Very Old Animals

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Holly here, listen. I have to apologize upfront
for an error in today's show that happens multiple times,
and it is all my fault. We in the first
segment of this show talk about a tortoise who lives
on Saint Helena Island. I very authoritatively said it's Saint
Helena throughout the show, and Tracy followed suit because it

(00:22):
was the one I researched. So instead of making our
poor editor, Casey edit in a whole new version of it,
since we did not catch this until the show was
edited together, I'm just gonna make this humble apology and
hope that you will forgive me. Every time you hear it,
you can chuckle to yourself and note that I'm the

(00:42):
reason it's wrong. Thanks. Welcome to Stuff you missed in
History Class, A production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Holly from and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy,

(01:02):
it's finally the lighter episode I've been meaning to do.
I'm so happy for you. This one was actually really fun.
There's some consternation that happens in the middle act that
I find humorous because it's just in my opinion silly.
I don't want to denigrate anyone who doesn't find it silly,

(01:22):
but I have reasons we can discuss them in the
behind the scenes. We're going to talk about very old
animals today. Yeah, because a lot of these animals, and
we say very old, we mean very old, very very old,
all of them more than a hundred so much more.

(01:44):
And I thought they would be interesting to talk about
because they've been, you know, marking time, more or less
unaware of all of the ups and downs and intrigues
that humanity has been going through. And there's the stories
that come out of this I found as I was researching,
are really about the way we as humans perceive these
animals and their importance or their iconic status. I just

(02:11):
want to note that we have this sort of I
don't know if I would call it bad luck. We
have an uncanny repetition of events where we record a
thing about something, and then within a week the circumstances
of that thing change. Right, two of the animals we're

(02:33):
talking about are still alive. So please, please, Universe, do
not do anything to these animals because we have recorded
this episode. I'm not that superstitious, but we really do
have an uncanny number of those instances. One of them
is already deceased, and it's death made people real mad.
So that's what we're talking about today, very old animals

(02:55):
and the way we think about them. So we're going
to start with Jonathan the tortoise, who is one of
the most famous animals on this list because he is,
as of when we're recording this, still alive. He offers
a link back through time, so a lot of events
we have talked about on the show over the years.

(03:15):
He's the oldest living land animal that we know of,
and as of January twenty twenty two, also considered the
oldest tortoise in history, again that we know of. Yeah,
it's not like they're submitting their birth certificates or records
to anyone, so there could be an older one out
there that just hasn't been like, Hello, I too saw

(03:39):
the war. Jonathan's hatch date is reported as somewhere around
eighteen thirty two, although veterinarian Joe Hollins, who is his caretaker,
has told news outlets that he thinks Jonathan could be
even older, and the head of tourism for the island
of Saint Helena just where he lives. That man is

(03:59):
Matt Joshua, and he told CNN in twenty twenty two
quote Jonathan could actually be two hundred because the information
regarding his arrival on the island is not exact, and
because there's no real record of his birth, So that
hatch date of eighteen thirty two is a calculated guess
based on when Jonathan first appears in the historical record,

(04:20):
at which point he was already an adult, which would
mean that he was at least fifty years old already.
That appearance in the historical record is the moment that Jonathan,
who had been captured in the Seychelles Island, which is
where his species, the Seychelles giant tortoise is native to
that moment he was captured and brought to the home

(04:41):
of Sir William Gray Wilson as a gift. That happened
in eighteen eighty two, So that eighteen thirty two date
is just the result of subtracting fifty years from the
date that the tortoise showed up as a gift. The
record that denotes Jonathan's arrival is not any kind of

(05:01):
official paperwork. It's just a letter that mentions him. There's
also a photograph that shows Jonathan alongside several humans that
was taken sometime between eighteen eighty two and eighteen eighty six,
and it's clear in that photograph that the tortoise is
full grown. So there's some additional supporting evidence here, not
just the letter. Yeah, we didn't say so, but William

(05:23):
Gray Wilson was the governor of Saint Helena at the time,
and there's been some confusion and debate over the years
over Jonathan's exact age. Throughout the mid twentieth century, there
were a number of press mentions of a historic tortoise
on Saint Helena that made an interesting boast. So one
of these I found in the Jersey Journal, which was

(05:45):
tagged as a dispatch from Saint Helena Island, and it
read quote, A giant land tortoise in the gardens of
Government House here is said to be the only creature
alive that set eyes on Napoleon the Great General, paced
the path of the gardens when in exile. Napoleon Bonaparte
was exiled on Saint Helena. It is the second place

(06:07):
he was exiled, and it was where he died in
eighteen twenty one, so that is more than a decade
before Jonathan is believed to have even been born, and
it's more than sixty years before Jonathan arrived on Saint Helena.
So it appears this is a case of a giant
tortoise who was there. Jonathan is not the only one

(06:27):
that's been a gift over the years. For a while
it was kind of trendy to give giant tortoises his gifts.
But it appears that there was one that was there
when Napoleon was that is getting conflated or was at
the time with Jonathan's story. A lot of newspapers reported
this error as fact, although some of them seemed kind
of tongue in cheek about it, like the Daily Times

(06:50):
of Davenport, Iowa, which reported on the tortoise in a
small blurb under the headline unique distinction in nineteen forty
seven reads quote, according to a newspaper item, there is
a tortoise at Saint Helena who probably saw Napoleon, and
I might surmise is the only one who hasn't written

(07:10):
a book about it. Saint Helena is part of the
larger British Overseas territory known as Saint Helena Ascension and
Tristan d'acuna. It's a tropical island in the South Atlantic
that sits twenty five hundred miles east of Rio di
Janio and twelve hundred miles west of Angola. It's remote

(07:30):
and it's recorded as having been uninhabited when it was
discovered on the feast day of Saint Helena May twenty first,
in fifteen oh two by Spanish explorer Juau de Nova.
That exact date is also contested, because it's likely that
it was actually discovered several weeks earlier. There's some supporting
documentation that hints at an earlier May date and that

(07:52):
the reported date was selected to align with the name
that they chose. But because of its isolated position in
the Southern Atlantic, it stayed the exclusive knowledge of Portugal,
for whom De Nova had been working when he found it,
for a while. It took more than eighty years for
English navigator Thomas Cavendish to land there after that once

(08:13):
England knew about Saint Helena, all of Europe kind of did,
and it became essentially a port island. Its position made
it a really good stopping point for ships on long voyages.
The occupation of the island was claimed alternately by British
and Dutch interests, but by the end of the seventeenth
century it was property of the British East India Company.

(08:35):
For roughly one hundred and fifty years. After that, its
population was split almost evenly between administrators of the British
East India Company and their families and their enslaved workforce.
Slavery was phased out on the island during the eighteen
twenties and thirties and the two hundred years since then.
The island has continued to be a British territory, but

(08:56):
it has gained some degree of self governance relateationship that
has continued to evolve into the twenty first century. The
island has retained a small community. Only about forty four
hundred people live there, but despite the fact that it
is pretty hard to get there, even with a relatively
new airport that opened in twenty sixteen, it's a tourism destination.

(09:18):
It's beautiful and it has Jonathan. You can visit him.
He's on my list. Jonathan is a Chelonian, meaning that
he is in the order that includes tortoises, turtles, and terrapins.
He is a Seychell's giant tortoise. As we said earlier,
that's an animal that was actually used as a food
source for a lot of years. Their own physiology was

(09:39):
what made them so sought after for that reason. Not
only have people found the meat from giant tortoises tasty,
but their shells have made them easy to stack and store,
particularly on sea voyages. And because they were so commonly
eaten for so long, Jonathan is one of very few left.
But he may be a specific subspecies of Seychelle's tortoise.

(10:03):
There are several such subspecies, some of which were thought
to be extinct and now were like maybe not, And
as of a year ago, there had not been a
conclusive determination regarding Jonathan and where he fits into the
Chelonian order. Jonathan today lives what sounds like a pretty
great life. He eats cabbage, carrots, apples, and bananas, as

(10:25):
well as other plants and produce. Apparently, though he does
not like kale. His sense of smell is gone and
he's blind. He can still hear, though, and he's pretty sociable.
He's very well cared for and seems to be still
full of life. His weight is uncertain. There's not really
an easy way to weigh him on the island. According

(10:46):
to his keeper, Jonathan is still very interested in mating,
and he has frequent rendezvous with two of the other
tortoises on the island. Those are Emma and Fred. Fred
incidentally was originally called Frederica and believed to be female
when the two were first introduced in the nineteen nineties.
It wasn't until twenty seventeen, when Fred had a veterinary procedure,

(11:09):
that they realized that he was male. Jonathan gets regular
baths from Joe Hollins and his hand fed, although Hollins
has to wear welding gloves to do this because Jonathan's
beak is very sharp. Could not be comfortable. He could
do a lot of damage if he clamped down on
someone's finger. Yeah, and uh again, he's blind, so there's

(11:33):
not necessarily he sayesn't have vision to help him go
after food, so the odds of a clamp on a
finger are high. I think Hollins has mentioned he's lost
a couple fingernails over the years. Jonathan is part of
a diverse group of animals that are kept on the island.
Of Saint Helena, and he's been a tourist attraction for
a long time. In recent years, though, more rules have

(11:56):
been instated to optimize Jonathan's health and ensure that he
is not unduly stressed by all of his visitors and fans.
For example, it was once allowed quite a number of
years back for kids to sit on his back for photos.
They don't allow that anymore, and now there is apparently
pretty careful management of his interactions when tour groups come through,

(12:17):
because they can get a little bit raucous. In the
decades that Jonathan has wandered within the grounds of the
Saint Helena Governor's House, he has not always thrived. In
the late nineteen sixties, he was reportedly having some behavioral issues.
An article that circulated in various papers read quote, A
protester has been disrupting the easy going routine of civilized

(12:41):
colonial life on the island of Saint Helena, the British
possession in the South Atlantic. Jonathan is the name, and
Jonathan likes to upend benches beside the British Governor's tennis
courts and halt croquet games by sitting on the ball. Ordinarily,
the Governor of the island not be expected to tolerate

(13:01):
such boorish behavior. But Jonathan is special. I just the
language of civilized life. I don't I don't love that.
I initially included an insert that just said grown in
this copy. So this article continues by telling Jonathan's story

(13:21):
and that he's one hundred and forty and that quote.
The governor decided the turtle was simply trying to let
people know that he had had enough of the lonely life.
Jonathan's mate met with an untimely death one hundred years
ago when she sauntered off a cliff. To remedy this problem,
the governor ordered additional tortoises to keep Jonathan company. We're

(13:43):
gonna pause for a quick sponsor break, and then we'll
talk about some modern efforts to improve Jonathan's health and
well being. When Hollins was initially hired to be Jonathan's
veterinarian and caretaker, the elderly tortoise had a number of

(14:07):
health issues, which were all traced back to nutrition deficiencies.
With a change in diet to include more fresh fruits
and vegetables, he bounced back and regained his health. You
can read stories about how his beak was kind of crumbly,
the nature of it was not very strong, and that
it has really regrown and come back quite well. He
does sometimes give visitors a scare that he has passed

(14:30):
because apparently Jonathan likes to sunbathe sprawling with his limbs
and neck outstretched. Hollins also conducted a thorough review of
the environment and protocols related to the care of the
island's tortoises to make changes that would maximize the quality
of life for Jonathan and his tortoise friends. Hollins told
The Washington Post in twenty twenty two quote, Jonathan is

(14:52):
symbolic of persistence, endurance, and survival and has achieved iconic
status on the island. Got a lot of news coverage
in twenty twenty two because Saint Helena had a huge
one hundred and ninetieth birthday for him. They asked fans
of Jonathan to send in video greetings wishing him happy
birthday and any photos that tourists may have taken with him.

(15:15):
This was all to be included in a celebration package
for the event. He also got a cake made of
salad as part of this three day long party. As
part of the promotion for Jonathan's Big Day, the island's
tourism pamphlet about the festivities noted just how much the
world has changed while Jonathan has been living out his
days there. Quote, he has watched more than thirty governors

(15:39):
come and go from plantation house, watch the island introduce radios, telephones, TVs, internet, cars,
and an airport. He has lived through two World wars.
NPR's coverage of the Big birthdaytion dig also contextualized Jonathan's
life on the historical timeline with some additional data points.

(16:00):
They noted, quote, He's lived through two World Wars, eight
British monarchs, and forty US presidents. His lifetime has seen
the first phone call eighteen seventy six, the first skyscraper
eighteen eighty five, the first power driven flight nineteen oh three,
the first people to walk on the moon nineteen sixty nine.

(16:20):
He was alive when the first photograph of a person
was taken eighteen thirty eight. Now he poses for selfies
with adoring tourists. He was born before the creation of
the postage stamp eighteen forty and now appears on them.
He's had the distinction of having met Queen Elizabeth the
second back when she was Princess Elizabeth. Yeah, that was

(16:41):
in the nineteen forties. So that is Jonathan. Happy belated birthday, Jonathan.
We hope you have many more. The second oldest Chillonian
on record, just incidentally, was a Madagascar radiated tortoise named
tul Malila, who died at the ripled age of one
hundred eighty eight in nineteen sixty five. Like Jonathan, he
had been a gift, this time from Captain James Cook

(17:02):
to the Royal family of Tonga in the late seventeen hundreds.
Moving on, in two thousand and six, a team of
researchers from Bangor University of Wales collected a number of
Arctica islandica, also known as ocean cohogs more casually just
called clams, that was off the northern coast of Iceland.

(17:24):
These cohogs come from a seabed that was two hundred
and sixty two feet or eighty meters deep. The research
project that the clams were part of was mounted to
study the history of the oceans in relation to climate
and the science of aging, because these clams are known
to live for a really long time. As part of
the collection process, the clams were frozen and opened, which

(17:48):
kills them, and then the shells were removed for study.
So here is a very quick and non thorough rundown
of clam anatomy and why the shell is important. Clams
are bivalve molluscs. Their shells protect the soft muscles and
the organs inside, and those insides are actually pretty simple,
but they're also very efficient. There's a hinge ligament that

(18:09):
keeps the two shell pieces together and able to open,
but there's also an adductor muscle that keeps the shell
closed unless they need a little gap. There are gills
for filter feeding and gas exchange. There's a heart, and
there's also a muscular foot that extends out from between
the shells to burrow into the sea bed. And those
shells are made of calcium carbonate. The mantle, or outermost

(18:31):
layer of the muscle secretes proteins and minerals that create
a framework for the shell, which the calcium carbonate binds
too as it is released. Anytime the animal grows, the
outermost edge of the shell extends, and as each growth
cycle completes, a ring is formed. So counting those rings
enables scientists to gauge the age of the cohog. Because

(18:53):
some rings may be only subtly different from those adjacent
to them, it's really necessary to look at these rings
quite close, thus the removal of the shells. So why
are we walking through all of this? Well, when the
Banger team started studying the shell samples they collected back
in the lab, they discovered that one of the coohog

(19:15):
they had found was four hundred and five years old.
So the headlines that followed this called this the world's
longest lived animal. Researchers named this ko hoog Ming because
it had been born when the Ming dynasty ruled China.
This was a record breaking age. The oldest animal title

(19:37):
had officially been held for two dozen years by another
clam listed in the Guinness Book of World Records is
two hundred and twenty years old. But there was also
another that wasn't in the Guinness Book, and that was
one that was part of a collection of a German
museum whose age was claimed to have been three hundred
and seventy four when it was harvested. When The Times

(20:00):
of London wrote about this discovery, it opened with quote,
a clam dredged alive from the bottom of the North
Atlantic has been identified by scientists as the longest living
animal ever known. Unfortunately, by the time its true age
had been established, the three point four inch clam was
already dead, but the British scientists who discovered it believed

(20:21):
it could yield valuable information to help research into aging.
The Times went on to explain that the team had
received a forty thousand pound grant to use their finding
and aging related work by the charity group helped the aged.
In an interview with the BBC that published on October
twenty eight, two thousand seven, Chris Richardson, a professor from

(20:43):
Bangor University, explained, quote what's intriguing the Bangor group as
how these animals have actually managed an effect to escape
senescence that's growing old. One of the reasons we think
is that the animals have got some difference in cell
turnover rates we would associate with much shorter lived animals.

(21:03):
He also explained how their work might map out the
history of climate as it occurred during Ming's lifetime, saying,
quote the growth increments themselves provide a record of how
the animal has varied in its growth rate from year
to year, and that varies according to climate, seawater temperature,
and food supply, and so by looking at these mollusks,
we can reconstruct the environment that animals grew in. They

(21:26):
are like tiny tape recorders, in effect, sitting on the
seabed and integrating signals about water, temperature and food over time.
Almost as soon as the news went public of this
record breaking cohog, there was public outcry. People were angry
that Ming had been killed as part of the research.
The research team had explained in interviews and press releases

(21:48):
that studying these clams could help humans understand the process
of aging much more deeply in a way that could
benefit humans. They had also stated that another goal of
their ongoing work was to look at the last century
of climate as it was reflected in these samples, and
then see if there was a significant difference to patterns
of climate in the centuries that preceded it. But some

(22:10):
people seem to think that the scientists had killed Ming
knowing it was more than four hundred because they wanted
to study it further. That was completely incorrect. They had
not been able to determine the cohog's age until after
it was killed. The research group had no reason to
think any of the collected clams were extraordinary. The Daily
Telegraph of London ran an obituary for Ming, noting that

(22:34):
it had grown from a larva when Queen Elizabeth I
was still on the throne. This oh bit noted the
various historical events that the clam had lived through, including
the Gunpowder Plot, the Glorious Revolution. Also noted that by
being an ocean floor dweller, Ming had been spared more
unpleasant events like the Potato famine, the plague, and World

(22:55):
War two. On a completely different note of Curtis's some
questions arose about whether Ming could really be considered the
oldest animal ever discovered, because there are coral that are older,
but coral is made up of multiple individual corals that
grow together to form the larger hole. So to sidestep
any confusion and to clarify the claim, researchers started qualifying

(23:20):
the superlative by saying that Ming was the oldest non
colonial animal, not having anything to do with any colonialism,
just colonies of animals. In twenty thirteen, there was a recount.
Really this was an additional examination of Ming's shell, but
researchers did once again count the bivalves rings, this time

(23:41):
using more advanced methods than had been available previously. This
time they discovered that Ming was a lot older than
they previously calculated five hundred and seven. That would make
Ming thirty four when Queen Elizabeth the First was born. Also,
a contemporary of figures like Christopher Columbus Leonardo da Vinci

(24:05):
would have been painting the Mona Lisa at the time.
The team published their findings from this seven year project
in the periodical paleo Geography, Paleoclimatology paleo Ecology in March
twenty thirteen. That was in a paper titled variability of
marine climate on the North Atlantic Shelf in a thirteen

(24:27):
fifty seven year proxy archive based on growth increments in
the bivalve Arctica Islandica. This paper details the historical ocean
record that has been established through this study and notes
that shells offer a unique opportunity to create such a record,
and it describes their sample collection from seven years earlier

(24:47):
quote live specimens, dead articulated shells and dead single shell
valves of a Islandica were collected from the seabed during
a cruise of the research vessel Bjarnie Simonson in June
two thousand. The collection site of the shells used in
this study was west of the island of Grimsey in
a water depth of eighty one to eighty three meters.

(25:09):
Live specimens were frozen on board and thought and processed
after return to the laboratory. So despite having explained the
methods used to cross all the specimens in the study,
people were ready to be angry over this mollusk's death.
We'll talk about the second wave of outrage after we
hear from the sponsors that keep stuffiness in history class going.

(25:42):
Almost immediately after the team published their paper, news stories
once again came out suggesting wrongdoing on the part of
the research team, and it ignored the established information that
they had not known they had such an old living
specimen on board at the time that they collected and
froze them. The Metro UK tabloid ran a story on

(26:03):
November thirteenth of twenty thirteen under the headline Bungling scientists
kill world's oldest creature, a clam after five hundred seven
years in c Oddly, this otherwise misleading article includes an
actual quote from one of the researchers regarding the usefulness
of the work that the study was doing regarding the

(26:23):
science of aging. The Christian Science Monitor covered the story
two days later with the headline Scientists discover world's oldest clam,
killing it in the process, and this particular article also
emphasized the clam's death, stating, but that is as old
as ming will ever get. CBS News wrote of the

(26:44):
work the team was doing, quote either way ming an
arctica ilandica, bivalve mollusc or ocean cohog is still dead
and he could have been saved if they just counted
the outside growth rings instead of the rings along the
interior hingeley ligament. An interview given to Science Nordic before
this article ran, which that CBS News story references, had

(27:08):
explained why the interior was the best bet. At the
time of that first count, the hinge ligaments offered the
best and most accurate information. They're not getting dinged around
by other stuff in the ocean. Marine biologist Rob Whitbard
told Science Nordic, quote the age has been confirmed with
a variety of methods, including geochemical methods such as the

(27:29):
carbon fourteen method, so I am very confident that they
have now determined the right age. If there is any error,
it can be only one or two years. Just a
day after this tabloid story, the BBC ran one titled Clamgate,
The Epic Saga of Ming, which walked readers through the

(27:50):
initial discovery, the revision of the known age of the clam,
and the level to which this entire story was misunderstood.
Research or mention that the team had gotten emails calling
them clam murderers. But in that interview with the BBC
that ran in November twenty thirteen, the research team pointed

(28:11):
out that there was a double standard that their work
faced amid the negative reactions, noting that quote, the same
species of clam are caught commercially and eaten daily. Anyone
who has eaten clam chowder in New England has probably
eaten flesh from this species, many of which are likely
several hundred years old. Additionally, the chances are that there

(28:33):
is an even older mollusk out there somewhere. Once these
clams reach a certain age, they don't grow all that
much each year, so a five hundred year old clam
is not that different in size from a two hundred
year old one, So it would be very easy to
pick up one that is much much older, not know
it and put it in chowder. You can now see

(28:53):
ming for yourself if you wish, at the National Museum, Cardiff,
where its story and the science associated with it are
integrated into the museum's Insight Gallery. Our last entry in
this episode is short, but Holly was very tickled by it.
This features a very old bird who is, as of
when we are recording, still alive, a blue and gold

(29:15):
macaw named Charlie. Charlie is believed to have hatched in
eighteen ninety nine, so she's one hundred and twenty three
or one hundred and twenty four, and she's known as
Charlie the Cursor, sometimes also described as Winston Churchill's parrot,
but that is contested. In January two thousand and four,

(29:36):
the Daily Mirror, so Yes, another tabloid, ran a very
colorful story about Charlie catapulting her onto the international stage.
I could not get my hands on that original article,
but in it all of the information was repeated in
many other places. The claim was made that Charlie routinely
uttered the phrases blank Hitler and blank Nazis, and she

(30:00):
had been taught those phrases with the word blank being
replaced to an expletive by none other than her former owner,
Sir Winston Churchill, and that when she said these things,
she sounded exactly like Churchill and Charlie's owner, a man
named Peter Orum, stood by this claim and told news
outlets repeatedly that his father in law, Percy Dabner, was

(30:21):
a well known dealer in birds and sold Charlie to
the Prime Minister in nineteen thirty seven, and that then,
when Churchill died in nineteen sixty five, Charlie was returned
to the Croydon pet shop she had come from. Today
she's part of Heathfield Nurseries, which is owned by Orum,
and employees of the nursery have also gone on record

(30:43):
repeating that same story. Here is the problem. Churchill's country estate,
known as Chartwell, is now part of the National Trust,
and as such it has a staff that retains the
historical records of the property and the Prime Minister's time there,
and they have found no evidence. Despite a lot of digging,
it sounds like that Charlie was ever Winston Churchill's bird.

(31:07):
The New York Times did some digging into the matter
and spoke with Judith Seaward, who worked at Chartwell and
was its marketing manager and head of visitor services at
the time. Her statement to the press was this quote,
Sir Winston had a variety of livestock and once owned
a budgeregard that's a budgy if any of you have
like pet birds. I didn't recognize it as a budge

(31:30):
by the word. He also had a completely different kind
of parrot some years previously. But Lady Solmes is absolutely
certain that this macaw was not her father's Seaward also
of the possibility it seemed kind of like a peacemaking
move that the macaw might have belonged to someone on
staff at Chartwell rather than Churchill the Lady Solmes. The

(31:51):
reference to there was, as the quote indicated, Churchill's daughter,
the author, Mary Solmes. She told the BBC in two
thousand and four quote, for the war, we did have
an African gray for about three years, but that's quite
quite different from a macaw. It's smaller or more compact,
with a sort of red face. It never came to London.

(32:12):
It may well have gone back for all I know,
to the person my father got it from. But it
was the end of the parrot's relationship with my father.
So by her account, there was not a bird in
the Churchill household while her father was Prime Minister, definitely
none that he kept until his death. She also gave
her opinion on the claim that her father might have

(32:33):
taught a bird to curse Nazis, saying it was quote
too tiresome for words. And although the Mirror claimed that
Charlie was famed for cursing in front of visitors, there's
no actual evidence of the bird cursing at all, other
than people's words. Charlie has been visited by various journalists

(32:54):
over the years, hoping to catch a recording of her
famously inappropriate language. I think the most recent when I
found was from twenty fourteen. But she seems to mostly
just give a croaky squawk. She is a very mature lady,
and say just a few benign words, including hello and goodbye. Uh.

(33:15):
We accidentally have a theme in what we're recording this week,
because the next thing we're going to record also has
a lot of things that it's like different people are
different publications reporting the same in accurate thing. Yeah, ooof
the old animals. Okay, my first listener email is from
our listener Holly Frye, who has a correction. It's a

(33:39):
minor correction and it's actually kind of a like, Ah,
I'm not sure. I think it was in the behind
the scenes that I mentioned that Thomas Hicks, who was
the winner of the nineteen oh four Olympic Marathon despite
having been poisoned, didn't run again to the best of
my knowledge, Like I had seen a mention of him

(33:59):
where it was like he did not do any more
running after that. But then I was just reviewing stuff
recently that I had had in relation to that episode
to make sure I hadn't missed any in the sources list,
and I saw a thing from Runners World, and that
suggested that he did keep running for a while and
then moved to Canada. But I didn't find backup on
that either, So just FYI, I may have made a

(34:22):
false statement about his running career. And then I have
a listener mail from our listener Anna, but she mentioned
something that I believe we have talked about on the show.
It's also related to the marathon. Anna writes, thank you
for so many wonderful episodes, the excellent nineteen oh four
marathon one inspired me to mention the delightful coverage of

(34:44):
the nineteen twelve Stockholm Olympics in the Jim Thorpe bio
path Lit by Lightning. I think you mentioned that when
we talked about Jim Thorpe, or you used it, but
I'm not positive. I don't immediately recall author author David
Moranis includes the exagger and poor performance of rich kid
Georges Payton to modern pentathlon, such a weird event, including

(35:06):
being dosed with opium before the four thousand meter run.
Have a great day. I don't have any cats, so
I'm including a photo of the kittens my friend Area
is currently fostering. Kitten pictures are like weapons grade cute
to me. I'm powerless in front of them. Thank you
so much. Anna. It is really really interesting when you
start looking back at Olympic sports and I know it's

(35:27):
still an issue where you know, doping is still something
that's constantly a concern and investigated, But like I just
I don't know, uh, you know, the idea that opium
and strych nine would be performance and answers continues to
blow my mind. So I just every time I think
about it, it's like my brain has like this clicking

(35:47):
thing where it can't quite reset because it just seems
so wrong. I know, well, poison people. That'll make them
run faster some excuse. Yes, if you would like to
write to us, especially if you have foster kit pictures,
but you don't have to, you could do that at
History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find

(36:07):
us on the internet on all of the social media's
as Missed in History And if you have not subscribed
to the podcast but you think that might be a
fun thing to do, you can do that on the
iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

(36:29):
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