what is now Ukraine and worked as an antiques dealer
in Jerusalem. Shapira first brought the scroll to Paul Schroeder,
a German scholar and interpreter who specialized in Semitic languages.
(06:21):
Schroeder asked about its origins, to which Shapira replied that
it had been discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea. However,
when University of Berlin professor Hermann Strach asked Shapira about
the scrolls provenance, he was told the fantastical story about
how a group of people had accidentally found them rolled
up in a bundle of rugs in a mountain cave.
In fact, depending on who he was talking to, Shapira
(06:43):
told a different story. So what was the scroll he found? Well,
it wasn't really a scroll at all, and that it
wasn't a long roll of paper. Instead, the Shapira scroll
was comprised of fifteen separate strips of leather, each with
a modified Bible verse from the Book of duter Ronomy
written across them. What's more, the language written on each
(07:04):
of the strips was Paleo Hebrew, an older version of
the Hebrew language found on stone walls and tablets beginning
in the thirteenth century b c. According to Shapira, his
fragments had been created before the fall of Solomon's temple
in Jerusalem. In other words, they were the oldest known
Biblical documentation in existence. He sent facsimiles of the strips
(07:27):
all over Germany to have them authenticated. Historians, scholars, and
librarians studied them closely. The Royal Library of Berlin wanted
to purchase the originals so that they could be examined
by German students, but Shapira had no interest in having
his scroll put under the microscope for handfuls of students
to study. Instead, he suggested that the British Museum by
(07:50):
the whole collection for one million pounds. The public was
enthralled and flocked to the museum to see two of
the scrolls in person. A Bible scholar named Christian David
Ginsburg took possession of the remaining fragments to analyze them.
It took him a month, but when he was done,
Ginsburg came to a very important conclusion they were forgeries.
(08:12):
Now Shapira wasn't a stranger to fake documents. And antiquities.
In eighteen seventy, he had tried fooling buyers with fabricated
artifacts from the ancient Moabite culture. Why anyone entertained his
latest attempt was a mystery, but many did, especially the public,
who were captivated by the existence of the strips. According
to Ginsburg, it appeared that Shapira had cut up a
(08:35):
Yemenite Torah scroll. These scrolls were very old, possibly hundreds
of years, and quite valuable. Shapira had sold Yemenite scrolls
to the British Museum before, and it was believed that
he had cut strips from the empty bottom margin to
create his own biblical relics. Of course, Shapira wrote a
letter to Ginsburg in which he declared his innocence and
the whole ordeal. He believed the scroll was authentic, but
(08:58):
claimed that if it was fake, someone else had been
responsible for its creation and had duped him. Shapira then
traveled to Amsterdam, where he sent another letter, this time
to Edward Augustus Bond. Bond was the primary librarian for
the British Museum, and Shapira begged him to check the
scrolls again. Sadly, he never got his answer. Six months later,
(09:20):
he took his own life. The Shapira scrolls went up
for auction a few years afterwards, selling for a measly
ten pounds. After eighteen eighty nine, no one saw them again.
Interest in the artifacts all but disappeared until the mid
nineteen hundreds. Between nineteen forty seven and nineteen fifty six,
the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves
(09:42):
alongside the Dead Sea discoveries that seemed eerily similar to
what Moses Shapira used to say about his leather fragments.
Scholars to this day are divided on the true providence
of the Shapira Scroll, with some claiming that it could
have been legitimate, while others maintained the original conclusion that
the scroll was a forgery. Moses Shapira might have been
(10:04):
responsible for one of the greatest historical discoveries ever recorded,
but his previous deceptions that ruined his chances for success. Heartbreaking,
for sure, but also oh so curious. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
(10:26):
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me, Aaron Manky 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
(10:47):
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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