Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Manky'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
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of Curiosities. When you think of the nomadic conquerors of history,
you probably first think of Genghis Khan, then perhaps Attila
in the Huns. But the fierce, often brutal warrior mentality
didn't end there. In seventy for example, a Turco Mongol
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warlord by the name of tamer Lane came into power,
and unlike any other commander in the history of military might,
tammer Lane was never defeated. However, he was the last
of the great nomadic conquerors, as a new era began
encroaching into the end of his reign with the expanse
of civilization. He died in February of fourteen o five
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during an uncharacteristic winter campaign against the Chinese Ming dynasty,
and was buried in Saint Marcan in a tomb that
still stands today. And because he was such a big deal.
It has its own name, Guri Amir. For most though,
death is usually the end of the story. When Genghis
Khan died, the Mongols splintered the same with Attila and
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his huns, and for the most part, that happened to
Tamerlane as well. But that's not the story that we're
here to talk about. We're here to discuss the fact
that he may or may not have taken a curse
with him to the grave, a curse that might well
have changed the course of human history. By now, we've
all heard of curses, of course, thanks to the supposed
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curses that came from Egyptian rulers like King tut as
well as modern cinematic curses like those we see in
Indiana Jones or the Mummy. Seeing excavation teams meet untimely
demises isn't quite as extraordinary as it might have once been.
But tammer Lane's curse hit on a much bigger scale,
and it all started with an intrepid Soviet scientist named
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Mikhail Gerassimov, who was in the midst of pioneering the
field of paleo anthropological facial reconstruction. Simply put, he dug
up the dead and use the remains to give us
spitting images of what the deceased might have looked like.
You can probably guess what happened next. Tamer Lane was
on Mikhal's list, and given the doctor's track record, Joseph
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Stalin himself was all for it. Although no one is
quite sure why, Michael set off to sam Marcan to
both verify that it was tamer Lane buried there and
to give the world another conqueror's face. As soon as
he arrived, though, the locals cried out against the expedition team,
worried that they would unleash a legendary curse, and the
local Muslim religious leaders tried to stop the exhimation for
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the same reason. After all, a tomb was inscribed with
some pretty daunting words. When I rise from the dead,
it said, the world shall tremble. Michail heard the words
from the keeper of the tomb, notified Moscow just in case,
and then promptly arrested the man for spreading false rumors
and instigating the public outcry. On June nineteenth, though things
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went sideways. A beautiful slab of green jade was removed
from atop the remains of tamer Lane, And there Michaal
found another inscription with yet another threat, whomsoever opens my
tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I. Still unfhazed,
the body was taken and carted off to Russia, where
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it underwent intensive study and led to an exact facial
reconstruction of what the Great Conqueror had looked like. But
at what cost. Three days later, in a seemingly unrelated event,
Nazi Germany initiated Operation Barbarossa and attacked Russia. Perhaps tamer
Lane had called his shot with this invader more terrible
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than him. Moscow was wise to the warnings of tamer
Lane's tomb, but they had bigger fish to fry fending
off the invasion by Germany. Still being of a superstitious sort,
Stalin knew that he needed to undo the curse that
Gerasimov had initiated, not just yet, though he had a
war to fight. A little over a year later, in
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November of nineteen two, Stalin finally got a bright idea.
If it was tamer Lane's curse that had instigated the
conflict with Germany, maybe he could end it too. So
the body was loaded into an aircraft and flown back
to sam Marcan, where it was buried with full honors
in traditional fashion. One month later, the Battle of Stalingrad
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turned the tide of war and gave Russia a victory
on the Eastern Front, a victory that would push the
Nazis into losing the war entirely. Whatever role tamer Lane
did or didn't have in changing the outcome of World
War Two, we'll never know for sure, because while the
face that McHale reconstructed from the conqueror's remains is remarkably lifelike,
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it's sadly I can't answer our questions when it comes
to unexplained phenomena. It's not uncommon for world leaders to
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be directly involved with their analysis or cover up. For example,
the US government has been keeping Area fifty one in
the Nevada Desert under wraps for decades. America's military continues
to claim that the object that crashed in Roswell, New
Mexico in nineteen forty seven was part of a surveillance balloon,
not an alien spacecraft, And in nineteen seventy nine, a
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certain English Prime Minister made it her mission to track
down one of the most mysterious creatures ever documented. That
Prime Minister was Margaret Thatcher, who held the position from
nineteen seventy nine until November of nine. She was known
for her staunch conservative views, which led to a rise
in poverty and income in equality across the UK. She
was tough too, earning her the nickname the Iron Lady,
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and for good reason. However, in one of her first
acts as Prime Minister, Thatcher did not repeal financial regulations
or privatized nationalized industries like gas and water. No, those
came later. Instead, she set her sights on a menace
stalking the waters of Scotland, a beast that had eluded hunters,
scientists and tourists for centuries, and it was time to
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bring it to justice. I'm talking, of course, about the
Luckness Monster, and surprisingly Thatcher had no interest in catching
it or mounting it on her wall. Rather, she wanted
to protect Nessie, and to do so she would use dolphins.
That's right, dolphins, but not just any dolphins. She wrote
a letter to the Scottish Home and Health Department requesting
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the import of trained dolphins provided by the United States Navy.
They would be placed in Lochness with high tech gadgets
affixed to them in order to sniff out the creature.
This plot was believed to have been concocted by noted
monster hunter doctor Robert Rynes from America in nineteen seventy two.
Ryans had taken several underwater photographs of blurry flippers and
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torsos in Loch Ness that he claimed belonged to NeSSI herself.
His obsession brought him back to Scotland countless times over
the span of thirty five years, with each visit involving
more equipment and technology. Unfortunately, his research never panned out,
at least not according to the wider scientific community, but
the Prime Minister was convinced, and so she pushed for
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a dolphin led investigation. When word got out about Thatcher's plans,
though the public rose up in opposition. Animal rights activists
didn't want her using dolphins for such a bizarre objective.
NeSSI enthusiasts worried that Thatcher's plan would actually result in
the monster being caught and killed. So what was her
reason for using trained dolphins? Well, for one, Sweden had
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reached out to the UK to understand how they were
planning to protect the Lockness monster. The Swedes were looking
to secure the safety of their own lake monster, a
serpent whose existence had dated back all the way to
the mid sixteen hundreds. But the real reason tourism the
UK's economy was suffering. Inflation was up, and Thatcher was
trying to bring in money however she could. If she
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could track down Nessie and reveal it to the public,
the discovery would bring in untold amounts from tourists all
over the world, and that meant money flowing back into
the banks of the UK. Margaret Thatcher was not known
as a jokester, yet her plan to protect Nessie was
done with her tongue planted, at least partly in her cheek.
Whether she really believed in Nessie is unknown, but she
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believed in it enough to warrant a formal inquest into
the use of US naval animals to find her. Thatcher
had also pursued the lockness Monster as a lighthearted response
to the Swedes, telling them that the Secretary of States
could add NeSSI to the endangered species list for added protection.
Her letters about the operation, as well as the responses
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she received, were classified for many years, then in two
thousand six they were made public under the Freedom of
Information Act. One letter in particular from the Stockholm Embassy
had been addressed to the Scottish Office. It was in
reference to Sweden's questions about Nessie's protection. If that's your responded,
saying the inquiry is a serious one and we should
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like to give them at least a half serious reply. Well,
that serious reply came in when Nessie was officially placed
under the protection of the UK's Wildlife and Countryside Act
and the best part of all, no dolphins required. I
hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The 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
you can learn all about it over at the World
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of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,