October 25, 2010 • 17 mins
Did Tycho Brahe really own a moose with a drinking problem? Did a U.S. President keep a pet alligator? Tune in as Katie and Sarah take a look at some of history's strangest pets (and their equally bizarre owners).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downing and this is
part two of some Historical Animals you Should Know and
(00:22):
our last podcast we talked about the Tower of London Menagerie,
Pablo Escobar's hippos, and Darwin's tortoise. But there are so
very many more interesting stories that we dug up, and
we're going to start with Winston Churchill, who has a
very very interesting pet. He does so Winston Churchill born
(00:43):
eighteen seventy four died nineteen is best known for his
leadership during World War Two. That's what most people request
him for in the podcast, not because of his very
interesting pet, but um, he decided from the first to
fight Hitler, and that's what he's most famous for. He's
considered a national hero and possibly the greatest statesman of
(01:04):
the twentieth century. He also had a career in the
House of Commons for sixty years. He was a war
correspondent and a Nobel Prize winning author. Um he escaped
from a Boer prison camp. The guy's got everything going
for him as far as an interesting life history, so
you might associate him with an animal like a lion
(01:24):
or you know, something noble and struggle and power. Yeah,
maybe not a platypus, but the platypus is called the
world's most interesting mammal. Sarah and Churchill agreed. So this
platypus named Jill gave birth to a baby in captivity
in Australia and people were really excited about it. You know,
it's such a strange and interesting animal. There was still
(01:47):
so much to learn about breeding them in captivity. So
in February nineteen forty three, which was at the height
of the war, Churchill sent a message to the Australian
Prime Minister asking for six of them, and it was
to be this hush hush wartime mission. You know, this
this getting of our of our platypus is And I'm
(02:08):
still not entirely sure why if that had something to
do with British morale, public interest, like it would be
a surprise, like, look, I got six platypuses. It would
have been the first thing. I don't know, it would
have been the first living platypus in Europe, which would
be huge. Or maybe he just had a personal thing
for them, and maybe because the journey would be risky,
(02:30):
he didn't want everybody to know and be disappointed if
something bad happened. There's there's probably it's a hint. So
an Australian man built a special traveling platypus ory for
the animal he chose, which he named Winston, and it
was complete with the worms and little grubs for it
to eat. And our animal did very well on its
voyage until submarines near England, just days from their landing
(02:53):
in Liverpool detonated to depth charges under the ship and
the animals so sensitive it's organs that it ended up
dying before they arrived, but later made Churchill's desk it's home. Well,
it was stuffed, of course. It's such a sad first
entry to start. A lot of these historical animals stories
end up with with dead animals, but at least Churchill
(03:16):
had good intentions are next story, unfortunately, also deals with
an animal death. But dare I say it's entertaining? Maybe
it is. It is entertaining, but trying to be a
little bit so This next one is Tycho Brahey, who
was born in fifteen forty six and died in sixteen
o one. He was born in Denmark and went's now Sweden,
(03:37):
and we've gotten several requests for Tycho. He's a pretty
interesting guy. We've gotten excerpt from an email from Mike
in Columbia, Missouri. He said, I'm particularly intrigued by Tycho
Brahe who had a silver fake nose and a tame
moose that died from falling down the stairs while drunk.
That was the moose. Tacho himself probably died of urmia.
(03:59):
But there are some question which means you knew it
had to becoming. There's an exhimation coming. And he lost
his nose in a duel by the way with another student,
but his career was not have her of a silver nose.
We'd also like to make a note that it may
well have been a different metal. Some stories say it's silver,
and say it's gold, some say it's copper. A silver
(04:19):
nose would be obnoxious because you'd have to take it
off and polish it all the time. But but to
think of how awesome it would be, So I think
you're missing You're missing the point here. I'm just saying
gold might be sort of a better might be a
better option bet our option as far as upkeep. Well,
we'll think about it a little bit later, what to
do with our our possible missing noses in the future.
But he was an astronomer. He built a fabulous observatory
(04:42):
and several very advanced astronomical instruments, which unfortunately have been lost.
That he's known especially for his meticulous observations, his astronomical observations,
which together with his assistant Johann Kepler's, were better than
anything anyone had ever seen. They made a real a
spectacular team. But they're all these strange stories about Tycho.
(05:05):
And one that's mentioned frequently is the story that Mike
wrote to us about, and that's the Moves getting intoxicated
off of beer and falling down the stairs and dying. Um, so,
I guess that's what happens when you try to entertain
a noble Yeah, I'd like to know how a moose
got into the store of someone's beer. It sounds like
(05:25):
something that would happen at a fraternity party. Yeah, I
have a hard time imagining, just like not an astronomer
Movese got into the beer. Again. Oh so that's somebody
Holly gave. Our next stories are a little more fun.
We're gonna start with John Quincy Adams, who was born
in seventeen sixty seven died in eighteen forty eight, and
he was a U S President and the son of
(05:47):
a U S. President. But he wasn't very popular. People
found him cold, and they didn't believe that he should
have won the presidency over Jackson. Adams himself thought Jackson
was a quote barbarian it. He was known for being
a really great diplomat, and in this very long diplomatic
career he laid the groundwork for them Monroe Doctrine and
(06:08):
helped the U S acchoir Florida and opposed the expansion
of slavery. But he also acquired a few interesting pets
that seem well and maybe if people knew about this,
they would see the more whimsical side of slightly morose personality.
I think he might have been into swimming in the
nude too. I don't know if that helped any opinion.
(06:30):
But he was given a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette,
a French ally during the Revolution, an alligator, and he
kept it in the east room bathtub. He also had
some silkworms, or his wife kept silkworms, which people thought
was quite strange. But he's certainly not the only White
House resident with an odd pet. I couldn't pick just one,
(06:50):
so we're going to tell you about a few of them.
I know, Katie was entertaining me earlier today with all
these pictures of White House pets. It was extremely distracting. Sorry,
bottled mossbum. So Calvin Coolidge had a raccoon named Rebecca
that walked on a leash, and the Coolidges also had
a wallaby, a pygmy hippo, a goose, a donkey, a bobcat, lion, cubs,
(07:14):
and a bear. Teddy. Roosevelt also had a lion, because
that's a cool pet to have if you're president. We
already talked about his badger, Josiah, but he also had
his own menagerie made of rats. When not a pet, Yeah,
I don't know. Um a donkey, bears, roosters, raccoon, snakes
(07:35):
and lizards, a coyote, a wildcat, a zebra, an owl,
and more. Yeah, I just got tired of typing up
a good representation to start with. Woodrow Wilson is known
for the sheep that grazed the White House lawn, but
his pets actually had a noble purpose. It was wartime
and he wanted to cut down on groundskeeping costs, and
(07:57):
their wool was also auction to raise funds for the
Red Cross. The most famous of the sheep was named
old Ike, and that was a ram who liked to
chew tobacco. And Taft also had a similarly useful pet
um a cow Pauline Wayne, who was the last cow
at the White House, and she provided the presidential family
(08:18):
with milk, so very helpful indeed. And another present, the
King of Siam gave Buchanan a herd of elephants. But
my absolutely favorite story apparently President Johnson fed some mice
that lived in the White House and I guess we're
just his little friends. He left them flower at night
(08:39):
when he was going through CS Cinderella political troubles, which
is the saddest, sweetest presidential story I have read today.
I think we've learned from this that you are pro
mice ANTII anti rat absolutely, and we want more stories
about countries leaders and their pets. We just focused on
us presidents because of course that's what we know. So
(08:59):
send sum where at history podcast at how stuff works
dot com. But we're going to move on now to
the next entry in our list. You've realized already that
we have bonus entries here with all those presidential mentions.
We still have a few more to cover in depth, though,
and that is Empress Josephine and her Orangutan. She was
(09:20):
born in seventeen sixty three and died in eight Yes, well,
did you know that her name wasn't really Josephine. That
one came from her husband, Napoleon Bonaparte. Her full name
was Marie joseph Rose Tasher de la Pagri, and her
friends called her Rose, And I say, beware of husbands
who change your name. I think it's a little bit creepy.
(09:41):
Everyone knew her as Rose, and then all of a
sudden she was Josephine. It's like if I told everyone
that Sarah's real name was Myrtle. Not true. But Katie
can't rename me so Josephine or Rose. At this point,
her first husband was guillotine during the Terror, and she
was a trusted But once that horror was over, she
(10:03):
rebounded with a lot of affairs with politicians, and one
of them was the famous Napoleon who proposed to her.
But you could kind of described the early years of
their marriage together as a one sided romance. It seemed
like Napoleon cared deeply for Josephine. He went off to Italy,
wrote her all these letters. We mentioned this in the
(10:25):
Egypt and Savant's episode, actually many many love letters, very
devoted to Josephine, and then when he hears that she's
been sleeping with someone else, he's absolutely crushed and then
quite cold to her from there on out, when she
hadn't been writing him back either, which can't be great
when you're in Italy during war. But she became Empress
(10:45):
of France when he was crowned in eighteen o four,
and she was loved by the people, but she wasn't
able to give her husband an heir, and his relatives
even tried to poison her so they could get someone
better equipped to give them one, and Napoleon divorced her
in December eighteen o nine, saying it was forthy good
of France because they needed his air, and it said
(11:07):
she died of a broken heart, even though her death
came many many years after their separation. She'd had to
leave their home with her parents and her dogs, but
that isn't the most famous patch she had. Instead, it's
the orangutang. Yeah, so this naval officer brought to the
Empress a very unusual gift, the gift of an orangutang.
(11:29):
Who doesn't want that, um, But it was kind of
thick for a while, and it had to be nursed
by a famous naturalist and zoologist, George Cuvier, And he
was very impressed by the orangutang's intelligence and its self
defense and awareness. Um kind of made a friend in him. Yeah,
we were trying to remember too, if he was one
of the savants. His name sounds very familiar. If we
(11:53):
didn't talk about him, he might have been in that book.
We'll have to look that one up later. But Empress
Josephine liked to dress her orange tang in a coat
and invited it to the dinner table. And like many
of the others we've mentioned, she didn't just stop there.
She also had black swans, of vulture gazelles, and flying squirrels,
among many many other animals. She even had a herd
(12:15):
of Swiss cattle, and she hired a shepherd and shepherdess
to take care of them. Candice would be so thrilled
if she could be a shepherdess. It's her dream career.
Katie and I were talking about this earlier. It would
probably be a pretty nice job, like it made like
a reenactor, sort of nothing to gross would be allowed
(12:35):
to happen, like Colonial Williamsburg, or like reading The Human
Guinea pig Art called on Slate where she went to
be a reenactor. I was almost thinking of Marie Antoinette
playing Swiss country like I don't know, maybe it would
be like the Tetrianal. Sorry screwing up my words. Today.
Our next person is Salvador Dolly and Baboo the Awful Lot,
(12:59):
which I saved for last Sarah, because I know it's
your favorite animal. I love austul lots. So starting with
a little Salvador Dolly biography. He was born nineteen o
four died nineteen eighty nine, and he is the Spanish surrealist,
perhaps best known for painting those Melting clocks, and also
known for his extremely eccentric behavior and his mustache and
(13:21):
his mustache. I got to give him that. He would
probably be a competitive entry in the beard and mustache competition.
The High Museum in Atlanta has a Dolly exhibition right now,
And they've got all these huge billboards with Dolly and
his mustache on all of them, and I just love
him peering out of traffic. Right in Peachtree Road. There's
like a giant billboard of Dolly. His personal life was
(13:43):
turbulent but fascinating, particularly his relationship with his wife Gala,
who was also his muse. And his reputation was also
marred by his association with, and perhaps admiration of, Franco's
regime in Spain. But instead of delving farther into his
further excuse me into his politics, we're going to talk
(14:03):
about one of the lighter aspects of his life. Yeah,
he had an awful lot, which I think most of
you know that I love awful lots. And this particular
animal's name was Baboo, and he had a very exciting life,
probably much more exciting. He'd get taken up to the
top of the Eiffel Tower and to the lobby in
(14:24):
New York City St. Regis. They both hang out in
the lobby of the St. Regis. So, I mean that
sounds pretty good already. It's a good conversation starter. However,
Baboo was declawed and defanged, which sounds really unfortunate. Um,
and he slept in an empty TV set and ate
dog food and liver and Dolly socks. I don't know,
(14:45):
I'm starting to maybe change my opinion on how much
more exciting is life like I could be sleeping and
but I guess the nice thing about that one is
clearly that his pet was well loved and well taken
care of. And as we've been through a lot of
these stories that we've talked about, not many of them are.
It was more acquiring animals as some sort of sign
(15:07):
of power, and like, look at the exotic things I'm
able to get without knowing anything about them or or
how to treat them and committing to them too. Some
of these animals live for a very long time, and
it seems like they're famous owners lost interests pretty quickly
as soon as the novelty world, like many kids when
they get a puppy for Christmas, thinking about after one
(15:28):
Dalmatians when there are all those Dalmatian puppies and the
Chuahuas after the Taco Bell commercials deal. But it's really
interesting too when we're looking back, there are many many
stories that we weren't able to put in this podcast.
But the tradition of giving these exotic animals as pets
to world leaders is just so interesting to me. I
(15:51):
don't think you'd be able to get away with it
as much here unless you could prove that it would
be taken care of adequately. Well that's what zoos are
for today, and you see that in some of these
ones we've talked about, Actually the world leader ends up
being forced to give his exotic animal away to the zoo.
But if if we're thinking modern times, I mean, countries
(16:13):
do still exchange animals between their zoos, so maybe that's
sort of the replacement. But our presidents are sticking more
to cats and dogs these days. They can take care
of and people can identify with. But if you would
like to tell us again the story of some interesting
historical figures and their fabulous pets, please email us at
(16:34):
History podcast, how stuff Works dot com. We're also on Facebook,
We've got fan page and on Twitter at missed in History.
And if you'd like to read a little bit more
about Salvage or Dolly, you can search our home page
for his name at www That how stuff works dot
com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(16:56):
Is it how stuff works dot Com and be sure
to check out the stuff you missed in history. Glass
flogged on the How staff Works dot Com plint page.
Boom boom,
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downing and this is
part two of some Historical Animals you Should Know and
(00:22):
our last podcast we talked about the Tower of London Menagerie,
Pablo Escobar's hippos, and Darwin's tortoise. But there are so
very many more interesting stories that we dug up, and
we're going to start with Winston Churchill, who has a
very very interesting pet. He does so Winston Churchill born
(00:43):
eighteen seventy four died nineteen is best known for his
leadership during World War Two. That's what most people request
him for in the podcast, not because of his very
interesting pet, but um, he decided from the first to
fight Hitler, and that's what he's most famous for. He's
considered a national hero and possibly the greatest statesman of
(01:04):
the twentieth century. He also had a career in the
House of Commons for sixty years. He was a war
correspondent and a Nobel Prize winning author. Um he escaped
from a Boer prison camp. The guy's got everything going
for him as far as an interesting life history, so
you might associate him with an animal like a lion
(01:24):
or you know, something noble and struggle and power. Yeah,
maybe not a platypus, but the platypus is called the
world's most interesting mammal. Sarah and Churchill agreed. So this
platypus named Jill gave birth to a baby in captivity
in Australia and people were really excited about it. You know,
it's such a strange and interesting animal. There was still
(01:47):
so much to learn about breeding them in captivity. So
in February nineteen forty three, which was at the height
of the war, Churchill sent a message to the Australian
Prime Minister asking for six of them, and it was
to be this hush hush wartime mission. You know, this
this getting of our of our platypus is And I'm
(02:08):
still not entirely sure why if that had something to
do with British morale, public interest, like it would be
a surprise, like, look, I got six platypuses. It would
have been the first thing. I don't know, it would
have been the first living platypus in Europe, which would
be huge. Or maybe he just had a personal thing
for them, and maybe because the journey would be risky,
(02:30):
he didn't want everybody to know and be disappointed if
something bad happened. There's there's probably it's a hint. So
an Australian man built a special traveling platypus ory for
the animal he chose, which he named Winston, and it
was complete with the worms and little grubs for it
to eat. And our animal did very well on its
voyage until submarines near England, just days from their landing
(02:53):
in Liverpool detonated to depth charges under the ship and
the animals so sensitive it's organs that it ended up
dying before they arrived, but later made Churchill's desk it's home. Well,
it was stuffed, of course. It's such a sad first
entry to start. A lot of these historical animals stories
end up with with dead animals, but at least Churchill
(03:16):
had good intentions are next story, unfortunately, also deals with
an animal death. But dare I say it's entertaining? Maybe
it is. It is entertaining, but trying to be a
little bit so This next one is Tycho Brahey, who
was born in fifteen forty six and died in sixteen
o one. He was born in Denmark and went's now Sweden,
(03:37):
and we've gotten several requests for Tycho. He's a pretty
interesting guy. We've gotten excerpt from an email from Mike
in Columbia, Missouri. He said, I'm particularly intrigued by Tycho
Brahe who had a silver fake nose and a tame
moose that died from falling down the stairs while drunk.
That was the moose. Tacho himself probably died of urmia.
(03:59):
But there are some question which means you knew it
had to becoming. There's an exhimation coming. And he lost
his nose in a duel by the way with another student,
but his career was not have her of a silver nose.
We'd also like to make a note that it may
well have been a different metal. Some stories say it's silver,
and say it's gold, some say it's copper. A silver
(04:19):
nose would be obnoxious because you'd have to take it
off and polish it all the time. But but to
think of how awesome it would be, So I think
you're missing You're missing the point here. I'm just saying
gold might be sort of a better might be a
better option bet our option as far as upkeep. Well,
we'll think about it a little bit later, what to
do with our our possible missing noses in the future.
But he was an astronomer. He built a fabulous observatory
(04:42):
and several very advanced astronomical instruments, which unfortunately have been lost.
That he's known especially for his meticulous observations, his astronomical observations,
which together with his assistant Johann Kepler's, were better than
anything anyone had ever seen. They made a real a
spectacular team. But they're all these strange stories about Tycho.
(05:05):
And one that's mentioned frequently is the story that Mike
wrote to us about, and that's the Moves getting intoxicated
off of beer and falling down the stairs and dying. Um, so,
I guess that's what happens when you try to entertain
a noble Yeah, I'd like to know how a moose
got into the store of someone's beer. It sounds like
(05:25):
something that would happen at a fraternity party. Yeah, I
have a hard time imagining, just like not an astronomer
Movese got into the beer. Again. Oh so that's somebody
Holly gave. Our next stories are a little more fun.
We're gonna start with John Quincy Adams, who was born
in seventeen sixty seven died in eighteen forty eight, and
he was a U S President and the son of
(05:47):
a U S. President. But he wasn't very popular. People
found him cold, and they didn't believe that he should
have won the presidency over Jackson. Adams himself thought Jackson
was a quote barbarian it. He was known for being
a really great diplomat, and in this very long diplomatic
career he laid the groundwork for them Monroe Doctrine and
(06:08):
helped the U S acchoir Florida and opposed the expansion
of slavery. But he also acquired a few interesting pets
that seem well and maybe if people knew about this,
they would see the more whimsical side of slightly morose personality.
I think he might have been into swimming in the
nude too. I don't know if that helped any opinion.
(06:30):
But he was given a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette,
a French ally during the Revolution, an alligator, and he
kept it in the east room bathtub. He also had
some silkworms, or his wife kept silkworms, which people thought
was quite strange. But he's certainly not the only White
House resident with an odd pet. I couldn't pick just one,
(06:50):
so we're going to tell you about a few of them.
I know, Katie was entertaining me earlier today with all
these pictures of White House pets. It was extremely distracting. Sorry,
bottled mossbum. So Calvin Coolidge had a raccoon named Rebecca
that walked on a leash, and the Coolidges also had
a wallaby, a pygmy hippo, a goose, a donkey, a bobcat, lion, cubs,
(07:14):
and a bear. Teddy. Roosevelt also had a lion, because
that's a cool pet to have if you're president. We
already talked about his badger, Josiah, but he also had
his own menagerie made of rats. When not a pet, Yeah,
I don't know. Um a donkey, bears, roosters, raccoon, snakes
(07:35):
and lizards, a coyote, a wildcat, a zebra, an owl,
and more. Yeah, I just got tired of typing up
a good representation to start with. Woodrow Wilson is known
for the sheep that grazed the White House lawn, but
his pets actually had a noble purpose. It was wartime
and he wanted to cut down on groundskeeping costs, and
(07:57):
their wool was also auction to raise funds for the
Red Cross. The most famous of the sheep was named
old Ike, and that was a ram who liked to
chew tobacco. And Taft also had a similarly useful pet
um a cow Pauline Wayne, who was the last cow
at the White House, and she provided the presidential family
(08:18):
with milk, so very helpful indeed. And another present, the
King of Siam gave Buchanan a herd of elephants. But
my absolutely favorite story apparently President Johnson fed some mice
that lived in the White House and I guess we're
just his little friends. He left them flower at night
(08:39):
when he was going through CS Cinderella political troubles, which
is the saddest, sweetest presidential story I have read today.
I think we've learned from this that you are pro
mice ANTII anti rat absolutely, and we want more stories
about countries leaders and their pets. We just focused on
us presidents because of course that's what we know. So
(08:59):
send sum where at history podcast at how stuff works
dot com. But we're going to move on now to
the next entry in our list. You've realized already that
we have bonus entries here with all those presidential mentions.
We still have a few more to cover in depth, though,
and that is Empress Josephine and her Orangutan. She was
(09:20):
born in seventeen sixty three and died in eight Yes, well,
did you know that her name wasn't really Josephine. That
one came from her husband, Napoleon Bonaparte. Her full name
was Marie joseph Rose Tasher de la Pagri, and her
friends called her Rose, And I say, beware of husbands
who change your name. I think it's a little bit creepy.
(09:41):
Everyone knew her as Rose, and then all of a
sudden she was Josephine. It's like if I told everyone
that Sarah's real name was Myrtle. Not true. But Katie
can't rename me so Josephine or Rose. At this point,
her first husband was guillotine during the Terror, and she
was a trusted But once that horror was over, she
(10:03):
rebounded with a lot of affairs with politicians, and one
of them was the famous Napoleon who proposed to her.
But you could kind of described the early years of
their marriage together as a one sided romance. It seemed
like Napoleon cared deeply for Josephine. He went off to Italy,
wrote her all these letters. We mentioned this in the
(10:25):
Egypt and Savant's episode, actually many many love letters, very
devoted to Josephine, and then when he hears that she's
been sleeping with someone else, he's absolutely crushed and then
quite cold to her from there on out, when she
hadn't been writing him back either, which can't be great
when you're in Italy during war. But she became Empress
(10:45):
of France when he was crowned in eighteen o four,
and she was loved by the people, but she wasn't
able to give her husband an heir, and his relatives
even tried to poison her so they could get someone
better equipped to give them one, and Napoleon divorced her
in December eighteen o nine, saying it was forthy good
of France because they needed his air, and it said
(11:07):
she died of a broken heart, even though her death
came many many years after their separation. She'd had to
leave their home with her parents and her dogs, but
that isn't the most famous patch she had. Instead, it's
the orangutang. Yeah, so this naval officer brought to the
Empress a very unusual gift, the gift of an orangutang.
(11:29):
Who doesn't want that, um, But it was kind of
thick for a while, and it had to be nursed
by a famous naturalist and zoologist, George Cuvier, And he
was very impressed by the orangutang's intelligence and its self
defense and awareness. Um kind of made a friend in him. Yeah,
we were trying to remember too, if he was one
of the savants. His name sounds very familiar. If we
(11:53):
didn't talk about him, he might have been in that book.
We'll have to look that one up later. But Empress
Josephine liked to dress her orange tang in a coat
and invited it to the dinner table. And like many
of the others we've mentioned, she didn't just stop there.
She also had black swans, of vulture gazelles, and flying squirrels,
among many many other animals. She even had a herd
(12:15):
of Swiss cattle, and she hired a shepherd and shepherdess
to take care of them. Candice would be so thrilled
if she could be a shepherdess. It's her dream career.
Katie and I were talking about this earlier. It would
probably be a pretty nice job, like it made like
a reenactor, sort of nothing to gross would be allowed
(12:35):
to happen, like Colonial Williamsburg, or like reading The Human
Guinea pig Art called on Slate where she went to
be a reenactor. I was almost thinking of Marie Antoinette
playing Swiss country like I don't know, maybe it would
be like the Tetrianal. Sorry screwing up my words. Today.
Our next person is Salvador Dolly and Baboo the Awful Lot,
(12:59):
which I saved for last Sarah, because I know it's
your favorite animal. I love austul lots. So starting with
a little Salvador Dolly biography. He was born nineteen o
four died nineteen eighty nine, and he is the Spanish surrealist,
perhaps best known for painting those Melting clocks, and also
known for his extremely eccentric behavior and his mustache and
(13:21):
his mustache. I got to give him that. He would
probably be a competitive entry in the beard and mustache competition.
The High Museum in Atlanta has a Dolly exhibition right now,
And they've got all these huge billboards with Dolly and
his mustache on all of them, and I just love
him peering out of traffic. Right in Peachtree Road. There's
like a giant billboard of Dolly. His personal life was
(13:43):
turbulent but fascinating, particularly his relationship with his wife Gala,
who was also his muse. And his reputation was also
marred by his association with, and perhaps admiration of, Franco's
regime in Spain. But instead of delving farther into his
further excuse me into his politics, we're going to talk
(14:03):
about one of the lighter aspects of his life. Yeah,
he had an awful lot, which I think most of
you know that I love awful lots. And this particular
animal's name was Baboo, and he had a very exciting life,
probably much more exciting. He'd get taken up to the
top of the Eiffel Tower and to the lobby in
(14:24):
New York City St. Regis. They both hang out in
the lobby of the St. Regis. So, I mean that
sounds pretty good already. It's a good conversation starter. However,
Baboo was declawed and defanged, which sounds really unfortunate. Um,
and he slept in an empty TV set and ate
dog food and liver and Dolly socks. I don't know,
(14:45):
I'm starting to maybe change my opinion on how much
more exciting is life like I could be sleeping and
but I guess the nice thing about that one is
clearly that his pet was well loved and well taken
care of. And as we've been through a lot of
these stories that we've talked about, not many of them are.
It was more acquiring animals as some sort of sign
(15:07):
of power, and like, look at the exotic things I'm
able to get without knowing anything about them or or
how to treat them and committing to them too. Some
of these animals live for a very long time, and
it seems like they're famous owners lost interests pretty quickly
as soon as the novelty world, like many kids when
they get a puppy for Christmas, thinking about after one
(15:28):
Dalmatians when there are all those Dalmatian puppies and the
Chuahuas after the Taco Bell commercials deal. But it's really
interesting too when we're looking back, there are many many
stories that we weren't able to put in this podcast.
But the tradition of giving these exotic animals as pets
to world leaders is just so interesting to me. I
(15:51):
don't think you'd be able to get away with it
as much here unless you could prove that it would
be taken care of adequately. Well that's what zoos are
for today, and you see that in some of these
ones we've talked about, Actually the world leader ends up
being forced to give his exotic animal away to the zoo.
But if if we're thinking modern times, I mean, countries
(16:13):
do still exchange animals between their zoos, so maybe that's
sort of the replacement. But our presidents are sticking more
to cats and dogs these days. They can take care
of and people can identify with. But if you would
like to tell us again the story of some interesting
historical figures and their fabulous pets, please email us at
(16:34):
History podcast, how stuff Works dot com. We're also on Facebook,
We've got fan page and on Twitter at missed in History.
And if you'd like to read a little bit more
about Salvage or Dolly, you can search our home page
for his name at www That how stuff works dot
com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(16:56):
Is it how stuff works dot Com and be sure
to check out the stuff you missed in history. Glass
flogged on the How staff Works dot Com plint page.
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